"Pretty Little Liars: Summer School": Teen Sex Galore! But Why?

Pretty Little Liars: Summer School Girls

The Pretty Little Liars novels, the original television series that was based on the novels, and Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin, the first season of the reboot of the series, all had age-gap relationships. For example, in the original series, Alison and Aria, two Pretty Little Liars, had an affair with Mr. Ezra Fitz - the high school’s English teacher. 

Pretty Little Liars | Alison & Ezra

And, interestingly, in Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin, fans of the original series learned that Mr. Fitz and Aria were married. Consequently, Imogen, a 16-year-old Pretty Little Liar, allowed Mr. Fitz and Aria to adopt her baby!

However, Pretty Little Liars: Summer School, which is the second season of the reboot, didn’t have any age-gap relationships; but, curiously, Pretty Little Liars: Summer School had a shocking number of teen sex and makeout scenes - including teen girl-on-girl scenes. For example, the first episode alone had 3.5 teen sex scenes! (One scene was off-camera and another scene stopped just prior to teen oral sex.) However, one wouldn't know about the prolific teen sex scenes from Max's synopsis:

In Season 2, our PLLs face down summer school and a new villain — who may or may not have a connection to "A" — ready to put them all to the test.

But the picture of the co-stars, who are playing high school coeds during the summer after their junior year, inexplicably posing in bikini tops that’s posted on Max’s website is a peek at the raunchy content in the series.

Pretty Little Liars: Summer School | Noa and Shawn

For example, in episode 01, while Noa and Shawn were dating, Noa experienced a family issue. Despite having four close female friends, Noa was allowed to stay at Shawn’s house while her family issue was being resolved. Consequently, naughty Noa crept into her boyfriend’s bed for (teen) sex.

Pretty Little Liars: Summer School | Mrs. Noble and Noa

Interestingly, Shawn’s mother knew the teens were having late-night sex, but she didn’t stop them. However, she waited until the morning to confront Noa whom the director slash wardrobe department decided to display in a pair of short running shorts seductively sitting in a living room chair.

16-Year-Old Britney Spears (Rolling Stone)

This may be shocking to (ultra) [orthodox] Jews and Muslims, but apparently, teens having sex in their bedrooms is not uncommon. For example, Lynne Spears shared in her memoir, Through The Storm: A Real Tale Of Fame And Family In A Tabloid World, that Britney Spears was drinking at 13 and that Britney lost her virginity the following year to an 18-year-old football player. Lynne encouraged her teen daughter to have sex, because Lynne surmised that it would make Britney more popular. So much so that Lynne allowed then-15-year-old Britney to have sex in her bedroom with her new boyfriend - Justin Timberlake.

And from the New York Times Bestseller, Restless Virgins: Love, Sex, and Survival in Prep School, we learned that Whitney had her first orgasm while attending the tony Milton Academy. Interestingly, the co-authors described Whitney’s teen orgasm as “delicious”, which took place “at some odd hour of the night” in Nick’s bedroom whom was conveniently living off-campus.

Pretty Little Liars: Summer School | Shawn, Noa and Minnie

As for Pretty Little Liars: Summer School, after being confronted by Noa’s mother, Noa decided to go home. And since Noa’s mother was conveniently away, Noa and Shawn moved their teen sex to Noa’s bed, but one night after sex with Shawn, Noa couldn’t prevent herself from thinking about her teen girl-on-girl affair with Minnie.

Unsurprisingly, most critics loved Pretty Little Liars: Summer School. For example, the show received a 90% average Tomatometer. Maybe that's why there was so much teen sex. #teensexsales

Salacious Schoolgirls vs Hot Teachers: Who Has The Power in Student Teacher Sexual Affairs?

On the “Hollywood Groomers [...] feat. Bekah Day” (Jul 24, 2023) episode of Shannon McNamara’s FluentlyForward podcast, McNamara read a definition of child grooming and some of its forms. She read:

Child grooming is the act of influencing children or young teenagers to befriend or trust an adult for the purpose of sexual manipulation later in the future. Forms: victim selection, gaining access, isolating the victim, developing trust, keeping secrets, and giving gifts [i.e., literally and/or emotionally (e.g., “attention”)]

Connectedly, Anne Barnard, in her New York Times piece “What does ‘grooming’ mean in sexual abuse cases?” (Dec. 2, 2021) related that grooming: 

[...] is a gradual process whereby an abuser wins the trust and cooperation of a potential victim, starting with interactions that seem normal and benign, like paying special attention or offering compliments and gifts.

