What We’ve Learned from Sex and the City
The movie Sex and the City brought in the largest opening weekend ever for a romantic comedy, R-rated comedy, and a film starring all women. The TV series (though edited considerably) has become increasingly popular in recent years due to its frank and open discussions about sex from a woman’s point of view.
So, after one movie, six seasons, and 11 years, what have we learned from Sex and the City?
1) Female sexual expression is still confined to upper-class heterosexual white women. The series does feature some fleeting discussions of sex as it pertains to race, sexual orientation, and economic level, but these are related to situations that only last an episode or two (“The Caste System” (Miranda dates a poor man), “What’s Sex Got to Do With It” (Samantha dates a woman), “Boy Girl Boy Girl” (Carrie dates a bisexual man), “No Ifs, Ands, or Butts” (Samantha dates a black man). The only way that Sex and the City attempts to include a long-running discussion of sexual orientation is with its exceedingly flamboyant gay characters, Stanford and Anthony, but their dialogue is cliche at best and stereotypical at worst.
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I love this Shaina,
I agree that the gay male characters are uniformly stereotypical; as if all gay men are swishing their way through life, with dramatic emotions and temper tantrums. We can all be like that, but the gay males seem to be in a perpetual effeminately exaggerated tailspin that's not really realistic. They are great characters, but not realistic.
I do love that they show that women in their 40s and 50s are sexual beings but at the same time there are jokes ad nauseum that they should now be more Golden Girls than New York City girls and that's silly. 50 isn't old. It ain't young - but no 50 year old woman needs to hang up her sexuality as if it's no longer necessary.
As stereotypical and cliche as this show may be, I still watched it religiously at one point and apparently the author of this article did too :-)
The show's success is based loosely on the fact that they were women who talked openly about sex. The stereotypes, the gay men parading around flamboyantly, were just funny add-ons that kept us laughing. I actually had a couple of gay friends that were eerily similar to Stanford. Not to say that all gay men do this but I live in a big city, were it isn't abnormal to see an openly gay man strut his stuff down the street.