You have seen hundreds of sex scenes before experiencing one yourself. Even before your first kiss, you had already absorbed hours of TV series, films and sometimes porn. Without you realising it, these images shaped what you expect from a first time: a certain sequence, particular lighting, certain gestures and sensations, a kind of ‘success’ you are supposed to achieve.
The problem is that almost all these depictions are false. Not slightly false, but fundamentally false. They prepare you for an experience that does not exist, and when the real one comes along, you think that is the one that has gone wrong.
I will try to dismantle these images, because unlearning what the screen has taught you is probably the best gift a young woman can give herself before her first time.
The big lie: sexuality as a spectacle
Sexuality in films is a spectacle. It is made to be watched. That is the founding lie.
Everything is visual, linear and perfect. The script is neatly ordered: a beginning, a middle and a final explosion. Bodies are lit, framed and chosen for how photogenic they are. Skin has no imperfections. Positions look good on camera before they feel comfortable. The soundtrack starts at the right moment, rises at the right moment and fades at the right moment. Everything is designed to show you a version of sexuality, not to let you experience it.
The result is that you approach your first time imagining sex in which you think about how you look instead of feeling what is happening. You become a spectator of your own sexual experience. You wonder: do I look beautiful in this position? Does my stomach look flat? Are my breasts moving the right way? Is the lighting right? Am I making the right sounds? Does my face show what it should?
And while you watch this imaginary scene in which you are playing yourself, you are not in it. Sex does not work like that. Sex asks you to be in your body, not watching it from the outside.
Real sexuality is sensory, not visual
Here is what a screen cannot film, and therefore never shows you.
The temperature of their skin against yours. The unique smell of their hair. The texture of their hands, unlike anyone else’s. The rhythm of their breathing against your neck. The weight of their body on yours. The warmth rising from your belly. The tingling at the nape of your neck. The roughness of an unshaven cheek. What moves inside you: not just penetration, but all the waves that rise and fall, the areas that awaken and those that quieten. The sound of blood in your ears. The very particular feeling of arousal becoming overwhelming emotion.
Your body has a sensory intelligence infinitely richer than any film. Your senses give you access to thousands of subtle pieces of information. That is real sexuality. Sensory before visual. Internal before external. Inhabited before displayed.
The lie of a straight line
In real life, arousal rises and falls, ebbs and flows, pauses and returns. This ebb and flow is normal. It is the very nature of female arousal: complex, sensitive to context and vulnerable to interruption. An honest film would show those fluctuations. Most films smooth them away because they spoil the drama.
The lie of porn
Porn occupies a category of its own within cinematic falsehood. It claims to show real sexuality while being almost its opposite. It is staged for the viewer’s gaze, not for the pleasure of those taking part. Positions are chosen for what they reveal, not for how they feel. Women adopt uncomfortable, acrobatic poses, with exaggerated expressions of pleasure that bear no relation to anything spontaneous. Penetration is fast and forceful, without meaningful foreplay. Female orgasm is performed rather than experienced.
Let me be very clear: porn is not an instruction manual. It is commercial fiction aimed at a male audience that does not want to see the complexity of female pleasure. Using it as a guide for your first time is a little like learning to drive by watching action films.
What screens never show
The awkwardness: bodies bump, elbows slip and you have to readjust. Shared laughter. Pauses for water or a breather. The sounds of air coming from the vagina after lubrication: a completely normal physical occurrence. Sensations that are neither pleasure nor pain, but pure novelty. Unexpected emotions: wanting to cry at the intensity, a wave of tenderness, absurd laughter. Films leave all this out because it does not lend itself to staging.
The real choreography
Your first time will probably be awkward, imperfect and full of surprises. That is exactly how it should be. It is how human first times have happened for as long as humans have existed, long before films came along to tell them what it should look like.
Instead of trying to reproduce what you have seen on screen, trust this natural bodily intelligence. Your body knows things that screenwriters do not. Let it take the lead. Be inside the experience, not watching it. Feel rather than look.
My book VIRGINITÉ — Spécial Filles explores these questions and 139 others, including a whole section on myths and realities, to unlearn what the screen has taught you. 140 questions, 140 answers, so you can choose rather than endure. Publication date: 1 September 2026.