Sexuality in Sex in the City

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Recommended: Sex and the City analysis by women perspective

Sexuality and The City
The film Sex and The City represents women’s personal freedom in sexuality, by presenting four successful women living in New York City dealing with love, marriage, and sex. The film, based on the television show, Sex and The City, follows the lives of 4 women who are expressing women hood, and their freedom, through marriages, families and sexual exploits. Many of them possessing different ideologies about love, each with their own pieces of feminism and independence. Sexuality within Sex and The City demonstrates how people should be confident and empowered by their sexuality and freedom.
Sex and the City revolves around ‘white, middle class, heterosexual women who define themselves primarily as oppressed victims of patriarchy’ (Brasfield 253), based upon this statement, it is obvious to observe the oxymoronic styles presented in the film. The women are attempting to reach a level of freedom that they already possess, they are under the impression that they cannot be truly free and independent as women until they are involved in a relationship with a man. Brasfield covers a variety of topics regarding Sex and the City and its feminist characters and characteristics. Brasfield also states that in Sex and the City they use sex ‘as a commodity that can be bought and sold’ (Brasfield 256), which is familiar to character Samantha in that she ‘detests relationships with an emotional component’ (Brasfield 252), and would prefer them to only include sex.
Samantha shows this side of her in the movie when she seems very interested in her neighbor, instead of her boyfriend of 5 years. When Smith gives her the ring that she had been dying to have, she wants to return the present in an ‘oral form’, when Smith deni...

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... forms of freedom, all of them successful, strong willed businesswomen. The presentation of this freedom allows for a belief that you can be strong within a relationship, as well as strong without a relationship. This demonstrates one more battle women to have gained control of.

Works Cited

Brasfield, Rebecca. "Rereading: Sex And The City: Exposing The Hegemonic Feminist Narrative." Multicultural Film: An Anthology Spring/Summer 2014. Boston: Pearson Learning Solutions, 2014. 251-61. Print.
Schrock, Douglas, and Michael Schwalbe. "Men, Masculinity, and Manhood Acts." Multicultural Film: An Anthology Spring/Summer 2014. Boston: Pearson Learning Solutions, 2014. 153-72. Print.
Sex and the City. Dir. Michael Patrick King. Prod. Sarah Jessica Parker. Perf. Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis, and Cynthia Nixon. New Line Cinema Corporation, 2008. Film.

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