I love you, but I love me more

I really enjoyed this week’s Susan Douglas’s chapter, “Sex ‘R’ Us” because as a young woman who grew up watching the TV shows and listening to the music that she mentions, I fully understand what she is talking about. Although I was too young to watch Sex and the City while it was on the air, the reruns have dominated the E! Network and guided my TV watching life.  There is something amazing about four completely different women becoming best friends and sharing their experiences with men. Most little girls grow up watching princess movies and watching TV shows that are focused on a woman finding a man, getting married, and having babies. Sex and the City gave young women an alternative idea about their future; possibly for the first time. We saw that we do not need to get married, have kids, and live in the suburbs. We can do and be anything we want.

Although I loved all four women on the show, there was always something about Samantha that intrigued me. She was outward about her dislikes of marriage and children and monogamy and although I did not fully agree with her opinions, I appreciated and admired her sense of freedom. Sex and the City: The Movie was released in 2008 and continued the story that the TV show leaves out. In the movie, I believe Samantha goes through the largest transformation. She is living with her boyfriend in California and we are led to believe they are going to be together forever and then something happens. They break up. There have been hundreds of breakups through the course of the show but this one means the most. In her process of breaking up with Smith, she says, “I love you, but I love me more”. This is something that I have never forgotten because it shows the true meaning of the show. Her love for a man carried Samantha away, but then she realizes that her love for him has distracted her from herself. She leaves Smith so she can fall back in love with herself.

Samantha is a character that young girls should aspire to be. By this I do not mean that they should be focused on sex and finding men, but being an independent woman. She shows that although men are great, they are not the defining factor in life or in a woman’s happiness. With a show titled Sex and the City, I can imagine the critiques and complaints filed during its release, but I think it is a great thing that has happened to television and our society. It showed a different type of lifestyle and that there is nothing wrong with straying from the norm.