Thinking Kink: Did Sex and the City Get BDSM Right?

It’s easy to forget just how groundbreaking Sex and the City was in the late ’90s when, with gay kisses and incest on our prime-time soap operas (well, here in Britain anyway), we thought we’d seen it all. Cue a show with four women talking about butt sex, and you had something so incendiary that this then-15-year-old had to tape it off the the TV and watch it when my family were all out. SATC—the series, not the films. We do not speak of the films—was lauded for its frank, open discussions of sex (and the notion that women might—erk!—enjoy it) without taking anything too seriously. But did it ever manage to move beyond the media’s often cartoonish portrayals of BDSM?

Throughout SATC’s six seasons, fragments of BDSM imagery were regularly dropped into episodes without further explanation. In one episode, Samantha mentions she keeps nipple clamps in her “goodie drawer,” and in another, Miranda is disconcerted to find her date has spanking fantasies. Another episode sees one of Samantha’s conquests chaining himself up in his own kinky closet and asking her to slap him, but a pejorative view on kink is inherent in the episode’s name: “The Freak Show.” Samantha is regularly depicted as a dominatrix figure, an image often used to deflect criticisms that BDSM is all about glorifying female submission.

In the season 2’s “La Douleur Exquise” (translation: The Exquisite Pain) the makers actually gave a whole episode over to exploring BDSM themes—with varying results. It kicks off with the girls attending an opening of an S&M (as BDSM was previously known) club. The opening tracking shot of opulent decor and glorious food is quickly contrasted when we see a woman chained to a giant spiderweb being flogged (my safety-first eye noticed that the woman is being flogged on her stomach, which is a strict no-no). A riding-crop-wielding, top-hatted Samantha is running the guestlist, and is a visual contrast to Charlotte who turns up in “vanilla” clothes and responds to Sam’s complaint, “The invitation said kinky!” with an innocent, “I kinked my hair!”.

As tends to be the case with SATC, humor is never far away and Samantha spanking the bare-assed waiter for getting her drink order wrong is definitely an example of how easy it is to play BDSM for laughs. However, Samantha also states the case for open-mindedness, telling a shocked Charlotte, “Don’t be so judgemental. This is just a sexual expression—all these people have jobs and pay their bills.” A reminder that kink is just one part of consenting adults’ lives is often missing from media representations, so props to SATC for including this.

However, messages get mixed as the episode progresses. The “pain” that Carrie is experiencing in her relationship with the commitment-phobic Mr. Big is compared to BDSM throughout her commentary (“And then I realized—I was in an S&M relationship with Mr. Big”), a metaphor which runs the risk of perpetuating a major misunderstanding about kink—that it’s all about pain (and not the pleasurable kind), that it’s abusive, and that it entraps people. Carrie’s commentary equates her emotional pain with the physical pain that BDSM is assumed to be synonymous with, even though pain is only one part of kink, and for some players, not included at all.

Carrie’s claim that she has “tied” herself to Mr. Big is clearly meant to evoke bondage imagery, but comparing consensual restraint to being trapped in a bad relationship does both BDSM and victims of abuse a disservice. BDSM is about pleasure – whether that is gained through the controlled infliction of pain, restraint, or humiliation—to which both parties have consented. There is no pleasure to be gained from an emotionally abusive relationship, however much Carrie attempts to romanticize it in her voiceover: “Was I addicted to the pain, the exquisite pain of wanting someone so unattainable?”. Comparing consensual masochistic practices to letting someone treat you like crap for real only serves to feed into the myth that BDSM is a cover for abuse, and all participants are damaged people.

The rest of the episode remains in lighter territory but continues to pathologize kinky people: Charlotte’s encounter with a foot fetishist is described as “dirty, kinky, freaked-out” and the man himself is portrayed as sleazy and somewhat predatory, having taken advantage of Charlotte’s supposed shoe fetish (NB—wanting to buy lots of shoes isn’t a necessarily a “fetish.” Wanting to lick them or come over them is). In another scene, Carrie agrees not to judge Stanford’s underwear fetish and cyber-promiscuity, as if these are things he should automatically be ashamed of.

“La Douleur Exquise” certainly made for a funny and fascinating episode of Sex and the City, but in terms of bridging the gap between the kink and vanilla world, it didn’t quite make it across the latex-lined divide.

Previously: Welcome to a Blog on BDSM, Feminism and Pop Culture, Debunking BDSM Myths