A gynecologist has weighed in on the “Fifty Shades Freed” ice cream sex scene

Fifty Shades Freed came out this weekend, and there is a lot to unpack from the third film in E.L. James’ franchise. The dialogue, the questionable decor, the plot, the on-the-nose character names, the problematic messages the movie sends…we could discuss this trilogy for years. But here’s the ice cold take you never knew you needed: A gynecologist has weighed in on Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) and Anastasia Steele’s (Dakota Johnson) midnight kitchen romp in Fifty Shades Freed. And yes, we are talking about that now-infamous ice cream scene.

Mild spoilers for those of you who haven’t made it to the theater to see Fifty Shades Freed just yet: at one point during the movie, one of the surprisingly few sex scenes involved Ana eating some ice cream by herself in the kitchen when Christian, also unable to sleep, walks in. Ana begins to have some fun and, using a spoon, trails a line of ice cream on Christian before licking it off. The normally dour couple actually acts fun and carefree in this scene, making it the only natural exchange between the pair in the whole trilogy. Really! They actually act like normal human beings that like each other.

But then things take a turn for the uncomfortable when Christian grabs the spoon and pretends like he’s about to shove it, full of ice cream, literally inside of Ana. And we don’t mean in her mouth. He stops right before and changes course, trailing ice cream on her thigh before licking it off. They then proceed to have vanilla missionary sex (pun definitely intended). And you know it was super sticky…because of the ice cream, guys, get your minds out of the gutter. You know, for a couple that is supposed to be super in BDSM, they end up having missionary sex quite a lot, huh?

Since the ice cream scene is the most memorable from the entire film (spy thriller kidnapping plot aside), Vulture decided to find out how a gynecologist feels about the act of shoving a spoonful of ice cream into a woman’s vagina before sex.

“Let me start by saying that this has never been studied in any kind of a scientific study. But in general, we don’t put food in the vagina,” says Lauren Streicher, M.D., medical director of the Northwestern Medicine Center for Sexual Medicine and Menopause and author of Sex RX: Hormones, Health, and Your Best Sex Ever. “Theoretically, could that throw off her normal flora and cause an infection? Absolutely. It’s sugar and milk, things that do not go in the vagina. But will that happen with a one-time thing? Who knows. The answer is: I don’t know, but in general, I’d say don’t put food in someone’s vagina.”

If you feel like you want to recreate this scene at home with your partner, Streicher recommends using food “that is not going to interact with the flora.”

"So, for example, a banana that’s not peeled could be potentially safe," she says. "A cucumber could be potentially safe, as long as it’s not going to break off or scratch you. But there have not been good scientific studies done on putting food inside of you."

As for Christian threatening to shove a spoon inside of Ana, Streicher laughs. “Cutlery is not good in the vagina,” she says. “Particularly knives and forks would be frowned upon. A spoon is a little different. If, for example, a gynecologist put a spoon in the vagina, that’d be fine, because we would know how to put a spoon in the vagina without causing an injury. As a sweeping generalization, I’d say cutlery would be frowned upon in the gynecologic world.”

? The more you know.