Navigating College Life in an Adult Body (in all its Glory and Shame): Reviewing Mindy Kaling’s Sex Lives of College Girls (2021)

By Maija Ariele Fiedelholtz Friday, March 11, 2022

The Possé: Leighton, Kimberly, Whitney, and Bela (from left to right). Image retrieved from: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/sex-lives-of-college-girls-mindy-kaling-cast-interviews\

Mindy Kaling’s new show Sex lives of College Girls on HBOMax is the new Sex and the City, except get rid of the mysteriously wealthy cisgender white women and sub in the ethnically and socio-economically diverse, LGBTQ representative cast. Sex lives of College Girls is relevant to 2022. The show draws attention to prevalent themes which women coming of age can relate to. Plus, it's actually funny. 

While Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda were in their late thirties and early forties, this posse is in their late teens and early twenties. And, instead of braving the streets of NYC,  Reneé Rapp’s character Leighton Murray, Amrit Kaur’s character Bela Malhotra, Pauline Chalamet’s character Kimberly Finkle, and Alyah Chanelle Scott’s character Whitney Chase, are huddled together in the dorm room of what looks like a quad at a New England university. It's their freshman year and they’re taking the fictional Essex College by-storm. 

You might know Mindy Kaling as Kelly Kapoor on the notable sitcom The Office or as Mindy from The Mindy Project, a TV show she wrote and starred in as the protagonist. Since graduating from Dartmouth 20 years ago, Kaling has built up a repertoire of acute humor throughout her career. Most recently, she came out with Never Have I Ever, a Netflix series, which follows the story of an Indian Girl crushing on the high school jock. I can imagine Sex Lives of College Girls as a sequel to Kaling’s Netflix show, and it out-does it by a longshot! In the show, the cohort of young women find themselves in similarly awkward conundrums and face new challenges as they transition from their lives at home to their lives away at college. 

Because Mindy Kaling is the brain behind Sex Lives of College Girls, it is no surprise that the cast of women is diverse in socio-economic status, ethnicity, sexuality, and even body-type. The same could not be said about the possé in Sex and the City. Kimberly works a job and is attending the university on scholarship. Whitney is the daughter of a senator and she plays on the soccer team. She is a Black woman and no, she is not the poorest, and does not play into the female-Black villain trope. Bela is the Indian woman who over-shares, with a salacious sense of humor. Leighton is the stereotypical blonde rich-bitch but she is the one who unexpectedly turns out to be Lesbian in episode 1, which is ultimately revealed to only one of her friends, Kimberly, in the season Finale during a heart to heart in her bedroom. It surprised me (in a good way!) that the woman who fits the Eurocentric beauty standard to a ‘T’ was gay. 

I chugged along through each episode— I would not describe the show as fast-paced or action-packed. I did a lot of information-gathering as a viewer as I slowly got to know each character and their life-story. Granted, this is typical of first-seasons and the show seems to be setting up for a multi-season run of some length.

While the show was slow paced, it retained its energy because of its ridiculous and unabashed humor, especially in regards to sex. In many shows, the male characters talk about sex lewdly, but in Sex Lives of College Girls, the women do that, and they certainly don’t hold back. In the first episode, Bela gives six-hand jobs in order to secure her spot in the Catullan, a comedy club on campus. Bela turns the patriarchy on its head by using sexuality to advance her career-ambitions, but as Leighton points out, this doesn’t actually diverge from the way women have had to resort to using sex to get ahead in previous eras. While the six hand-jobs are an exaggeration for comedic effect, this plot-line highlights the core benefits and drawbacks of the sex-positivity trend in 2022.  How much progress the modern feminist movement has made if women still levy their sexuality to get ahead? 

Besides exploring the nature of the sex lives of modern women, as the show’s title suggests, Sex Lives of College Girls touches on a plethora of other themes which are prevalent during the first year of college like fitting in and deciphering right from wrong. One particularly notable plotline is Bela’s two sexual assaults, culminating in episode 7, when the upperclassman member of Catullan touches her butt non-consensually. Bela doesn’t know how to proceed with Title IX. This scene and the subsequent action sheds light on the complexity of sexual assault. Kaling’s writing makes it clear that coming forward in these situations is complicated. There is a lot at stake for Bela because she could potentially jeopardize her position in the club. 

While Kaling’s writing is nuanced and prescient in nearly every other aspect of the show, Kimberly’s relationship with Leighton’s older brother, Nico, played by Gavin Leatherwood feels inauthentic. Nico is in a fraternity and seems to be one of the most popular guys at Essex. I expected something more enlightened and trail-blazing from Mindy Kaling. The Cinderella trope in the media in which the flawed female character gets the well-to-do glamorous real-life player makes me want to throw my pint of ice-cream at the TV screen. The nerd-frat boy connection is clichéd and unrealistic. Like, he’s not coming to save you, babe. No one is.

That said, overall the show captures the awkwardness of Freshman year of college. I feel embarrassed for the girls throughout the show, but I am rooting for them, hoping things go their way. Many critics revel in this awkwardness and despise the over-dramatization of the central plotlines. But, I would argue that these moments are dramatized for good reason. Budding relationships, cheating scandals, and Title IX allegations feel intensely dramatic (albeit in different ways), and those feelings are captured by the show’s exaggerated nature. 

The show begs the question: If we aren’t embarrassed about our past choices then are we really growing? The girls bond over their collective problems in the show and overcome them together. Like its predecessor Sex and the City, the friendship between the women is what stands out. Just take the scene where they all make DIY ABC (Anything But Clothes) costumes for the party in the final episode.  

The Girls Getting Ready for the ABC (Anything But Clothes) Party. Image Retrieved from: https://www.popsugar.com/entertainment/sex-lives-college-girls-reimagines-popular-kid-48637969

Kaling’s Sex Lives of College Girls highlights that “sex lives” aren’t just about sex. At its crux, the show is about existing as a woman in 2022—as patriarchal a year as ever—and navigating the new college space away from parents in an adult body. I am excited to see more nuanced inter-friend group conflict as the action develops in the seasons to come. 

Works Cited 

“Mindy Kaling.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mindy-Kaling. 

​​Vulture. “The Sex Lives of College Girls Recap: Nico's Revenge.” Vulture, 3 Dec. 2021, https://www.vulture.com/article/the-sex-lives-of-college-girls-season-1-episode-7-recap-i-think-im-a-sex-addict.html.