entertainment

“Why aren’t there more willies on Game of Thrones? It’s not fair”.

There is plenty of female anatomy shown on Game of Thrones. But what about the male bits?

Spolier alert. Don’t read if you haven’t watched Season 5, Episode 1 yet.

Today I sat down with my 70-year-old mum to watch the first episode in the new series of GoT.

(Legally of course, Mr Foxtel).

It was a big deal. We are both huge fans. I’d gone to Gelato Messina specially to get a half litre of their limited edition GoT flavours (half a tub of Jon Snow, half a tub of Hodor thanks very much). We had the big screen TV and cups of tea. It was perfect.

Ten minutes in and Mum turned to me and said…

“Why aren’t there more willies on Game of Thrones? It’s not fair”.

Read more: Game of Thrones: the cheat-sheet.

Now mum’s a retired Catholic school teacher. She’s no prude but she’s no cougar either. She was making a salient point about the representation of men and women in this fabulous, intelligent and epic piece of popular culture.

There are boobs everywhere on GoT. Bums galore. And muff from here til Thursday. We do get men’s bums but the willies are pretty thin on the ground.

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Indeed, in the first ep of the new season Ser Loras Tyrell is lying in bed with his gorgeous male lover. If memory serves, they are having a conversation about willies. And yet you don’t see them.

Loras’ new squeeze gets up from the bed and wanders around the room and does this odd walk so the camera never catches a glimpse of his Fassbender. This stands in stark comparison to the often relentless exposure of women’s bodies in the show.

Related: 8 things only extremely addicted Game of Thrones fans will understand.

Now you can say I am being silly. Or trivial. Or that I just want to look at willies. But there is an issue of equal treatment of the genders at stake here. It’s odd too because Game of Thrones has some of the most complex and powerful women on TV today – Arya Stark, Brienne of Tarth, Melisandre and of course Daenerys Targaryen.

I will of course continue to watch GoT but the dearth of willies will continue to annoy me and remind me that gender equality on our screens still has some way to go.

Do you watch Game of Thrones? Do you need to see more willies?