Next the abuser acclimates the victim to physical touching and sexual references, breaking down ordinary boundaries. Gradually, the predator exposes the victim to sexual behaviors, like light touching, to desensitize them.

Then McNamara shared with Day that she had a high school history teacher whom had a number of affairs with his students. And that he “picked” well-developed students whom were raised by single-parents - thereby, implying, implausibly, that an under-developed student with two parents would not have an affair with a teacher. And McNamara implied, erroneously, that student-teacher affairs are always initiated by teachers; however, minutes later, Day and McNamara shared that student-teacher affairs can be initiated by students. 

For example, Day shared that when she was a 16-year-old high school student, she “loved [getting] attention from, like, older people - older men”. And based on McNamara’s question, it’s safe to infer that the “older men” Day was referring to were teachers. 

McNamara: Did you ever, like, have a creepy, like, teacher [...] that, like, everyone knew about? 

Day: [...] personally, when I was in my sixteens and seventeens, is when I started to, like, become more adult. You know what I mean? Start [to] become an older teenager. You know what I mean? And I started to feel like I was 16 going on 25. You know what I mean? And, like, loved attention from, like, older people - older men. You know what I mean? And looking back now, as an almost 26-year-old woman. I’m like, “Girl, what was going on?”

Interestingly, McNamara went on to take the blame for student-teacher affairs away from grooming teachers and placed that blame on Lana Del Rey. McNamara opined that Lana Del Rey “[...] made a lot of 16-year-olds be like, “Like, dating my teacher would be amazing?”” [Emphasis added] 

McNamara: Can I ask, were you listening to Lana Del Rey? ‘Cause, like, I feel, like, there needs to be an parental advisory on some of those albums, like, it made a lot of 16-year-olds be like, “Like dating my teacher would be amazing?”

McNamara was referring to the fact that Lana Del Rey referenced Lolita in a number of her songs. For example, “Little Girls (Put Me In A Movie)” is a song on Lana Del Ray (2010). Here is a (self-explanatory) excerpt from the lyrics:

Lights, camera, action

If he likes me, takes me home

Come on, you know you like little girls

Come on, you know you like little girls

You can be my daddy

You can be my daddy

Day added that in addition to being influenced by Lana Del Rey, the student-teacher affairs in Pretty Little Liars were influential as well. But most revealingly, Day confessed that she takes half the blame for having a (consensual) student-teacher affair. 

Day: Like, honestly, you got me there. And I was also watching Pretty Little Liars. [...] I found myself in some bad situations. As many of us did. And I think looking back there’s always, like, you, like, look at it and you’re like, “I shouldn't have done that.” But at the same time, I’m like, “They shouldn’t have done that.” You know what I mean? 

As for Pretty Little Liars, the ABC Family show had, not one, but two student-teacher affairs. The affair between Aria and Mr. Ezra Fitz (i.e.,  Ezria), Aria’s English teacher, is inarguably the most famous (fictional) student-teacher affair in popular culture; however, before Ezria there was Ezrison - the student-teacher affair between Alison DiLaurentis and Ezra. And just like with Aria, Ezra met Alison in a bar, where, just like Aria, 15-year-old Alison lied about her age.

On the podcast, Day went on to relate that, like McNamara’s high school, student-teachers affairs were prevalent in her high school as well.

Day: So I think, like, and I think there’s a lot of girls who had that [...] but a lot of people who have that experience don’t talk about it [...]

We're not surprised by Day's assertion that "there’s a lot of girls who had [student-teacher] affair. We've written extensively about how fictional and non-fictional student-teacher affairs are portrayed in popular culture. And on social media, from Tumblr to Twitter to TikTok, schoolgirls have posted about their attractions to teachers.

In the end, Day had a student-teacher affair, because she desired attention from older men, and she was influenced by Lana Del Rey’s lyrics and the student-teacher affairs portrayed on Pretty Little Liars; however, like Day said, her teacher should have had more power (over himself) to resist, which is were the power imbalance should have come in, but commonly, teachers do not have the power to resist a nymphet, which raises the question: Where is the power imbalance in student-teacher relationships? 

Alisson Wood wrote in her memoir Being Lolita that she had the power in her student-teacher affair with Mr. North - her English teacher.  Wood wrote that she was a beautiful 17-year-old who boys called a “Disney princess”. Yet it wasn’t until after she met Mr. North that she said: “I wasn’t suicidal anymore.” Alisson’s suicidal ideations stemmed from the fact that she felt that her body was her: “[...] only possible source of power.”, which she blamed on Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, MTV, Fiona Apple, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Victoria’s Secret. 

