Sex And The City S1 E1-2: A Retro SSL Review
My new little segment is back for a another round. It's a modified, lazy version of an SSL Review. It's just me transcribing my notes, page by page, on all of the Sex and the City episodes. I watched them all - not necessarily in order - during 2007 and 2008, and I took notes on the depiction/discussion of female orgasm and female masturbation. It was my early attempt at this type of lady-gasm review stuff. Anyway, I never actually created reviews from these notes, but since they exist, I'd like to get them out there on the interwebs before they get burned in a house fire or something...thus this series.
Anyway, the fun of this will be that I will transcribe these as word for word as I can while still trying to make it be a sensible read. I'll post a pick of the notes for your reference. I'll do one or more episodes at a time - from the beginning of the notebook to the end. I may add notes for clarification or add my SSL-Review-style comments.
Hopefully the notes I took privately 10 years ago won't make me look like a dumb asshole. I will add them in the TV SSL Review Master List (of course you are also welcome to check out the Movie SSL Review Master List as well). Here we go.
Sex And The City Season 1 Episodes 1 and 2
Season 1 Episode 1
- Go have sex "like a man" - meaning without feelings
-Carrie doing guy who was best sex of her life - she orgasms off camera, he comes up from under covers. He says, "My Turn." She says, "no - gotta go." V.O says it was good especially without all the emotional shit. very good Except - the dude sees Carrie later and says it's awesome that she understands the sex relationship he always wanted - but in V.O. she says she doesn't get it.
-Samantha goes home with guy then he looks like he's going down on her.
Season 1 Episode 2
-Some dude Carrie's talking to showed her sex tapes w/ him and models, looks like porn - he's self-involved and the girls seem to be enjoying themselves.
-Samantha being fucked. They tape it - she's looking at the camera like he was (me: in the model videos).
My Thoughts
I actually just watched these episodes again recently with a friend, so I'm pretty familiar at this moment with what was happening in them. I really LOVED that when Carrie decided she should try to 'have sex like a man' they depicted it in what I think it the most important and kinda least discussed aspect of 'having sex like a man' - which is getting your orgasm without your partner not getting one.
She got her orgasm from a little oral and said - 'see ya.' I. Love. That.
They talked a lot about sex like a man being about lack of emotion, but I think that's just something this world tells itself to sooth the deep sad fact that men have the luxury of pursuing sex with the opposite sex just to get off and women really don't have that luxury...I mean we can, but it's just so fucking hard to do it.
We can get off, it's not like female bodies are less capable, It's just that the 'normal' sex scripts are not focused on the clitoral glans (which is what women need stimulated to orgasm) and uber-focused on the penis and intercourse (which is shit at getting women off). For a woman to orgasm with a man, she needs to be very specific and direct and have a man that doesn't get offended or confused in order to move past the basic not-great-for-lady-gasm sexual scripts that we all tend to just move through without much discussion. Plus, even if the guy is cool to try whatever and the gal is very clear and knows what to tell him to get her off, there's this weird thing where maybe being so specific and detailed and worrying how it might be received gets her into her head and out of her arousal, and maybe even if the guy is cool with it, it's not something in his normal sex toolbox and he feels a little in his head and out of his arousal as well.
I'm just saying it's an up-hill battle for women. However, for men, the normal sexual scripts, if everyone plays along - and we all often do, are great for his orgasm. And a vagina to put his dick in, even if there is no sexual skill in that woman with the vagina, is a FAB masturbation tool for a dick, so there's a lot going right for the dude-gasm.
Point is, I think it's a bunch of B.S. to pin the way men have sex on a lack of emotion. Men have the luxury of not having to focus so much on the emotional parts of sex because they, unlike women have the orgasmic parts of sex so available to them that they can hang their hats on that in a way women can't. That's the real story you should be writing about, Ms. Bradshaw. (but she doesn't, buy the end of the episode she just kinda ignores the whole orgasm aspect and brings it back to emotion - Blah)
Other than that - I liked seeing Samantha's sexual encounter allude to some cunnilingus. I just obviously appreciate 2 pussy-eatings in the first episodes in the first episode of a female centric TV show about sex.
Also, there was no orgasm in the model tapes or the Samantha and model-guy tape, so I can't really SSL review it. You're free to make your own thoughts up about it.