Aahana Swrup
‘The Sex Lives of College Girls’ is a teen comedy series that revolves around a group of young girls as they foray into the proverbial best years of their lives. Kimberly Finkle is bright-eyed, optimistic, and straight out of a small town in Arizona. Bela Malhotra, an aspiring comedian, has recently hit her post-puberty glow up and is ready to make exciting new memories with her can-do, sex-positive attitude. Whitney Chase is a star soccer player trying to escape the shadows of her Senator mother.
Lastly, legacy student Leighton Murray is a typical popular girl who actually has her fair share of secrets to hide. When all four of these young girls arrive at Essex College as freshmen and get paired up to be suitemates, it sets them up for a whirlwind of hormone-fuelled misadventures. The show is set almost entirely in the central college campus and its surrounding town of Vermont. As a result, the location becomes a pivotal aspect of the story and its sense of grounded relatability.
Essex College is a Fictional Establishment With Multiple Real-Life Counterparts
‘The Sex Lives of College Girls’ charts a realistic and relatable path, exploring the college experiences of a group of girls, stepping into young adulthood and all that it entails. Yet, despite the grounded realism of the characters, their narratives remain entirely fictionalized with no direct roots in reality. As a result, the worldbuilding around these characters also finds a fictionalized origin. Thus, Essex College, the academic establishment at the center of the story, remains a work of fiction. In real life, there are no similarly christened institutions in Vermont. The details of the college, including its social structures, extracurricular activities, and campus life, are all created in service of the show. Even so, while the campus, as we see it on the screen, may not exist in real life, it inevitably sports many off-screen counterparts in terms of actual filming locations employed during the show’s production.
In season 1, Vassar College, located at 124 Raymond Avenue, in Poughkeepsie, New York, lends its exteriors for the on-screen establishment. Much like the latter, the off-screen institution is also an NY-based private liberal arts college. This allows for the real-life location to naturally sport an environment and visual aesthetic that lines up with Essex College’s identity in the show. Alternatively, season 2 swaps out the Vassar College campus for a new filming location. Filming for the sophomore season largely took place in Los Angeles, with the University of California becoming the new central counterpart for the Vermont-based fictional college. Additionally, the University of Washington’s Seattle campus was also employed as a filming location. Consequently, these real-life locations lend a sense of authenticity and realism to the otherwise fictitious establishment. This allows the show to sustain a more grounded visual identity.
Read More: Is The Sex Lives of College Girls Based on a True Story?