However, Alisson used the power of her body on her English teacher. Alisson related that she knew that she had power over Mr. North but that she wanted the power of sex and the safety of childhood: “[...] my breasts, all of the things that shifted the way men looked at me. If this was power [...] I wanted the safety of childhood and the power of sex. I wanted it all, in my life and in my body.” 

And Maggie shared in Lisa Taddeo’s (non-fiction) book Three Women, that she had the power in her student-teacher affair. Agmand that the source of her power was her age and the fact that her illegal lover was a teacher.

Lastly, artist and writer Betsy Karasik opined in the Washington Post op-ed "The unintended consequences of the law addressing sex between teachers and students" (August 30, 2013) that: [...] consensual sexual activity between teachers and students should not be criminalized."

Karasik went on to submit that schoolgirls don't have to be groomed to have affairs with teachers, because schoolgirls have "sex on the brain" a lot. Consequently, a number of Karasik's high school classmates had consensual sexual relations with teachers, which Karasik fully condoned - with consensual being the keyword.

"When it comes to having sex on the brain, teenage boys got nothin’ on us. When I was growing up in the 1960s and ’70s, the sexual boundaries between teachers and students were much fuzzier. Throughout high school, college and law school, I knew students who had sexual relations with teachers. To the best of my knowledge, these situations were all consensual in every honest meaning of the word..."

Despite, Karasik's Washington Post piece, the law addressing sex between teachers and students hasn't changed; therefore, teachers must use their power to resist the allure of salacious schoolgirls - and vice versa.

PRETTY LITTLE LIARS: A Student Teacher Sexual Affair Triangle | Alison, Aria & Mr. Fitz

On Pretty Little Liars, Aria and Mr. Ezra Fitz’s age-gap sexual affair may be the most famous (fictional) student-teacher affair in popular culture; however, before Ezria there was Ezrison - the age-gap affair between Alison DiLaurentis and Ezra. And just like with Aria, Ezra met Alison in a bar where, just like Aria, 15-year-old Alison lied about her age; however, unlike Ezria, viewers didn’t learn of Ezrison until season 4.

In “Turn of the Shoe” (s04e02), Tippi, a parrot, parroted “Hey Board Shorts, miss me?", which Tippi learned from Alison. Consequently, the Pretty Little Liars (PLL) learned that Alison had an affair with someone named Board Shorts. 

Alison DiLaurentis

In “Now You See Me, Now You Don't” (s04e12), Aria discovered a letter that revealed that Alison met Board Shorts in Rosewood. In the letter, Alison told Board Shorts that she was planning to take him to her parents' place on the seaside resort of Cape May for her 18th birthday. (Intriguingly, Higbee was the name of Alison’s favorite beach on Cape May, which IRL is a nudist beach.)

Of Rosewood, Alison wrote in the letter to Board Shorts: “It’s best kept secret was you. But you’re my best kept secret now. My friends wouldn’t understand [our age difference].”

Source: Analyzing A\Tumblr

In “Love ShAck, Baby” (s04e15) a PLL noticed an entry in Alison’s journal\dairy titled “Hot for Teacher”, which is also the title of a 1984 Van Halen song that is about a student who is “hot for teacher” . Here’s the text of the letter where Alison expresses her attraction to older men:

Hot for Teacher

I saw a teacher interviewing today with the principal. He was quite sexy. High school boys are gross, college guys are only looking for one thing, but older men, now they know what they want and take it all. He looked kind of bookish but in a cute way. I will get to know him eventually and to have a teacher on my side [...]

In ‘Bite Your Tongue’ s04e17, we learned, via a flashback, that Board Shorts liked to take Alison to The Hart and The Huntsman bar where, after Alison asked Board Shorts, “So, you think I’m mature enough?”, she sensually kissed him.

Alison & Ezra

Eventually, via journal slash diary entries (i.e., Hot for Teacher and The Hart and The Huntsman) and some investigative work, the PLLs discovered that Board Shorts was actually ≈ 22-year-old Ezra.

In “A is for Answers” (s04e24), Alison revealed to Aria that she first met Ezra in a pub that she used to “hangout a lot” in and that she told Ezra that she was a [freshman] at UPenn. (Of course, Alison chose UPenn, an Ivy League school, over Drexel, which would have been just as geographically accurate.)

In a flashback, Alison spied Ezra in the pub, sat next to him, ordered a “gin and tonic”, and foretold Ezra, “Sometimes lies are more interesting than the truth.” Alison went on to share with Aria that Ezra told her that she reminded him of Breakfast at Tiffany’s Holly Golightly and that he wanted her to be the muse for his writing. 

