The Sex Lives of College Girls (TSLoCG) is an HBO original series produced, written, and co-created by Mindy Kaling. Kaling has said the series is her answer to the male-centric fraternity sitcoms of the 90s. In an effort to represent the lives of young women in the demographic, Kaling developed TSLoCG using her own memories of attending an elite East Coast university. Despite its concept stemming from her lived experience, it is set on a squarely contemporary college campus, its students hyper-saturated Gen Z caricatures.
The college girls in question are Bela, the comedian, Whitney, the athlete, Kimberly, the straight-A student, and Kacey, a Southern former pageant girl. The posh Leighton used to fill out the posse, but actress Renee Rapp announced she would be leaving the show in July of 2023. Clearly wanting to fill a Rapp-shaped hole in the lineup, it seems the writers chose to split the character in two. We have the aforementioned preppy Kacey, who brings her own powerful pipes to rival Rapp’s, and the brooding Taylor, who checks the “blonde” and “lesbian” boxes with a British twist.
Taylor’s plight is unclear. She starts the season as an antagonistic force, belittling Bela under a flimsy sheen of disaffection. When Bela eventually confronts her, Taylor immediately spins into a downward spiral. This motivates her to confide in Bela, revealing her struggle with alcohol abuse. Once the audience is let in on an authentic, internal plotline, it dissolves under sparkly makeup and crop tops. Taylor’s arc has the potential to unravel current ideas regarding the rise in sobriety among Gen Z college students, perhaps even forcing our main squad to consider their dependence on the substance. Unfortunately, Taylor’s alcoholism only exists to disrupt the action of the main four. She is this season’s proverbial tree in the woods. If Bela is not listening to hear to fall, does she make a sound?
Kacey is an infuriating character. She is internalized misogyny and toxic beauty standards manifested. Again, the moment we gain a glimpse into something substantive, it’s seemingly swept under the rug. Her character could have been used to explore those issues and their impact on today’s college girls, but the show refuses to scrutinize any of her problematic ideals. She is instead rewarded for her entitled behavior every step of the way. Every time she is met with an obstacle or someone tries to teach her a lesson, she earns her payoff before the message has time to sink in.
Her most discouraging behaviour comes when she is horrified to discover she did not earn a spot on a seemingly sanctioned a “hottest students” list. She spends the entirety of the episode belaboring this singular event until her indulgent boy-crush asks a friend to artificially include her. It didn’t matter if she earned the a spot on the list, it was enough to have the title illegitimately rewarded to her.
If the show did not consistently reward Kacey for her egoistic and fretful attitude, her obsession with optics and public perception might open a relevant and powerful conversation regarding the pressures young women face to be popular, beautiful, or perfectly charming. Instead of opening that conversation, the show inadvertently legitimizes these concerns surrounding girlhood in giving Kacey everything she wants, with no critical or opposing perspectives explored for more than one line of dialogue. For a program that prides itself on its forward-thinking, current, empowered approach to the lives of young women, this is a frustratingly unproductive step.
To add insult to injury, there is a recurring bit of Kacey making fun of theater kids while claiming to deserve the a lead role in the drama department’s musical. This is not confidence, irony, or even intelligent comedic writing–it’s unimaginative and tacky.
A beacon of optimism is the show’s handling of her virginity, for the most part. She does not face any severe judgement from her peers for being a virign, and her anxieties about her lack of experience were honest.
Perhaps the show’s most disappointing downfall is its misuse of the character Lila. Lila is not part of the core friend group, in fact her presence is often treated as overbearing or out of place. We first meet her as Kimberly’s coworker at a coffee shop. She either plays the role of the loud, loyal guard dog to other girls, or of the bombastic comic relief who gives wildly ill-informed sex advice. While the actor does good work of delivering her quips, the character is ultimately relegated to a two-dimensional role of plot development and fluff. She has no arc of her own.
In 2025, it feels impossible to see an adequately sexual, plus-sized woman in film and television. They oscillate between the prudish, decidedly unsexy fat girl trope, or the hypersexual, borderline regressive attitudes of TSLoCG’s Lila. In either case, the conclusion our zeitgeist arrives at is the same: the ways in which fat women engage with sexuality, whether implied not at all or too much, is a source of comedy. It is to be laughed at or mocked. Many sexually active young adults are guilty of overcompensation. Socially, we tend to regard overcompensation as a clear indication of insecurity. To consistently employ the fat character in this role is to suggest their sexuality is beyond belief. The idea anyone might find them attractive is so unlikely, so out of the ordinary, that they must overcompensate to belong in the conversation. Lila’s sexual humor has her coming across like less of an empowered baddie, and more of the insecure friend looking for any gap in conversation to confess that they too have sex. In a show that aims to depict the reality of the modern college girl and to uplift female sexuality, this is a severe letdown.
Bela has by far the most invigorating arc this season. Past seasons saw her self-sabotaging by harming herself or hurting the feelings of those around her. In season three, she decides to pursue a committed relationship, but leaves it when she realizes they are not sexually compatible. Bela is unashamed of her storied sexual history; it fuels her comedic and creative life. When her boyfriend of the season, the gentle but meek Arvind, expresses discomfort with her openness, she respects his boundaries, as well as her own intuition, and walks away.
Despite Kaling’s mission to accurately represent today’s youth, the show takes creative liberties by virtue of being a fictitious product. Not all college girls have illustrious and frenetic sex lives. And not all of the sex college girls have is remotely good. In fact, bad sex is a pillar of the college experience, yet the rite-of-passage is hardly touched with a ten-foot-pole. Every encounter is teeming with sweaty perfection; the girls are always satisfied, always well-kempt, never awkward or ungainly. The show only explores “failed” sexual experiences in the stories of the virginal Kacey, who actually has an amazing time when the sex does occur, and Kimberly, who incorrectly assumes her new bisexual partner will prefer overtly kinkier activities. An assumption no real human would ever make out of sheer self-awareness.
The show’s intended purpose is not some dirty little secret whispered between women as they giggle while passing notes in class. It’s right in the title. Viewers know the focus of the show will be the sex lives of college girls, and certainly the steamy love scenes are part of the appeal. Female audiences have long sought erotic media less crude than pornography. Content with higher production value, greater body diversity, and emotional as well as sexual interest. Thus we have the rise in roman-tasy fiction, or Bridgerton and its gracefully choreographed sex scenes. And TSLoCG has plenty of rockin’ love scenes. But this begs the question: why not write a show that fulfills this market and promotes positivity?
One piece of dialogue from this season of the show is perfectly indicative of its shortcomings. The blonde, British bombshell Taylor jokes to her equally conventional partner, “I’ve never forgiven an ugly person.” The Sex Lives of College Girls builds a world where consistent female pleasure is possible, even promised. Where girl friendships triumph over all misunderstandings and bad behavior, and no one ever wears leggings to their 9AM bio lecture. Against the college lives most of us lived, this is a fiction. A cute, saturated fiction, with the possibility to have been a platform to glimpse these girls’ internal lives as well as their external ones. But like many of its characters, it’s more concerned with how it looks on the outside than what it has to say.