A five-point checklist for good consent — Freely given, Reversible, Informed, Enthusiastic, Specific.
Consent is easy to nod along to and hard to remember under the lights. FRIES exists because Planned Parenthood wanted something stickier than a lecture: five letters, one bad pun ("would you like FRIES with that?"), and suddenly the whole idea of enthusiastic consent fits in your pocket. Freely given: no pressure, no manipulation. Reversible: a yes earlier is not a yes now — anyone can tap out mid-thing, no explanation owed. Informed: the yes is only real if nobody lied to get it. Enthusiastic: look for the "hell yes," not the resigned "…fine." Specific: yes to the bedroom is not yes to everything that happens in it.
The common misconception is that FRIES is a legal standard or a checklist you run out loud like airport security. It isn't. It's a literacy tool — a way to notice when a "yes" is actually a shrug, a fawn, or a person waiting for it to be over. Nobody expects you to recite five words before a kiss. The point is that after you've internalised them, a non-enthusiastic yes stops reading as a yes.
Worth being honest about lineage: FRIES is the packaging, not the invention. The idea it carries — enthusiastic, affirmative consent — comes out of decades of feminist and anti-violence organising well before 2016. Planned Parenthood's contribution was the mnemonic that made it travel, which is why you now see FRIES on university posters and quoted by dating apps. Good packaging is not nothing. Just don't mistake the acronym for the origin of the ethic.