Maybe *Just a Thought* We All Shouldn’t Try to Be a ‘Samantha’

HBO. Sex And The City. A show that has been serving merely as Cocomelon for the last three generations of women.

If you have never seen or heard about this show, you are either

a) lying .

b) a man that has never had a sister, girl best friend, or a girlfriend.

or c) reclusive to a happy and fulfilling life

Anywhoziez.

Sex And The City . A show I can describe in one sentence.

“Four hot women in their 30s, horny, single, and living in New York City before 9-11.”

What a vibe!! How fucking cool. When I was first watching the show, I was 20, freshly independent, living in Chicago, working my big-girl box office administration job. After my shifts, I would come home, sprawl out and binge some SATC for hours. Eyes glued, brain rotting, heart yearning to become these glamourous women. Powerful, desired, yet still very messy and problematic. Their lives felt aspirational but still real enough to grab onto. These women are deeply relatable, and they all represent something that is inside all of us.

Charlotte is love. Miranda is logic. Carrie is chaos. And my personal favorite, Samantha, is sex. She’s the character with a new man in her drawers almost every episode. On the surface, she’s treated as comic relief: oh wow, look at Samantha, at it again, getting railed. But the show also frames her as the most liberated of them all: rich, successful, unattached, and seemingly untouched. Her message is simple and seductive: sex is power, detachment is strength, and needing no one makes you unstoppable

And when watching from a couch, brain soft, identity still loading, that message doesn’t live on the screen. It slips into your body. Because it is inspiring. I want to be liberated, I want to be powerful, and I want to fuck! Weeeee !!

Tinder date. Tinder hookup! Hinge date, hinge hook up! Local dive bar?? Hook up but with the bartender. Hey mister! Hellooo there!! Buy me a drink and maybe I will make out with you!! Hehee. HA-HA-HA. Flirt flirt flirt. Sex sex sex.! Oooo I am such a Samantha. Yess…. Yes… Look at me. I am wild. I am BEAST!!! I have a roster! An army’s worth of men in my Iphone that can eat me out on speed dial!!

Uhmm. Sorry. What were we talking about?

Right. Samantha.

On the show, Samantha, she can make sex look like a clean, useful tool, something you pick up when you need it and put down when you’re done. It doesn’t touch her back. It’s practically self-care.

And for a young woman learning desire and power at the same time, that framing is intoxicating. If you can collect men, discard them, stay unfazed, then you’re winning. But the problem is, Samantha is actually easy to perform, men are easy to get, AND sex is always available to have. So really, how empowering is this all anyways? Just because something is easy, doesn’t mean it’s harmless. Sex is vulnerable, whether we admit it or not. And what starts as empowerment can quietly turn into numbness, ‘til you realize you’ve stopped watching Samantha as a character and started using her as a blueprint.

Let me draw an example from my own chungus life.

Last winter, I was tweaking over a bartender at my job. We all know this story. Bartender, also co-worker, a tale as old as time. Throughout our shifts, we would flirt for hours. I was recently single, and he just broke up with his fiance. It was game time.

Eventually numbers were exchanged, eventually a text message conversation sprung. And eventually, I said, boy stop playing, come over, and eat this kitty.

But this motherfucker switched up on me. Laughed. Said I was hilarious, and he would never have sex with a co-worker. And I, alas, lost my fucking marbles.

What? Why? You don’t want to fuck me? Stupid idiot bartender boy? ?? Are you fucking stupid?!?!!

I turmoiled over this. Ranting on and on to my best friend Cierra, and she just rolled her eyes; boredly listening to me talk about yet another stupid white boy.

“You don’t even like this boy.” She said,

“I know. But I need to hook up with him, I need to prove a point.”

“Would you ever want to be this boy?”

“What?”

“Like– would you want to be him? Live in his shoes for a day.”

“Eww. Absolutely not. He’s a bum.”

“Then why would you let him inside of you.”

Oh.

I am not upset because I liked this guy, I am upset because Samantha taught me that being wanted meant winning.

Oh right. I became blinded by the idea that sex is this power game you can play, that I completely forgot my emotions and integrity also played a huge part too.

That’s the part we don’t talk about when we talk about “empowered” women on TV. How archetypes like Samantha are fun, sharp, and freeing, but also simplified. They flatten sex into a performance, power into detachment, and self-worth into desirability. Samantha is fictional, and she doesn’t sit alone and wonder why being wanted didn’t feel the way she thought it would. Real women do. And while casual sex can be liberating for some, for others it quietly rewires how we feel about ourselves, teaching us to value numbness over how we honestly feel.

So maybe, just a thought, we don’t all need to be Samantha. We can try to be Steve instead.