Indulging in one’s sexual freedom is no excuse to disregard looking after your sexual health, and that goes for you too, Lawrence. After several fans and critics noticed that with Insecure’s season-two free-for-all seems to be a noticeable lack of seeing anyone on the show practice safe sex, creator and star Issa Rae has vowed to do better and also assured viewers that her characters are using protection. “We tend to place condoms in the backgrounds of scenes or imply them. But we hear you guys and will do better next season,†Rae tweeted after Sunday’s night episode, sharing a still of an opened condom wrapper from one of Lawrence’s sex scenes hiding in plain sight.
After a flurry of tweets sparked from an essay questioning why Insecure is giving the impression of being a little too raw in its depiction of casual sex, showrunner Prentice Penny tweeted that “In the writers room we always assume they do [use condoms],†requesting viewers not to nitpick. But when fans further challenged his response, bringing up statistics about young black people and HIV rates and responsible media representation, Penny doubled down on his defense, saying “We are just editing to get to emotional beats not to be misleading†and that the show is “not a PSA, documentary, [or] non profit organization.†He also correctly noted that it’s probably a bad idea to “look to ANY decisions our characters make as a compass†anyway. Because, if nothing else, an unplanned pregnancy would make for some good season-three awkwardness.