Sex And The City S1 E8-9: 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 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 8 & 9
Season 1 Ep 8
Charlotte - fantasies (her boyfriend asks what they are). She says do it in her parents bed. Her boyfriend says, you me, another woman. Girls discuss 3-somes.
"Guys are infatuated with threesomes." - Carrie Voice Over
Sam fucking cowgirl (position) - She orgasms hands free.
Season 1 Ep 9
Miranda got a great vibrator. She thinks she's in love (with it). "At least I can say where my next orgasm is coming from - who here at the table can say that?"
When Miranda says it's called 'The Rabbit', Sam says 'if you're gonna get a vibrator at least get one called 'The Horse'. [again - confusing insertion and vibration (outer stimulation)]
Miranda took Carrie and Charlotte to get The Rabbit [it looks more like a dildo - the rabbit part (the ears that vibrate against the clit) could go unnoticed.Also the dildo part moves around some, so it seems like the dildo part (might be most important).
Charlotte - "I think it broke my vagina." The rabbit made her come one time for 5 minutes. No man has ever done that, she tells Carrie. "You know sometimes when you're with a man and he's doing things, and it feels good, but you just can't cum? It's never like that with The Rabbit." She thinks it will ruin sex with a man. Carrie said she could have both, but Charlotte said 'no way - she's giving up.'
Charlotte was spending the night with a vibrator and had to have an intervention to take The Rabbit away.
My Thoughts
Reading what I wrote about these episodes, here's my thoughts:
I was clearly still noting parts of episodes that had to do with sex or sexuality in more general terms instead of only stuff specific to lady-gasms, lady-bation, and clits. I mean, so what if Charlotte's BF wants a threesome unless we get to see or hear about how the ladies in the threesome come, amiright?
The Samantha character has a sexual-bawdy-lady schtick that has an old-timey, male-centric, not-based-in-the-reality-of-female-orgasm-sexual-bravado thing going on. First, her Ep. 8 orgasm that arises from merely the penis banging in her vagina with no direct or even indirect stimulation to the clitoral glans is unrealistic. It is not something that one should expect to cause orgasm for a woman, yet character like her in scenes like that are far, far, far too common and make it seem like a p-in-v bang is all a woman needs to come. It keeps in place the already strongly held cultural expectation that women should just come from getting boned. It's not great.
Also, continuing on the above point, Samantha's whole horse comment was meant for laughs because, again, she's got that particular sexual-bawdy-lady schtick, and so she's supposed to LOVE big dicks...the bigger the better. Problem is, a vibrator is truly great not because it vibrates inside a woman's vagina (although that can be arousing of course), and certainly not because it's shaped like an extra large dick to imitate big-horse-dick-intercourse. It's great specifically because it does something that doesn't often happen during p-in-v intercourse. It stimulates the clitoral glans (which is on the outside of the body, not inside the vagina), and it stimulates it strongly with vibration...and here's the clincher - that is a superb way to get an orgasm! Little secret for everyone - ladies love to orgasm and vibrators make that shit happen. Putting big ol' horse-dick vibrators inside the vagina is maybe fun, but still not the kind of thing that one can expect to cause orgasm. So, I didn't love Samantha's horse comment because it insinuates that the size of something going into the vagina is an important factor in a vibrator, when it's just not (I mean if we'ree talking in terms of orgasm here). It's the vibration we can put on the outside (the clitoral glans/vulva area) that gives us ladies the consistent path to orgasm we all love about vibrators. Samantha, per usual, reiterates the incorrect and harmful cultural assumption that female orgasmic pleasure is related to intercourse with a big ol' penis.
I love a lot about Miranda and Charlotte's commentary on how great the vibrator is because it emphasizes a reality we don't often put out into the light - that women don't consistently come with their male partners (because p-in-v sex is shit for lady-gasms), but that coming is awesome and we love it and crave it and a vibrator can consistently do that for us (because it's stimulating the clit, the part of us that actually can be expected to cause orgasms).