Sex and the City S4 Ep 13-17: A Retro SSL Review
***First, sorry for the delay in posts the past week. I'm still trying to balance out my life to write more. I'll get there one day.***
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 4 Episodes 13-17
Season 4 Ep 13
-(asking each other about) secret single behavior - Sam: "like masturbating?"
-Miranda - What if he's a really good fuck? Will all that poking hurt the baby?
-Saw Sam's boyfriend's flaccid penis (only one ever seen)
-Miranda had sex with a dude missionary and cowgirl both definitely bobbing up and down and seemed to be on the verge of orgasming both times.
Season 4 Ep 14
-Sam - missionary w/ her legs up - he pumping her and on ecstasy - orgasmsed
-girls watched gay por - just laughed and screamed
Season 4 Ep 15
-Sam in shower w/ guy - shower head is taken off and put down toward her nether regions. She looked like ti felt real good.
-Sam gets fucked - she just does it because boyfriend is fucking others - he goes limp - she's uninterested
Season 4 Ep 16
-v.o. "Steve gave Miranda multiple orgasms."
Season 4 Ep 17
-Sam gives her man a 3-way with a girl for his b-day, but she is young and they don't like her
Season 4 Ep 17
-Sam catches her man with a woman spread eagle eating her out
My Thoughts
I must have been like half asleep when I made these notes because they're pretty shitty...short and not a lot of context. So, I'm going to give my thoughts on how these SSL Reviewable moments (depictions/discussions of female orgasm, masturbation, or the clit) affect and are affected by the sexual culture and our understanding of female orgasm in a general way related to the 2 characters that were highlighted in these episodes.
SAM
Sam, as always, is a mixed bag. Her character is both an authentically sexual and orgasming woman and also an archetype of the 'overly sexual woman.' She is depicted as a person that orgasms through things that would actually be physically likely to cause a female to come. Yet, she is also depicted often as orgasming in ways we are used to seeing 'sexual' women orgasm, ways that are also conveniently congruous with things that make men orgasm but in reality would not realistically cause a female to orgasm.
So, yes, I like that she speaks about masturbation casually and often in this show because it normalizes women masturbating, which very much needs more publicity given that too many women do not do it. Plus, frankly, women really must masturbate in order to figure out how to orgasm when with another person. Yes, I like that we see her getting some shower head on her vulva because that water massage on the vulva/clit area is a sensible way to stimulate a woman to orgasm. AND, I like that she's with a partner yet instead of of simply p-in-v fucking, they choose to do something actually orgasmic for her instead. That is not often depicted. I also like that when she catches her man fucking someone else, he's not just sticking his dick in her. She's getting ate the fuck out. Both those things depict and normalize a hetero partnered sexual encounter that are actually orgasmic for the lady.
BUT, Sam is also always getting a penis banged in her, with no additional clitoral stimulation, and coming like a banshee. Stimulating the inside of the vagina as one does when getting banged, does not a lady-gasm make...for real...and it's a disservice to our cultural knowledge of female orgasm every time a woman is shown orgasming from something that would never actually cause a real female to have an actual physical orgasm. Unfortunately that is depicted more often than not, in porn, in movie, in TV, and maybe most sadly in the 'sexually strong lady' characters like Sam...because we really need to have a different understanding of what a sexual woman is than just a woman the really likes, seeks out, and (fakes) orgasms during sexual acts that men really enjoy and orgasm from.
Miranda
Miranda's orgasms tend to be a bit more realistically depicted than Sams overall in the show. She talks more about the clit and talks about how just getting fucked isn't always that great, and about the wonders of getting your junk licked to orgasm - you know the good stuff. However, like all the women in this show (and most shows really) all the good depictions always seem to get counteracted by other depictions of them getting railed into orgasm; no vibrator, no hands on the clit area, no grinding the vulva against something, just a penis moving in and out of their vagina. It reinforces the already strongly held but deeply flawed notion that one can just fuck a woman into orgasm (or multiple orgasms as was insinuated of Steve and Miranda in episode 16 up there).
Other Shit
As for the other things in the notes; first SATC look at a flaccid penis, the hilarity the women felt at watching gay porn, and the 3-way gone wrong - they are not actually SSL Reviewable qualified things - just things related to sex that at the time I thought might be relevant. I do, however, want to say 2 things. 1. Sex-based shows for hetero women should have more penises and specifically more har or semi-hard ones. 2.(male) gay porn is umm, pretty damn hot. Dicks on dick, ya'll. It's much better to masturbate to it than laugh at it with your friends. Get it together ladies of SATC.
Also, Ramona always be sitting on my SATC notes.
