u/Bug-no-brain

I want to preface by saying that I am a long time fan of this show and I am not criticizing any performance or actor.

Euphoria has taken some really odd steps in the treatment of it's female characters. In the previous two seasons it's obvious that the show is sexual in nature and deals with very mature themes despite the main cast of characters being minors (though all of the actors apart from Ashtray [Javon Walton]), but this season takes it so much further. I'm not sure if Levinson is trying to punch the boundaries further due the characters being older, or if there's something sinister in the writing and directing itself. My gut is telling me it's a mix of both.

I think this show touches on many very important and socially relevant topics, though the way it's depicted I feel it's just not landing. So many moments it feels like the goal is to show the vulnerability and cruel realities that women face, but it reads like a humiliation ritual.

Rue - Rue is Levinson's self insert character so I feel like she is treated with a lighter hand when it comes to sexually exploitative or graphic moments (this could also be a choice on Zendaya's part, but I can't know for sure).

Maddy - Maddy is also less subject to this character treatment, which doesn't make sense with her personality and plot this season.

Now the characters that get the worst treatment.

Cassie - I do not like Cassie, many of her choices and her logic make no sense to me personally but do for her character. My issue comes with how it's depicted. Cassie's questionable choices and motives are always so sexually humiliating. Plot wise, I get it. But the level of graphic displays of those choices feels egregious.

Jules - The sugar baby plot line makes total sense, the scenes with her former sugar daddies aren't an issue for me either, but the seran wrap scene? It feels like fetish content at the expense of the character's dignity, a story that seems like it should feel empowering came off as so reductive to me.

And finally, Faye - Faye's character is the most obvious example of unnecessarily humiliating sexual moments in this show. The balloon swallowing scene was already gross with Rue, the directorial choices of Faye in that scene was diabolical. The dog licking her bodily fluids off of her, every scene of her with that fucking Nazi waste, almost every time she is on screen, reduced and boiled down to sexual shock value.

Every consequence the male characters come across, physical endangerment, financial ruin, law enforcement, the female characters are also subject to with the added bonus of being sexually exploited as well.

There are moments that I understand and fit with the narrative (the dance scene with Angel and sniffing drugs off of her nipples for example, Cassie's photoshoots as well). But so many female characters seem so stripped down (literally and figuratively) that I just can't see past it sometimes. This is the very reason I'm not a fan of directors like Tarantino.

So much time and effort was put into creating these stories that matter, stories that can resonate with people, the reality of being a woman (a flawed, human, imperfect woman) and it ends up feeling less like real consequences to a wild series of events and choices and more like revenge porn against women.

Nate got his toe cut off and beat to a bloody pulp, and so far that's the only consequence I've seen for any man on this show. Can anyone give me a reason other than misogyny? Why are the women's consequences so sexually embarrassing? If it's to exemplify how women often feel in the real world, fine. But it missed the mark and just feels like part of the problem.

Edit: Spelling and name corrections

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