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Spoilers for Bridgerton.
It seems that all anyone wants to talk about these days is Bridgerton, a Netflix show released last month that has already been watched by over 63 million people. It’s an epic period romance set in Pride and Prejudice-era Britain and it has a ton of highly unrealistic but very sizzling sex scenes.
So, okay, I liked it. I watched it in three or four days with my sister and my husband (warning: do NOT watch this show with your parents). I love superheroes and sci-fi, I usually enjoy romances only if they come with sword fights, and Bridgerton is the furthest thing from my typical TV-lineup. Yet I was drawn into the chemistry between the leads, the obsession with scandal, and the frank discussion of important topics, such as why the heck you wouldn’t educate adult women on how sex works.
It wasn’t shocking to me that many other people also liked it, nor that they were willing to overlook problematic issues of race and consensual sex. What did shock me is how many of them wrote thirst tweets or Instagram captions, wishing they, too, could be a Bridgerton or a Hastings, caught up in a whirlwind, passionate romance.
