Contains spoilers for Wuthering Heights – the sex scenes, at least.
If you’re anything like me, your weekend was spent in the cinema, awkwardly squirming through Emerald Fennel’s Wuthering Heights. From lashings of BDSM to strangely erotic, gooey food sequences, it’s a movie to be watched with your thighs pressed firmly together.
What fascinated me most, however, was Heathcliff’s (Jacob Elordi) hands. These huge, sinewy things, fussing with skirts, unbuttoning clothes and clasped around Cathy’s (Margot Robbie) eyes. Say what you will about Wuthering Heights’ treatment of the original source material, but Fennel has created a film which embodies the passion of its two leads with a visceral tactility.
Introducing the unexpected star of Emerald Fennell’s hotly anticipated adaptation.
Key to all that tactility? Well, it’s definitely the major emphasis on hands and fingers – not just Heathcliff’s – through the film. Cathy poking through a mound of jelly and sliding her pointer into a fish’s mouth, Heathcliff languorously rubbing his hands in the sticky yoke of an egg…and then, there’s the finger sucking.
Featured prominently in the film’s trailer is a glimpse of Cathy’s fingers inside Heathcliff’s mouth as the two are pulled close against the English elements, their hair whipping in the wind and volatile rain. So far, so hot – and enough to put the internet into collective hysteria. But it’s so much hotter in the movie.
The scene actually comes after Cathy has secreted herself away to the moors to furiously, surreptitiously masturbate, only to be discovered by Heathcliff. What ensues is a moment charged with shame, mutual tension, and the duo’s unspoken, ferocious love for one another. Heathcliff isn’t just sucking on fingers for the sake of it. He wants to taste Cathy, to suck up any last crumb of her he can, and she’s perplexed – and shocked, at the power of her own sexuality – that this hulking, rugged mass of a man is completely in her thrall.
Okay, it’s worth acknowledging that not every finger-sucking scenario is charged with years of simmering devotion and forbidden lust. While Wuthering Heights is the golden standard of finger-sucking, there is definitely a pro-finger agenda going on in pop culture RN.
Case-in-point: the soon-to-be-released Vladimir, a Netflix drama which follows an unnamed female professor (Rachel Weisz) as she becomes obsessed with her younger, hot male colleague Vladimir (Leo Woodall). The trailer, which basically functions as a megamix of the show’s horniest moments, features finger-sucking – specifically, Vladimir prying the female protagonist’s mouth open and slowly sliding in two fingers – in a montage of irresistible sexual fantasies.
Then, of course, there’s the Staircase Scene™ in Bridgerton season four, where Sophie (Yerin Ha) and Benedict’s (Luke Thompson) tension, and forbidden love, explodes in a multi-orgasmic sex scene. Here, Benedict puts his fingers in his own mouth before, ever-so-slowly, ever-so-teasingly sliding his hand under Sophie’s skirt – all while maintaining the most steady eye contact known to man.
For sex and relationships educator Leanne Yau, the finger-sucking boom is tied to the fact that, in 2026, we’re all for yearning: aching desire, rising tension, and general delayed gratification. “2026 is the year that yearning is coming back. With shows like Heated Rivalry, yearning has been a major part of the plot line,” Yau explains. “Finger-sucking is also about teasing, the build-up, and demonstrating that kind of yearning desire.”
From Wuthering Heights to Vladimir, the common ingredient in all these finger-sucking scenes is, yes, yearning – but also transgression, whether it be social norms, age gaps, or infidelity. However, finger-sucking isn’t exactly hardcore BDSM, and needn’t be viewed as such.
Instead, as clinical sexologist and intimacy coach Georgia Rose explains, it can be a seriously powerful tool in service of sexual anticipation. “Finger-sucking is not necessarily considered a super explicit X rated sex act, but there is potential for intense eroticism and sexual tension involved,” Rose explains.
It’s also worth noting that not all finger-sucking is the same! It can be used as a kind of pre-fingering, lubrication and suspense-building tactic (à la Bridgerton) or a sort of power play accessory (like in Vladimir). But is there the same appetite for finger-sucking off screen, as well as on?
After my very horny Saturday at the cinema watching Wuthering Heights, I turned to my IG followers to ask: are we here for the finger-sucking agenda? Well, after putting that exact poll on my Story, 95% of respondents – a mix of millennials and Gen Z of the boy, girl and gender-fluid persuasion – said “yes”.
Taking the conversation into my DMs, I was astonished that – regardless of their puritanical reputation – the Gen Zs were all for sucking some fingers. Dani, 28, shared: “I am so for finger-sucking!!! I do it to my partner, and he does it to me. I quite like fingering myself and then making my partner suck my finger. I also like a few fingers in my mouth during sex, it really does it for me!”
Where the response to finger-sucking was mixed wasn’t necessarily about the act itself but, rather, the partner. For bisexual Genevieve*, 27, it’s much hotter when coming from women rather than men. “If a girl shoves her fingers in my mouth I’m into it, but I’m much more reluctant if it’s a dirty man.”
I think I'm gonna die in this skin room.
However, if hygiene really is a concern, you needn’t worry…Rose has some pointers for how to keep things clean, even as you’re getting dirty. “If you are on the receiving end of finger sucking and you don’t think your partner has been mindful enough about hygiene for your liking, do speak up,” she explains. “Many of us mistake communication as a buzzkill. It’s not, and shouldn’t be! You can speak up and be erotic.”
Her tip for managing that difficult convo? Make it all a part of the erotic game: “‘Let me slowly wash your hands first,’ can heighten anticipation, not undermine it.”
*Name has been changed.
