The Cultural Discomfort Behind the Criticism of Bridgerton
On Christmas day of 2020, Netflix released the first season of its chart-topping series Bridgerton. Based on Julia Quinn’s award-winning book series of the same name, Bridgerton was an overnight success that reignited global interest in regency romance. With each new season of Bridgerton comes a familiar pattern in public discourse. While praised for its costumes and character development, the show is repeatedly dismissed as being ‘glorified porn’. It is hardly revolutionary for TV series to include sexual scenes, so why did Bridgerton provoke such strong criticism for doing so?
Viewership data consistently shows an average of 75% of Bridgerton’s audience is made up by female viewers. This context is crucial in understanding why it is so frequently overlooked as ‘pornographic’. When a show is culturally coded as being ‘for women’, it is easily trivialised, and when it represents female pleasure and agency, it becomes culturally threatening. It’s easier to dismiss the show as indulgent and excessive rather than meaningful. This pattern becomes even clearer when you compare Bridgerton to shows with a similar number of sexual scenes but a different target audience.
Like Bridgerton, Game of Thrones commonly aired explicit scenes of a sexual imagery. Game of Throne released its first season almost a decade before Bridgerton with nine distinct scenes of a sexual nature. This is only slightly fewer than Bridgerton’s 12 scenes in its first season. However, unlike Bridgerton, Game of Thrones is framed as ‘serious’ television and rarely dismissed as pornographic in any mainstream commentary. While Game of Thrones experienced a slightly more mixed audience, it was still largely perceived as targeting male viewers.
Another important comparison of the two shows is the nature of the explicit scenes themselves. In Game of Thrones, sexual scenes often function as demonstrations of power, dominance or political control. Violence is normalised and female nudity significantly outweighs male nudity. In contrast, Bridgerton uses sexual scenes to explore intimacy, emotional connection and self discovery. There is rarely a power imbalance or violence within the sexual scenes. Game of Thrones uses sex as spectacle while Bridgerton treats it as an experience. Yet mainstream reporting is still more comfortable with the sexual scenes in Game of Thrones than those in Bridgerton.
What makes the sexual scenes in Bridgerton really stand apart from similar scenes in shows like Game of Thrones and Peaky Blinders is that it centres female pleasure. Bridgerton makes a point of taking time to showcase women’s anticipation, consent, curiosity and emotional response. Female desire is given space. So frequently when shows do this, they are labelled excessive, indulgent or pornographic.
This continuous dismissal of the show overshadows the very important themes that are actually attracting the large audience number. In each season we see different female leads confront societal constraints that still resonate with modern audience’s navigating ongoing gender inequalities. From the pressure put on Eloise to marry while she watches her brothers pursue education, travel and personal ambitions to Daphne’s journey in understanding her own desires which highlight’s how little agency women were granted over their own bodies. Taken together, these storylines reveal a series invested in exploring the structural limitations placed on women. They make the female audience feel seen and heard, instead of overlooked or misrepresented. Bridgerton is not simply a regency romance, it is stories every woman can relate to.
The representation of societal constraints on women is not the only thing drawing in such high numbers of viewers. Sisterhood and female friendships are ongoing themes throughout all the seasons of Bridgerton, and this resonates strongly with the audience. Female leads are shown navigating desire alongside loyalty, rivalry, care and social constraint. Women are frequently shown as uplifting and supporting each other. By reducing it to ‘glorified porn’, we obscure these nuanced explorations of gender, relationships and identity.
The language we see used to describe Bridgerton doesn’t exist in a vacuum. So often when a show is targeted to a female audience and explores sex, pleasure and exploration, it is overlooked and labelled excessive and indulgent. But there’s a real danger in that. These labels lead to audiences feeling ashamed for watching the show. Suddenly, viewers have to justify why they enjoy it. This shame can then spread to how viewers experience their own sexuality and curiosity. Representation shapes what we believe is normal or permissible.
The response to Bridgerton reveals a persistent cultural unease with women’s sexuality and female pleasure. There is a continuous push to control and dominate women’s bodies. This is why sex that objectifies women’s bodies is normalised on media and in TV, while sex that validates women is scrutinised. When female sexuality is presented on women’s terms rather than through the male gaze, it challenges long-standing cultural expectations and that discomfort is often what we see reflected in the criticism of Bridgerton. So perhaps the question is not why Bridgerton provoked such criticism, but why female pleasure on screen still makes audiences so uncomfortable.