Shameless Explores Sexual Fluidity, Cameron Monaghan is Nude

^Shameless

This post was going to mostly be about Cameron Monaghan's nude appearance in last night's Shameless episode titled "Swipe, Fuck, Leave," but since the show is increasingly about challenging sexual norms, we gonna talk about that too. This is the first Monaghan nude scene in which he has sex with a woman, and either you'll think that the show is progressively redefining modern sexuality, or that it's reached the don't-give-a-fuck-Lady-Gaga-in-AHS stage of a television series. Let's explore!

Shameless is one of the few legit shows that I keep up with on television, mostly because the 30 minutes of 1 second segments on Family Guy are better suited to my Rex Goliath "Free Range Red" evening festivities. If you don't watch Shameless, here's an insanely brief synopsis of Monaghan's character Ian up until this season on the Showtime series. Ian is the only gay brother of the Gallagher siblings, who live like South Chicago Boxcar Children. He has red hair and is gorgeous and I'm in love with him. Ian once had a relationship with fellow lovable hooligan Mickey (Noel Fisher). Ian then had a bi-polar meltdown. The two of them worked it out. Noel Fisher became famous and left the show. The writers flailed and paired Ian with HIV positive firefighter Caleb last season.

SPOILERS: In the current seventh season, Caleb divulges to Ian that he still has sex with his ex girlfriend. Caleb doesn't consider it to be cheating because it's with a woman. Even more important than the infidelity aspect of Caleb's sextra curricular activities is the fact that until this point Ian had considered gay to mean gay, as in vagina free zone 24/7. Shameless has already established a dialogue about polyamorous relationships with lovers Svetlana (Isidora Goreshter), Veronica (Shanola Hampton) and Kevin (Steve Howey), so in retrospect this new storyline makes sense. Boundaries, you have been pushed!

^{Shameless polyamorous relationship}

Or maybe not. Ian's confusion over his boyfriend's labia lusting leads him to seek out a taste of low tide as well, and he hooks up with a woman he meets on a train. Afterwards Ian realizes that he's definitely not into girls, and it has yet to be seen how he and Caleb move forward with their relationship.

My question is: What are the fucking odds that two women on the show would be down to clown with each other in a story arc meant to explore polyamorous relationships, AND Ian's gay boyfriend would be down to clown with women, AND Ian would be so curious that he'd be down to go down on a seafood buffet? In the recent showtime series Easy a married couple played by Orlando Bloom and Malin Akerman decide to have a three way with a woman, and Malin seems to become immediately engorged when they lez out, even though sexuality isn't addressed in any capacity.

Basically, WHERE ARE ALL OF THESE SEXUALLY FLUID PEOPLE IN REAL LIFE? And for the record, I'm not talking about people who identify as bisexual. I'm talking about laissez-faire fucking. The storylines of my friends would be a lot more interesting if they had all of this dramz. To me sexual fluidity seems so en vogue right now that introducing it to characters that we've established as gay, like Ian, actually destroys the believability of the entire storyline. With everything we know about Caleb from last season, it feels random that he would be cheating with a woman, and Ian has been through so much self-exploration that it's improbable to me that that he would question his sexuality. 

^{Long live Ian and Mickey}

My inability to get with this storyline in Shameless could have to do with the fact that I'm 100% grade A gay, and maybe even, closed-minded? I can't tell if a pop culture ratings quest is leading to more conversations about sexual fluidity in real life, or if conversations about sexual fluidity in real life are simply being reflected in pop culture. I know that sexuality exists on a spectrum, but is it believable that so many characters would be hovering around a 5, or be able to hop around the scale like a Mexican jumping bean in heat? haha I like that last one.

In the end, none of this matters compared to Cameron Monaghan's naked scene in this most recent episode of Shameless! The ginger God finally got hair on his chest last season, and basically he's just the cutest thing God ever put on this Earth. Unfortunately he's wearing a penis pouch in this scene, but that ass is 100% au naturel. 

Via A.V. Club and THR