Sex and the City find their happy endings despite participating in problematic behaviours was a large-scale social learning theory crisis, if we want to be dramatic. Their behaviour was easy to remember (Retention) and there were attractive rewards depicted (Motivation) without the potential consequences that might have been more representative of the viewers’ experiences.’
I’d add to Bandura’s theory and say that the fun of watching Sex and the City can be confused with the fun of actually doing what they do – i.e., have lots of no-strings, fun (if problematic, but ultimately brunch-analysed) sex. The problem is, while the SATC ladies proved to some extent that sex could result in the outcome most women desire (husband, kids, riches, happiness, success), we cannot always be assured of the same outcome. And our path to getting there will be all the rockier until we realise it’s not possible to be Samantha, either in numbers or approach. Or, for that matter, while we deny ourselves the right to bear strings.
The sex diarist: seductive mistresses of the strings-free shagathon
There’s another thing confusing our notion of ‘fun’ that is closer to home, perhaps, than the bars and bedrooms of Upper Manhattan. And that is the sex diarist, who romps the streets and clubs of London, and inhabits the pages of UK newspapers and the shelves of UK bookstores. I knew this culture of do-and-share a bit from the inside, since for one and a half years I was the Girl About Town dating columnist for thelondonpaper, a now-defunct but wildly popular evening freesheet. I was a novice, and at first I shared too much. People loved it when I did; all the same, I pulled back, feeling deeply awkward at the idea that everyone, from the Islamic extremist who threatened to kill me to my 12-year-old cousin, was reading about my exploits.
When I wasn’t enthralling the world with my numerous dates and hook-ups (of which a good few were, ahem, embellished), it was my job to depict a sort of glamorous lifestyle, a bit like Carrie. I was encouraged to namedrop cool bars and locations around town that made it sound like I had a big night out every night, never got tired, and was always getting into exciting scrapes. I created a world in which sexual adventure, romantic mishap and great nightlife flowed seamlessly together. I assume it was seductive – I stuck to it for a year and a half, after all, and people still fondly remember the column today.
But I was only a dating columnist. I was completely vanilla – even alongside the others on the same paper. My rivals were a different story. They were properly telling all – Catherine Townsend of the Independent was spilling the beans about the length and strength of her orgasms; Belle de Jour (real name: Brooke Magnanti, scientist) was setting the world alight with her stories of sex as a call girl.
Zoe Margolis’s book Girl with a One Track Mind, published under the pseudonym Abby Lee, set out to address the problem of prudishness. ‘My own friends appear quite happy to sit in a pub, swapping Sex and the City anecdotes and joking about rabbit vibrators. But, the thing is, if I want to get into more detail and mention something like, say, wanting to try out a cock ring on a guy, whole fingering his arse, they all suddenly become rather quiet … And I’d be left sitting there staring at the bartender’s trouser bulge …’ And in case you were unclear about the kind of sex she likes to have, and its exact definition, she’s included a handy list: The Girl’s Guide to Fuck-Buddies: Definitions. ‘A fuck-buddy is someone with whom you are sexually involved, but with no romantic or emotional strings attached. They are NOT a friend that you fuck … the fuck-buddy relationship is purely sexual.’ Or, lest you foolishly still thought that you might be allowed to squeeze a bit of humanity into the transaction: ‘With a fuck-buddy, there is no real intimacy beyond nudity and mutual hotness … It’s not like meeting up with a mate to watch a movie and talking about the plot afterwards over dinner. By definition a fuck-buddy relationship happens on a physical level only.’
A far cry from the words of early 20th-century anarchist Emma Goldman in Living My Life, who was put in prison for her defence of women’s rights to contraception: ‘I have propagated freedom in sex. I have had many men myself. But I have loved them; I have never been able to go indiscriminately with men.’
Ricky Emanuel, the psychotherapist, is despairing at the One Track Mind culture. He told me in the canteen of the Royal Free Hospital: “This is the commodification of sex and it’s extremely damaging to girls. I have some patients having sex with five people at the same time, described as “friends that I do stuff with”. This is infantile sexuality; it’s about excitement, fizziness, completely devoid of emotional depth or benefit. Young women feel they have to do it – but the lack of meaning makes them depressed. I have to ask: what’s happened to courting? Getting to know someone? It’s not by chance that biblically they used “know” as a meaning for deep and emotional sexual contact. These days much casual sex has nothing to do with knowing.’
Catherine Townsend’s well-written book, Sleeping Around: Secrets of a Sexual Adventuress, is about: ‘Threesomes, sorbet sex, drunk dialling, multiple orgasms, girly gossip-swaps, buying silk underwear – welcome to dating the modern girl’s way.’ Wait, so if I have sex with (or is it while eating?) sorbet and buy silk underwear and cosmos, I’ll have multiple orgasms? This is similar to the picture presented in Sex and the City, the seductive mixture of lifestyle and sex – but even in SATC you’re not guaranteed a multiple orgasm. That’s because even having one orgasm during sex isn’t easy for a lot of women – it’s thought that 20 to 30 per cent of women can do it through vaginal penetration; the rest require a degree of confidence to ask for other stimulation in a particular fashion, which takes time and a bit of trust.
The sex itself
Have you noticed that the sex you have when you don’t know or like the person you’re sleeping with is sort of actually not that great, when you think about it? What happens is that you do it, you get excited by this fact, tell all your friends, then forget the actual moments of alienation in the sex itself.
We saw earlier how Lisa and Lucy talked about their casual sex experiences – one cries during sex, hoping to be noticed, the other keeps her eyes closed. A friend of mine, Melissa, was devastated by a one-night stand she had with a much older man she met in a bar; weeks later, the lack of intimacy and the repulsion she realised she’d felt for him when she sobered up still made her depressed. She mainly remembered just praying he’d hurry up and come – an experience common to many a casual sex encounter, when you’re just guessing what’s going to work. I am not writing off all casual sex for women in a Protestant fury, but this rule stems from the observation that while we think it’s great and fun at the time, it’s often damaging later.
‘You have to act ridiculously into it’
Junk-food sex ranges from the dangerous – unprotected – to the callous and insultingly selfish, to the pseudo-intimate, whereby it’s good and you wish strings were allowed. More and more, though, you’re expected to do whatever it takes to be sexy. Ruth, 31, says:
‘I told a guy I wasn’t going to sleep with him, and he said, “At least, let me put it in your ass.”’
Indeed, a desirable male acquaintance told me that women compete to sleep with him, offering him anal sex immediately ‘to distinguish themselves from the other girls.’ Holly, 32, a successful fashion journalist says:
‘There’s massive pressure to be good in bed – having to act ridiculously into it and up for everything; giving the “knowing” blow job etc – it’s not enough to just do your basic missionary. Which is ironic, because mostly boys are shit in bed.’
Another lethal junk-food sex trend is men saying they can’t possibly perform while wearing a condom, thus making the woman feel guilty if she insists on safe sex. Ruth says: ‘I can’t believe that would influence me – but it does. All you’re supposed to be is sexy and make them come, that is the most important thing. I never think about my own pleasure – the only time I will ever orgasm is in a serious