As Ezra was an English teacher and writer, it’s safe to assume that he was referring to Truman Capote's novella and not the film adaptation of Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Of the novella, I related in The Allure of Nymphets that Holly Golightly married a much older man at the age of 13, she lived with a college jock at the age of 15, and at the age of 18, she proclaimed, “I can’t get excited by a man until he’s at least forty-two.”

And Ezra’s Alison slash Holly connection is a double entendre, which will be explored when we discuss Emison. 

Back from the flashback, Ezra exclaimed to Alison, 

“You lied to me.” “Look, it is one thing to make up stories [...] but to lie to a guy and say that you’re 21, when you’re [15 and] still in high school!”

(Note: “you’re 21” may be a Pretty Little Liars continuity error as Alison lied in the letter that she was 18.)

Alison replied, “What’s the big deal? [...]” ''[...] what are you so freaked out about?”

Ezra, “God help me, Alison. I actually like you. I just don’t want to see you get hurt.” 

Allison softly kissed Ezra on the cheek and said, “You’re an alright guy. See you around”

Very interestingly, later in the episode, Alison checked into the Lost Woods Resort under the alias Vivian Darkbloom, which is an anagram of Vladimir Nabokov - the author of Lolita.

If you agree with novelist Robertson Davies' assessment of Lolita, Alison’s use of Vivian Darkbloom as an alias is fitting. We shared in Nymphalis carmen: Nympholepsy in Nabokov’s Oeuvre that Davies opined that Lolita was: “[...] not [about] the corruption of an innocent child by a cunning adult, but [about] the exploitation of a weak adult by a corrupt child.” And Donald Malcolm wrote in his New Yorker piece, “Lo, the Poor Nymphet”: “[...] it is Lolita who boldly, directly seduces him [i.e., Humbert]. 

In "EscApe From New York" (s05e01), Alison took the PLLs to the Fitzgerald Theater in Manhattan. Despite the theater’s “wow” factor, Alison told the PLLs that Ezra didn’t take Alison to the theater to impress her, but that the theater was his, “[...] kind of special place.”  

In a flashback at the theater, once again, Ezra reminded Alison that she was his Holly Golighty.

Upon the stage Alison said, “I could be an actress.”

Ezra, “Could be? Well, I hate to break it to you but you already are.” [...] “You really are my Holly Golighty.”

After Alison learned from Bill, the Fitzgerald Theater’s janitor, that Ezra was in fact a Fitzgerald, she shared with the PLLs that that was when she realized that Ezra was pretending to be poor. Consequently, Alison shared, “I actually like him more for that.” In addition, Alison confessed to the PLLs that she “stayed over a few times” at the theater. Rhetorical question: What was Alison and Ezra doing when she “stayed over a few times” at Ezra's “[...] kind of special place”?

In "Surfing the Aftershocks" s05e03, Alison briefly visited Ezra’s apartment  - only to return his manuscript, but Ezra wanted Alison to let Aria know that she had paid him a visit. One can confidently infer that that was not the only visit Alison made to Ezra’s place. 

Wait, but Ezra wasn’t Alison’s only age-gap affair. Remember when Alison said to Ezra, “What’s the big deal? [...]” ''[...]  what are you so freaked out about?” Well, I left out the part where Alison said, “We didn’t do anything.” That sentence was revealing, because it revealed that Ezra didn’t cause Alison’s teen pregnancy scare. It was Darren Wilden, a Rosewood police officer, who Alison referred to in her journal as Beach Hottie. That’s correct. 15-year-old Alison and 34-year-old Wilden had (unprotected) sex during Alison’s summer break on the romantic seaside resort of Cape May.

As a matter of fact, Alison shared in “Out of the Frying Pan, into the Inferno” (s03e17) that she and Beach Hottie had sex more than once. When asked, “You mean you weren’t using protection?” Alison replied, “We were. Just not all the time.”

Beach Hottie (Darren Wilden), Alison, & CeCe

The PLLs didn’t realize it, but during “Now You See Me, Now You Don't”, they saw a picture of Alison posing on a boat in Cape May with her hand around Beach Hottie’s waist. 

And when Alison was 14, she had an age-gap affair with (approximately) 25-year-old Ian Thomas. Some even considered it one of the hottest hookups in Pretty Little Liars history!

