When Rachel Bloom was a teen, she wondered, "Should I be having sex right now? Is Everyone having sex and they're not telling me?"

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend's Rachel Bloom: Why Losing My Virginity in College 'Really Messed with My Head'

Now that she’s starring on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Rachel Bloom freely performs songs about getting frisky, but her cheeky take on sexuality comes after years of struggling with how her own life was stacking up to what she saw on TV.

“I remember being a teenager and [seeing how] teens were always portrayed on TV — everyone was having sex all over the place,” she told PEOPLE exclusively at last week’s Paley Honors at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City. “I lost my virginity in college and it really messed with my head.”

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When Bloom was a teen, she wondered, “Should I be having sex right now? Is Everyone having sex and they’re not telling me?” Now at age 30, she believes that “the media when you are young really, really affects the way that you see yourself, and so that’s why it’s important for there to be shows about real people and not trying to be tropes and not trying to be stereotypes of what they think women are.”

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Bloom shared these memories at Paley’s Celebrating Women in Television, which honored legend Carol Burnett and featured presenters Marlo Thomas, Dorothy Hamill and Jackie Joyner-Kersee. Bloom said she felt “honored” to be in presence of female TV icons, quipping, “It’s not a fetish, [but] I just want to kiss their feet!”