At the Intimacy Intersection of Pleasure and Shame, Let’s Delete Stigma.

Pleasure and shame are addressed in a recent movie, in two directions. Good Luck to you, Leo Grande is a movie where characters meet at the intersection of intimacy and sexuality. Both know shame and taboo tempers their pleasure choices. Each person highlights the other as they seek pleasure, delete shame, and provide caring.

Middle-Aged Women.

So many women receive messages that after menopause, it’s a downhill trip for sex. And the reality is if you haven’t experienced what you had hoped in your life, it’s time to make a choice to go for pleasure. That’s what Nancy, the retired religious education teacher, played by Emma Thompson, does with Leo, the sex worker played by Darryl McCormack. She chose him to be the catalyst for her bucket list of sex.

I loved hearing from Emma Thompson about this role as I read interviews and watched her speak about the film. She indicated she thought this was a zeitgeist film—a movie not seen before, with a woman’s courage to examine her life and pleasure. After all, who puts women’s pleasure on the top of the important to-do list? It’s up to the individual woman.

Pleasure and Shame.

Does it take the interaction with a sex worker dubbed sex care-er to bring forward respect for our sexual desires? That’s one element addressed in the movie. After speaking with sex workers, Darryl McCormack saw they had a specific capacity to be generous and compassionate. In the movie, Leo listens and shows his respect for pleasure through this listening. That allowed him to ease or release one from suffering, make them feel better, or even facilitate a platform for self-learning. He embodied that through his character.

Emma coined the phrase “neutral gaze” as she settled on the view of her own body, like the character by the film’s end. Instead of looking at the outer vessel of her body, she internalized a new sense of ownership. No shame, no self-consciousness.

Active Sexuality Discovery.

I’ve been a believer that if you chose to delve into the deeper notions within yourself about sexuality, you will come out the other side discovering a different person. Because the pandemic kept the movie crew small and the location minimal, Emma, Darryl, and Sophie Hyde, the director, worked together for openness. They stripped their clothes away in a naked rehearsal, and in doing so, they each owned who and what they were with their clothes off.

Emma noted she never expected to learn so much about her attitude and relationship with her body, related to pleasure and shame. She showed us that you grow, change, and smile by stepping into who you are.

Wouldn’t we all like to be one and at peace with our total selves, which includes sexuality? Let’s get rid of stigma and invite pleasure and desire into our lives.

Go watch the movie and see how it changes your perspectives. And also, check out our discussion of the movie in The Sexuality Space.