Shyla Watson wrote in her PopSugar post “39 of the Hottest Hookups in Pretty Little Liars History”: “Spencer [a PLL]  isn't the first younger girl who Ian dates in secret. While in a relationship with Melissa [Spencer’s older sister], Ian has a secret affair with a 14-year-old Alison.”

Intriguingly, some PLL fans theorized that Alison's Hot for Teacher journal entry was not written about Ezra but was written about Ian after Alison saw Ian interviewing for Rosewood High’s field hockey coaching position. After which, Alison had a sudden desire to learn how to play the sport. 

Lastly, let’s circle back to Ezra’s double entendre that Alison was his Holly Golightly. 

Rebecca Renner wrote in her The Paris Review post "Was Holly Golightly Bisexual?": "The name Holly Golightly is synonymous with sex and sophistication, but viewers may not know as much about her as they think." You can write that again. Renner then shared this relevant Holly quote from the novella:

“Of course people couldn’t help but think I must be a bit of a dyke myself. And of course I am [...] So what? That never discouraged a man yet, in fact it seems to goad them on.”

And this excerpt from a 1968 Truman Capote Playboy interview is revealing:

Playboy: “Was Holly a Lesbian?”

Capote: “Of course [...] but what intrigues me is the heterosexual male’s fascination with Lesbians.”

What does this have to do with Alison - you may ask? As often is the case with (fictional) teleiophiles, like, Holly, Alison was a lipstick lesbian too who gave Emily, her schoolmate and PLL, “practice kisses”. For example, in a “The Perfect Storm” (s01e09) flashback scene, after Alison read to Emily from Great Expectations, the nymphets kissed in Rosewood High’s library. Consequently, Alison wrote in her journal under the title Girl Crush:

So girl crush kissed me today. To be fair, I kissed her back and it was nice, but I definitely don’t have feelings for her in the way she has for me [...] I catch her staring at me in class [...]

In another flashback, in Rosewood’s locker room, Alison removed her towel, and while topless, she turned to face Emily before she asked Emily if she had seen her new French bra. “Do me a favor. Hook it for me, would you?” Emily obliged and hooked Alison’s French bra, rubbed Alison’s bare shoulder, and kissed Alison's damp neck, which prompted Alison to remind Emily, “Just because we kissed in the library Emily [...] A kiss is a kiss [...] if I’m kissing you it’s because it’s practice for the real thing.”

Alison & Emily

However, in “Miss Me × 100” (s05e05), Alison asked if she could stay in Emily’s bedroom, because her dad was working late, and she didn’t want to go home to an empty house. In addition, Alison informed Emily, “Those kisses just weren’t for practice.” After Emily confirmed with her mom that it was okay for Alison to spend the night, while in bed, Emily aked, “Ali? Are you asleep?” Subsequently, the teens kissed passionately. And fans assumed that they had lipstick lesbian sex! Interestingly, this teen lesbian sex scene was cut from to a student-teacher sex scene with a topless, and presumed bottomless, Aria in the cowgirl position astride Ezra.

There you have it, Alison was a teleiophile who had her first age-gap affair at 14 when she had unprotected sex, multiple times, with an over 30-year-old police officer, and she was a lipstick lesbian. Yet, this raises some questions: Why did the Pretty Little Liars writers make Alison have three age-gap relationships when she had zero in the novels? And why were there multiple references to nympholepsy in the series?  The allure of nymphets.

The Daily Mail: From Olivia Rodrigo to Amelia Gray | Famous Age-Gap Crushes and Couples

The Daily Mail is a good source for nympholepsy and celebrity age-gap relationships, but, this week, the tabloid has been particularly prolific. 

For example, Glenn Garner reported: "Olivia Rodrigo, 18, [of High School Musical: The Musical fame] reveals [SNL's] Pete Davidson, 27, is her 'biggest celebrity crush'" (2 March 2021)

Cassie Carpenter posted: "Lucy Hale, 31, [of Pretty Little Liars fame] and [American actor] Skeet Ulrich, 51, have 'fallen hard' for each other despite 20-year age gap" (4 March 2021) 

Heidi Parker shared an update on the Amelia Gray and Scott Disick age-gap affair: "Amelia Gray , 19, calls beau Scott Disick, 37, her 'dream man'" (1 March 2021)

And Garner reported that: "[American singer-songwriter] Don McLean, 75, has 'no plans' to ever break up with girlfriend [model] Paris Dylan, 27, as he talks about their supportive relationship: 'I'm crazy for her'" (2 March 2021)

But not to be undone, Madeleine Aggeler of New York magazine's The Cut posted: "Checking In on Scott Disick and His New Teen Girlfriend" (FEB. 22, 2021)