Remember that “First Kiss” video from a while ago, showing the “social experiment” of attractive strangers kissing in front of a rolling camera? Here’s a new one, featuring attractive strangers taking their clothes off and climbing into a twin-sized bed together—only this time, it’s for the social experiment of helping Showtime promote season two of Masters Of Sex.
Like ”First Kiss,” the participants of “Undress Me” are young, thin, and attractive (except for one older couple that’s just thin and attractive). They giggle adorably and make halting conversation while taking each other’s clothing off, almost like they’re used to being on screen. If this video is anything like the last one—which turned out to be not so much “social experiment” so much as an advertisement for clothing—these strangers are likely also professional models, and therefore confident enough in their pleasant facial features and magazine-worthy bodies to act charming in front of a camera.
Analyzing the video through William Masters and Virginia Johnson’s four-stage model of sexual response, the participants don’t appear to get past the initial excitement phase, wherein things like touching and kissing take place, cuing bodies to prepare for sex. Unlike the short’s director, Tatia Pilieva, Masters and Johnson weren’t shy about studying the actual sex between actual people—which is a far cry from having models undress to hype a TV show.
“There is no man or woman who does not face in his or lifetime the concerns of sexual tensions.” That’s from Masters and Johnson’s introduction to their groundbreaking book Human Sexual Response, and it’s a truth ignored and inverted in this video, which mostly serves to reinforce that only attractive people are encouraged to explore their sexuality. Perhaps if Pilieva had worked in a few more everyday people, this would be more of a celebration of Masters and Johnson’s work.