Back in the running days of HBO’s critically acclaimed Sex and the City, Samantha Jones was tagged the ‘slutty friend.’ With a new sexual partner every show, casual attitudes about plastic surgery, and an open approach to relationships with people of all genders, races, and creeds, many viewers wondered why the serial monogamist and (somewhat sexually conservative) Carrie Bradshaw was the writer of a sex column and not her wild friend. The truth is, most viewers weren’t ready for Samantha. Her casual approach to sex and free love attitude was a difficult pill to swallow in the late 90s. She was scorned once or twice as a ‘whore’ not just by more conservative viewers, but by her friends in the show, even though by modern standards, she is a primary example of a sexually empowered woman. So let’s examine Samantha’s approach to sex, love, and life through a modern lens.
Fluid sexuality was a hallmark of Samantha’s character. In the show, she only casually dated two women and tens (if not hundreds) of men, but she was a self-proclaimed “try-sexual: [she’d] try anything once.” This mindset was extremely divergent from that of her friends, who could barely stomach the fact that Carrie was dating a bisexual man at the time of this famous quote. Samantha wasn’t into labels — whether in relationships or identity. Through and through, Samantha’s flings and relationships were only ever about the person, regardless of race, class, gender, religion, and even age. These traits would never really be embraced by her friends and were rather just something they brushed aside as part of her promiscuous behavior. The reality is that, for a group of middle-aged women living in New York, the racial, religious, and class diversity of partners was severely lacking beyond Samantha’s repertoire.
Possibly, and more importantly, Samantha was the only woman in the show who had seemed to overcome the internalized misogyny that bred women to aim for marriage as their sole life goal. Charlotte, the traditionalist of the group, was a character who reeked of desperation to marry. Now, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to get married — to love someone and want to spend the rest of your life with them is a beautiful thing. However, Charlotte was obsessed with the institution of marriage. She forced relationships to work, just for the potential of one day being joined in holy matrimony. Carrie broke off a relationship with a divorced man because he was unsure about the possibility of marriage in his future. None of the women seemed content even with the idea of a life partner. They constantly acted like they were on a time crunch to tie the knot — not because they wanted children or were ready to start creating a home — but because they didn’t want to fall behind their peers and become ‘spinsters.’ Samantha, however, was the oldest of the group and seemed content taking her time and dating around until she found the right person. Marriage would happen in her life, or it wouldn’t; it was never an aspiration and was rather a perk of being in a happy relationship.
The most notable of all of Samantha’s amazing characteristics, though, was the fact that at the end of the day, she was confident in herself. Samantha was known for her brazen one-liners, staunch honesty, and hilarious quips through the run of the show. She wasn’t afraid to bring those who opposed her (or her friends) down a couple of notches. Heading her own business, Samantha had learned to run with the big dogs and wasn’t one to be talked down to, ever. When told she couldn’t date a man because of his race, Samantha didn’t back down from a fight. When the people in her building labeled her a “slut” for always bringing men up, she confronted them and promptly took her business to another location better suited for her. More inspiring than any of these examples, however, was when Samantha got breast cancer. She didn’t let it drag her down and continued being the amazing, confident, and powerful woman she had been throughout the entire series.
Looking at these facets of her character, why was Samantha constantly pegged as promiscuous and narcissistic? In a series about the excitement of sexuality, why were Samantha’s conquests a running gag? The obvious answer is sexism. Although SATC was acclaimed as a raunchy show, the main characters (and the ones who didn’t end up with cancer as some brand of karmic punishment) were relatively reserved by comparison in their approach to sex. Casual hookups for all of the women were common, but never without a date or two (or ten) sandwiching them. Samantha, at face value, was a 40-something woman who was at peace with hookup culture. Our society brands both her promiscuity and independence as a ‘phase’ of one’s 20s rather than an actual lifestyle. The idea of the main character being truly comfortable in a bachelorette lifestyle (even though a bachelor lifestyle is perfectly normal for men in the show) was disagreeable. The only way to make Samantha’s choices more acceptable was to make a joke out of them. Watching the show now, one can see that Samantha, ever the whirlwind of a woman, still had her life way more together than any of her neurotic co-characters.
For the amazing show that it is, Sex and the City’s characters carry with them the weight of internalized misogyny. For every barrier broken with a sex scene and glass ceiling shattered with swear words, there are ten conversations about protagonist Carrie’s show-long hero’s journey: the quest for marriage. SATC’s legacy as a show to foster women’s empowerment is forever marred by the notion that every casual hookup made under the guise of sexual liberation during the series is completed with the end goal of a big, white wedding in mind. Perhaps these are simply constraints of the rom-com genre; after all, what kind of ending for a show with female protagonists is there other than marriage? For the bulk of the series, Samantha is every female viewer’s relief from the constant conversation of ‘husband this, marriage that.’ But even she, the butt of every sex joke and connoisseur of every man in Manhattan, is still tied down and married by the end of the show. This predictable ending doesn’t so much fall on Samantha as a character as it does on television media in the 90s, and even today, as a whole. As considerably the most feminist show of its time, Sex and the City still fails to reach beyond the constricts of a patriarchal marriage as the final word for every character.
Nevertheless, for the entirety of the show, Samantha had an approach to sex that any woman should embrace: not only did she never judge other women for their sexual history — whether it be riddled with a diverse line of lovers or none at all — but she never let other people judge her. She prioritized her wellbeing and separated herself from people in relationships and life who made her feel lesser-than for things that she enjoyed. She never brought pressure, but rather positivity and support, into the lives of her friends who were less adventurous than herself and was content with the lifestyle she had chosen and where it would take her. Despite the confines of rom-com television at the turn of the century and the inevitability of marriage that would come for her character, Samantha never aspired to marry and instead took life as it came, with the good and the bad. Her character deserved more than to be reduced to some trampy joke for five television seasons, especially when she exhibited more positive and progressive traits than the rest of the cast combined. Samantha Jones is the modern ‘it girl,’ and any viewer of Sex and the City in 2021 should take on her way of thinking.