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The best teen movie virginity scenes

We made a list of the best teen movie v-card scenes – good, bad and ugly. Because virginity... who needs it?

Phil de Semlyen
Written by
Kate Wertheimer
&
Phil de Semlyen
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The movies get a fair few things wrong – eg: people forgetting to say goodbye before they put the phone down; the implausibility of coolly walking away from a massive explosion; everything that happens in Fast and Furious 9 – but they tend to get scenes of teenagers losing their virginity entirely, awkwardly right. While they pop up in a miscellany of adult-oriented movies, like The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Call Me By Your Name, sex scenes are an absolute fixture in teen flicks. 

That unique cocktail of nerves, tentative connection and horndog excitement – usually augmented by about a keg’s worth of liquor – is absolute gold for Hollywood screenwriters, many of whom will probably have had their own experiences in mind as they created these 14 memorable moments of first lust.

RECOMMENDED: More of the 100 best teen movies

Cruel Intentions, 1999

This sweaty, sun-dappled sex scene is pretty magical, we have to admit. Sebastian, ever the gentleman, asks if Annette is okay (um, she seems great) while Counting Crows' "Colorblind" plays in the background... but it was 1999, okay? Don't lie and say the whole thing didn't stir your loins.

Superbad, 2007

Poor McLovin. He only got in one thrust before being rudely interrupted by his cockblocking cop friends, scaring away his lady friend and driving him to his inhaler. But oh, what a thrust.
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The Virgin Suicides, 1999

Lux Lisbon is living the Platonic Ideal of the American teen experience: she’s a beautiful suburban blonde who is crowned homecoming queen before losing her virginity to her king under the lights of her high school’s football field. Unfortunately for Lux, she’s in a Sofia Coppola movie, which means that she’s going to wake up the next morning near the 50-yard line, that teen dream quickly replaced by the cold light of day.

Clueless, 1995

When Di accidentally drives on the freeway, the fear of death drives her and Murray into one another's arms (beds). Like Cher says, "Boy, getting off the freeway makes you realize how important love is."
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Kids, 1995

"I think if we fuck, you would love it." So says Telly, the self-proclaimed "virgin surgeon," as he prepares to relieve another barely-teenage victim of her innocence. This is cherry-popping as an act of unthinking existential desperation, a way for the unloved Telly to leave his mark on the world. How the girl in question feels about it is, rather cruelly, left unexplored.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High, 1982

Unless you also lost your virginity in a seedy baseball dugout while Jackson Browne crooned "Somebody's Baby" on the soundtrack of your mind, you can't even begin to understand the psychic trauma endured by Jennifer Jason Leigh's Stacy. Also, that bench has got to hurt. But it's the poolhouse sex (pictured above) that everyone remembers... we wonder why?
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Wet Hot American Summer, 2001

Ben and McKinley's romance is by far our favorite subplot in Wet Hot American Summer. And while the hippie wedding scene is magical, it just doesn't beat sweaty man sex in a sports shed, complete with tube socks and loose balls (we mean soccer balls, perv).

Can't Hardly Wait, 1998

Loathing turns to lust when former childhood friends Denise and Kenny are locked in a bathroom together all night. And Kenny's creepy love backpack comes in handy after all.
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  • Film
  • Romance

A sun-warmed coming-of-age film concerned with popping cherries (and the odd peach), Call Me By Your Name’s abashed-but-sincere virginity scene shows that it’s possible to express and repress your desires at the same time. When 17-year-old Elio (Timothée Chalamet) hooks up for a roll on the lawn with Marzia (Esther Garrel), its pleasures can’t mask the fact that his stronger urges are for studly American Oliver (Armie Hammer). Bonus points for doing the deed ’80s-style in double denim.

  • Film
  • Comedy

This Wayne’s World sequel affords the dorky but loveable Garth the opportunity to pop his cherry to the not-even-slightly-dorky Honey Hornée and the rest of us the chance to feel marginally less bad about our first times. If Garth had an actual physical shell he would have retreated into it long before Kim Basinger’s Honey is part-way through her purring seduction. The pillow chat is hilariously off-the-mark (‘Can I be frank?’ ‘Can I still be Garth?’), but the morning-after reinvention as a suave, pipe-chewing lotherio with shades of Cary Grant is pure genius.

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The Last Picture Show, 1971

This is arguably the most heartbreaking loss-of-virginity scene in cinema, as a gang of bored Texas teens round up slow-witted Billy and drag him down to the corpulent local hooker to make a man of him. He comes too soon, she punches him in the face, and another hapless kid loses what little innocence he had left.
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