Menu
Sign In Search Podcasts Charts People & Topics Add Podcast API Blog Pricing
Podcast Image

Mamamia Out Loud

The Fingering Renaissance

07 Jan 2026

Transcription

Chapter 1: What is the fingering renaissance and why is it significant?

0.47 - 30.038 Jessie Stephens

You're listening to a Mamma Mia podcast. Hello, it is Jessie Stephens here and this summer we have decided to curate your Outloud playlist. We have been bringing you some of our most popular subscriber episodes so that your holiday listening is sorted and, wow, we chose this one because it got such an enormous response from the Outlouders.

0

30.018 - 45.817 Jessie Stephens

Now, this episode was a little bit spicy, so we are warning you, grab your headphones for this one. Maybe go for a private little walk in case there's little ears around. There's been something very specific happening on our screens over the past year, and boy, did we want to talk about it.

0

46.438 - 59.434 Jessie Stephens

We deep dive into why this particular intimate digital act has been having a major moment and what this trend says about changing attitudes towards women's pleasure.

0

62.536 - 68.885 Monique Bowley

Are you okay? Oh.

0

71.056 - 72.04 Mia Freedman

Oh, God.

Chapter 2: How have recent films portrayed fingering and women's pleasure?

73.454 - 94.613 Mia Freedman

Oh, God. Hello, we love you and welcome to a slightly rude episode, I'm going to say. It's about sex. And naughty. Yeah. Sealed section. It's our sealed section. Now, if you've been to the movies lately or watched a streaming show, you might have noticed that Hollywood's having what we're calling a fingering renaissance. Are we calling it that? I'm calling it that.

0

Chapter 3: What cultural shifts are influencing attitudes towards women's sexual pleasure?

94.633 - 100.719 Jessie Stephens

Did you know that it's actually been coined as the finger innocence? The finger innocence.

0

100.799 - 110.832 Mia Freedman

I think that's true. It's like renaissance but with fingering. A few recent examples, Nicole Kidman's erotic thriller Baby Girl, you might remember, face down. If people haven't seen that yet, please go and see it.

0

110.892 - 111.553 Jessie Stephens

It's so good.

0

111.573 - 113.997 Mia Freedman

It's so interesting. Yeah, it's really interesting. A lot of fingering in that.

0

Chapter 4: How does the rise of intimacy coordinators impact sex scenes in media?

114.157 - 133.202 Mia Freedman

Also Anne Hathaway's character in the movie The Idea of You when she's with that younger guy who's like a Harry Styles-esque character in the boy band and she meets him at a hotel and their first sexual encounter happens. starts with a really enthusiastic bout of fingering, which she likes a lot.

0

133.783 - 141.733 Mia Freedman

And also, not to be outdone, Bridgerton, with the famous carriage scene between Penelope and Colin, Nicola Coghlan's character, you might remember.

0

141.973 - 144.396 Monique Bowley

Not easy to get a finger in between all of those petticoats.

0

144.416 - 154.888 Mia Freedman

A lot of petticoats to get through. It's very true. Pantalons. It's true. What's interesting when we've been looking at the rise of fingering, and I've been thinking about it a little bit. Yeah, come on.

0

Chapter 5: What role does the female gaze play in modern sexual narratives?

155.128 - 173.627 Mia Freedman

Cultural critics. Fingering's back. And I think there's a couple of reasons for that. The first is that no one has to be nude. Both parties can be fully clothed, which is good for some of the parties involved might not want to be nude. Also, it's more safe for mainstream viewing. And then the other thing, of course, which is wonderful is this focus on female pleasure.

0

173.607 - 197.573 Jessie Stephens

So do you think, because I was wondering why we're seeing more of this, and the obvious reason to me was that these are screenplays that are written by women. So when women are writing the sex scenes, their female pleasure is centred. I also wondered if it had anything to do with the rise of intimacy coordinators where a sex scene is now examined for a different

0

Chapter 6: Why are Gen X women reportedly having the best sex?

197.553 - 197.954 Jessie Stephens

Prison?

0

198.535 - 213.541 Monique Bowley

I think that's so smart. Definitely. I also think in a way, as you said, Mira, about how it makes them a little bit safer. This isn't the case for like Baby Girl, which obviously had a lot of other sex going on. There's a little bit of plausible deniability. Like if you were watching Bridgerton.

0
0

213.922 - 217.947 Monique Bowley

Like you either know what's going on in that scene or you don't. Do you know what I mean?

0

Chapter 7: How has the perception of sex changed across different generations?

217.967 - 220.309 Jessie Stephens

So you can say to your kid, oh, she's just got an itch. Yes.

0

220.65 - 228.278 Monique Bowley

It's a little bit sort of safer. But I think the female gaze on these screenplays is definitely a big part of it.

0

228.338 - 242.494 Jessie Stephens

There was a quote by the director of Baby Girl where she said that basically movies are full of scenes where we see a woman have an orgasm on screen that is anatomically not possible. Yes. Which is, I think, very, very true. Yes.

0

242.474 - 244.738 Mia Freedman

Like during penetrative sex all the time.

0

244.778 - 251.031 Jessie Stephens

So 70 to 90% of women do not have an orgasm from penetrative sex.

Chapter 8: What pressures do women face regarding sexual performance in today's culture?

251.111 - 265.098 Jessie Stephens

But 100% of the ones on movies do. Exactly, exactly. And funnily, that's actually how Baby Girl starts, of course, is through her having an orgasm through penetrative sex, which we learn is not a real one, which is kind of what all of this sexual... fantasy is about.

0

265.198 - 282.353 Jessie Stephens

So I think I've also noticed it in books I'm reading and I read almost exclusively books by women and certainly recently one of the big things people said about Sally Rooney was that she wrote a really good sex scene and of course you've got Miranda July and all of these women who are

0

282.333 - 300.954 Jessie Stephens

writing sex very differently and they do put female pleasure front and centre, which is a really brave thing to do because we haven't seen a lot of it before, but it's like this is how it actually looks. I wonder too if there's something about fingering that feels... Nostalgic. Yes. Yeah. Okay.

0

301.214 - 312.987 Jessie Stephens

So I wonder if this dynamic that we keep playing with where it's a young man and an older woman, I wonder if it's like meant to be a bit of a throwback to It reminds you of being young.

0

313.007 - 319.173 Monique Bowley

Yeah, exactly. I mean, not necessarily literally but culturally of you're at school.

319.434 - 320.635 Mia Freedman

Big experimenting.

320.655 - 331.206 Monique Bowley

You're a teenager and you're not allowed to go all the way. You're not allowed to have your clothes off. So it's all like furtive and frottage. We used to call it frottage when I was a teenager.

331.226 - 345.341 Mia Freedman

Lots of rubbing up against people. I think it's really hot because often when you graduate to P&V sex and oral sex, you leave that behind. And it's actually a great thing to maybe reintroduce back into the men's room.

345.361 - 349.766 Jessie Stephens

There's terms for it. They call it hand sex, outercourse. Outercourse.

Comments

There are no comments yet.

Please log in to write the first comment.