The Mindy Kaling–produced HBO Max series follows four roommates at Essex College, a prestigious New England school: Whitney, a soccer star whose mother is a powerful U.S.

“So often, we get the sex that is exploitative and hypersexualizing us young women, and this isn’t that.” How messy it is, how awkward it is, how funny it is…all of it,” Alyah Chanelle Scott, who plays Whitney, explains over Zoom.

For once, it’d be nice to hear stories about what really goes down at college…and that’s exactly what The Sex Lives of College Girlshas accomplished. Hollywood’s high schools have gotten the memo (the evolution from One Tree Hill to Never Have I Ever is ripe ground for an entire dissertation), but college, bizarrely, has been overlooked. Every one of us who suffered through orientation icebreakers is long overdue for college media that feels, well, real. But can you think of any depictions of college women that aren’t wildly oversexualized? I mean, Elle Woods literally got catcalled in the middle of her Harvard Law School admission video essay, Spring Breakers has essentially the same plot as Grand Theft Auto, and The House Bunny is based on the premise that the smartest sorority on campus can pull in a decent pledge class only if they learn to attract men first. Perhaps I’m telling on myself by assuming you’ll hear the title and immediately picture raunchy sorority car washes and sex scenes orchestrated without considering the physical limitations of getting it on in an extra-long twin-size bed.

There’s no way to say this without sounding like a college student trying to convince an RA that the murky Dasani bottle on their desk is truly just filled with water, but I’m going to give it a shot anyway: The Sex Lives of College Girlsis not what you think it is.

Nobody wanna see us together cast