One of the world’s favorite bicons, Drew Barrymore, shocked the audience of her eponymous talk show by revealing that she doesn’t require consistent sex. When the topic of celibacy came up, Barrymore admitted that she could go years abstaining.
Barrymore has a reputation for candid confessions. She’s comfortable openly chatting about intimacy. But she is accused of being “anti-sex” since challenging the idea that Andrew Garfield’s (The Amazing Spider-Man) six-month celibacy, to prepare for a new film, was such a big deal.
“I created new rituals for myself,” Garfield said to Marc Maron on the WTF podcast. “I was celibate for six months. I was fasting a lot because me and Adam [Driver] had to lose a bunch of weight and it kind of all added up. So there was all these spiritual kind of practices that we got to do while we were praying, meditating, and you know, having all the intentions that we had as those characters. It was very cool man had some pretty wild trippy experiences from starving myself of sex and food for that period of time.”
Garfield’s comments were discussed on Drew Barrymore’s show. On a segment called “Drew’s News,” the actress and co-host Ross Matthews shared how long they could go without sex.
Matthews, a gay man, said, “I get abstaining from sex. I mean, I did that my entire 20s, right?”
Barrymore responded: “What’s wrong with me that six months doesn’t seem like a very long time? I was like ‘Yeah, so?’”
When Matthews joked about how they’d “buried the lede,” after Barrymore said six months wasn’t long without sex, she said she could actually go “years.”
Why is it juicy and powerful when a woman shares her raunchy sex stories, but she becomes a rigid prude when she admits to not needing sex to be happy? Confessing that you don’t need sex is just as vulnerable as revealing a kinky expedition. If not more, in a world where your worth is based on how desirable you are to men.
The audience’s offended response to Drew Barrymore’s de-prioritization of sex reminds me of how many men felt betrayed when Cassandra Peterson (Elvira) came out.
If sex isn’t at the forefront of Barrymore’s mind, then she’s less appealing to liberal feminist audiences who think a woman’s liberation is located in how sexually “free” she is – leftover misogyny from the sexual revolution that leads to women having sex they don’t want in order to appear “empowered.” The fact Barrymore can go years without sex is seen to be encouraging, or even symptomatic of, our oppression.
Since Barrymore made the comments, she discussed these “anti-sex” reactions on her blog.
“The other day I walked into a workout class,” Barrymore wrote, “and this woman said “you look just like Drew Barrymore except for you look like you have mental wellness and besides …she hates sex!”
“I did not know what this woman was talking about,” the actress added.
That is when Barrymore realized how much her current views on sex actually offended people.
“Then a few days later, I learned that somehow a comment that I had made on the show about how abstaining from sex for six months just didn’t seem like that long to me because at my age and with my life experience, it just doesn’t. The whole conversation came about because the news reported that a talented and cool, male actor – who is considered a heart throb by many accounts! – abstained from sex for six months as part of a role he was working on. And I love this actor. For him, that must have been challenging. I see that now. And I’m sure that there was one point in my life where six months might have seemed extreme, but I’m on the other side of that now.”
Barrymore was under attack. She justified her comments, as if she needed to, by indicating that they are a result of her troublesome life experience.
“At nearly 48 I have very different feelings about intimacy than I did growing up. I did not have role model parents and I engaged with people in grown up ways since a tender age! I was looking for companionship! validation! excitement! pleasure! hedonism! fun! And adventures!! Now, because I can’t get in the time machine and change my history. So I now choose to look at it through a positive lens, which is that I lived! I lived a very rich full life. However, after two kids and a separation from their father that has made me cautious, I have had the pleasure of shifting my focus when it comes to love for myself and my two daughters. I know that does not include a man nor has it for a while. I’ve come to realize through working in therapy (with Barry), he said something and I had to write it down. He said, “Sex is not love! It is the expression of love.” I have searched my whole life to have words like that to help me understand the difference and now, thanks to him, I do.”
