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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
If I watch "Sex and the City" with my teenage daughter we end up discussing important subjects like vibrators, blow jobs -- and the female point of view.
Jul 19, 2002 | Thanks to Tower Records, where you can rent the boxed sets for the first three seasons of "Sex and the City" for 99 cents a night, and a friend who taped the fourth season, I've caught up all 66 of the past episodes. My 14-year-old daughter watched the marathon with me as we sewed name labels on her wardrobe for sleep-away camp.
Some parents I know would label me an unfit mother for exposing my daughter to the sexually explicit exploits of Samantha, Miranda, Charlotte and Carrie. But I've discovered that "Sex and the City," which is back for a fifth season this week, is a great way to explore the subject of S-E-X with my teenage daughter.
Yes, I've come late to the show. When it first started airing in 1998, my household didn't have HBO. Even when we did become subscribers after my 9-year-old son insisted on watching some baseball movie directed by Billy Crystal, I still didn't tune in. I didn't want to watch some glib portrayal of promiscuous, attractive women enjoying sex in some totally unrealistic, glamorized way that would only end up making me feel depressed and inadequate.
My conversion happened after I sold my first novel, "Thoughts While Having Sex," earlier this year. My editor told me they were marketing it as a "Sex and the City"-type book. They were even putting a teaser on the cover saying, "Sometimes finding great sex in the city is a no-brainer."
At first I was horrified. They were demeaning my literary efforts! I begged my editor to have the teaser removed from the cover, but he claimed it was too late.
The idea that they were marketing my book to the "Sex and the City" audience seemed absurd at first. Though my novel is about a young single woman living in Manhattan, she's repressed and avoids sex. If anything it's about having no sex in the city. But my publishers were happy to make the stretch so they could capitalize on the show's appeal. So I decided to check out the boxed set for the first season and see what "my audience" was so excited about.
To my surprise, I'm now delighted to have my book associated with that show. It's funny, well written and as thorough a sex primer as you could ever find. If only the main character in my novel had watched, maybe she would've had a better sex life.
And that's why I think "Sex and the City" is great for girls. What better way is there to learn the mysteries of human sexual behavior? When I grew up, my parents didn't tell me much of anything about sex. I had the typical sex education class at school taught by the only married gym teacher. (Since the others were single or gay, they weren't supposed to know about sex, right?) I can remember the tanned, white tennis-shoed Mrs. Hanson explaining the usual few sterile facts to us girls in our blue bloomer uniforms. How unsexy can sex get?
But "Sex and the City" touches on every topic relating to the carnal proclivities of the human race. As I said to my daughter while we watched shows that touched on such topics as oral sex, threesomes, fetishes and faking orgasm -- they leave no stone unturned. If I'd been exposed to all that when I was a teenage girl, I could've set forth into the world with so much more confidence!
For example, we were watching the show where the four women are in a cab talking about anal sex. I'm not about to tell my daughter about anal sex. Way too embarrassing. But why shouldn't she know, for future reference, that this option exists? Thanks to "Sex and the City," not only does she know, she hears a fairly balanced discussion on the subject in which all possible viewpoints are expressed. As usual Samantha is the most liberal, proclaiming it a "physical expression the body was designed to experience," while Charlotte is the most conservative, declaring she would never do it because she "went to Smith." Not only has my daughter been informed on another way to have sex, she's also gotten some info to help her select a college, which is her other favorite subject these days.
