Beyond the Backlash: Sex and the City and Three Feminist Struggles

Abstract

Much scholarly debate surrounds the extent to which female situation comedies make feminist contributions, particularly in a postfeminist context. While Sex and the City (SATC) can be read as a postfeminist text, this essay aims to recover the show's feminist meanings. To that end, this essay situates SATC within three key feminist struggles—between the individual and the collective, feminism and femininity, and agency and victimization. As Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda, and Samantha face each of these struggles, they often embody complex feminist identities. Exploring these complexities will highlight SATC's participatory elements as they relate to the ongoing feminist project.

Keywords:

• Agency
• Feminism
• Polysemy
• Postfeminism
• Sex and the City

The author would like to thank Shawn J. Parry-Giles for entertaining the idea of this paper and guiding it throughout its many stages, as well as this paper's many readers, including Professor Janette Kenner Muir and two anonymous reviewers for their generous feedback on this manuscript.

Notes

This paper began as a seminar paper in Professor Shawn J. Parry-Giles's course on Historical/Critical Methods in Rhetoric. A previous version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the National Communication Association, November 2003.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Belinda A. Stillion Southard

Belinda A. Stillion Southard (MA, University of Maryland, 2004) is a PhD candidate in the Department of Communication at the University of Maryland.