(Re)Constructing the Male Body (One Pill at a Time): Analyzing How the Narratives Surrounding Pharmaceutical Products Reinforce Normative Masculinity

Figure 1.1

Having been inspired by my previous semi-serious analysis of the Viagra & Cialis commercials, I decided to continue studying representations of masculinity in pharmaceutical and over the counter medication ads.  For a recent conference presentation I decided to critique the print advertisements for muscle building in magazines such as Men’s Health and Muscle & Fitness. I expected to find stereotypical depictions of masculinity since such are often grounded in expectations concerning physical strength and appearance.  The print imagery and advertisement blurbs did not disappoint.  The descriptions for these products, almost always aimed at a male consumer, were often written in 2^nd person, telling the reader what to expect from their “exceptional” products.  For example, one ad writes:  “Prepare to exceed limitations and ignite both body and mind.”  Common buzz words included:   focus, intensity, domination, preparation, power, and potency.  Users were encouraged to take these pills to “feed the fire,” experience a “blast of energy,” to “push harder,” and become “sculpted and strong.”  These products are needed, one ad claims, “because big isn’t big enough.”

Figure 1.2

While this focus on strength and bodily perfection is only to be expected by products aimed, in part, at body builders, two somewhat surprising motifs surfaced, and yet another seemed almost noticeably absent.  One surprising motif was the association of masculinity with animality.  One product, “Beyond Raw’s,” description reads:  “The Best of the Beast:  To truly become a monster, it takes monster nutrition.  Shatter your perception of what is humanly possible by stacking these vicious formulas to build immense muscle, defy limits, maximize training, destroy plateaus.”  Another product, as hinted in its name, “Paleo Protein,” happily advertises to “the modern day caveman.”    

Figure 1.3

While I expected such depictions of masculinity (as can be seen in figures 1.1 through 1.3), I also had expected to find the male bodies in these vitamin supplement ads sexualized and this was largely  not the case – at least in an overt way.  The male body is certainly the dominant subject of the print ads, with a focus almost always being on the chest and abdomen, but this makes sense because of the ultimate result the product promises.  

Figure 1.4

                        

Figure 1.5

Figure 1.6

However, the practice of fragmenting the body, a common practice used when female bodies are objectified, was shockingly regular.  When women’s bodies are fragmented in ways that allow them to become sexual object, usually shots focusing on legs, breasts, and butts are present.  In the case of the male fragmented body in these ads, it is most often the torso.  (See figures 1.4 through 1.6).

The purposeful act of cutting off the model’s head/face was quite interesting.  (This can be seen in figures 1.4, 1.6, 1.7, and 1.8).  And when a complete male face is viewable, the gaze is almost always averted.  Figures 1.3 and 1.6 are exceptions in this regard.  In fact, Figure 1.6 is an exception on many levels as it is the only advertisement for body building products I could find that showed a man smiling.  All others showed the figures sporting more serious, even menacing, expressions. 

Figure 1.7

                    

Figure 1.9

            

Figure 1.8

When beginning this study I expected to find the men in these ads more overtly sexualized, in scenarios where they might be the obvious object of the female gaze, with female models posed beside them.  This was almost never the case.  Figure 1.7 was the only ad that actually showcased females touching a male body, and this was not an advertisement specifically for a vitamin supplement but rather a website resource related to body building more generally.  Figure 1.9 showcases both a male and a female within the frame but they are not intended to be read as together (in the relational sense or perhaps even in the sense of physical setting).  And while the male model is looking down, almost notably at the groin area, the female model’s own body is on display and, therefore, his body does not seem to be the object of her particular desire as she looks outward toward the camera rather than toward the side at his space on the page.

Figure 1.10

 Throughout the ads, there were phrasing about “getting harder” and “big not being big enough,” and wording such as “endurance” and “power” that at times read as double entendres.  And some background imagery in the ads allowed for them to be ready sexually.  An example would be Figure 1.8, the product “Hardcore,” and its use of flame imagery – heat being often associated with sexuality.  However, for the most part it was quite obvious that intended viewer of these ads were men and perhaps that accounts for the lack of direct sexualization of male bodies.  It also may account for the sexualization of the few female models shown in these ads (see figures 1.9 through 1.12). 

Figure 1.11

The women in these ads were more overtly sexualized, lifting items of clothing, posing more provocatively, and directly engaging in the gaze (looking out at the viewer rather than away as with most men).  When the product itself seemed to be marketed to both men and women, hence the use of both sexes in the ad, the placement of certain advertising blurbs near the female was telling.  While male blurbs continued to talk about the effect of the drug (and sometimes the science behind it), the blurbs most closely located near the female body often focused on less substantial items.  Some blurbs were flowery in phrasing like “pure protein mastery” and others seemed to focus on something a woman would like:  the taste.  Consider this blurb:  which praised its “exceptional mixability” and a “taste I couldn’t believe!”  This slight language shift when the product was to be consumed by a female (or both females and males alike) is interesting and aligns with my previous findings about how the audience of a pharmaceutical/over-the-counter medication ads often impacts the narrative and gender depictions present within them.

Figure 1.12

Not sure if there is a major take away from this study (as it was mostly done for fun), but as always advertisements offer up an interesting snapshot into our normative depictions of gender. 

The Female Sexual Awakening Theme across Media, or, Why ABC’s Betrayal Almost Made me Rethink my Old Dissertation Claims

This fall ABC premiered its much advertised new series, Betrayal.  Joining the ranks of Scandal and the recently renewed Mistresses, Lori Rackl, blogger for the Chicago Sun-Times, argues that the network acronym may as well stand for Adultery Broadcast Network.  Although a bit overdone at the present moment, I was eagerly awaiting the show’s debut since I’ve long studied the female sexual awakening theme in narratives.  It didn’t take long for me to lose my enthusiasm. 

            

Other critics have slammed the show for the stilted dialogue and lack of chemistry between the main lovers, so I won’t wax on about that.  What bothered me was twofold.  First, as with most sexual awakening stories, the plot was predictable (it was advertised to look like a television version of the film Unfaithful – which I discuss below – and that’s, more or less, what it is, plus a side storyline about a murder trial connected to a corrupt corporate family).  Betrayal tells the story of Sara Hanley, a photographer who begins a love affair with Jack McAllister, a lawyer from a powerful family involved in Chicago-style crime.  Their affair becomes all the more complicated when Jack is pitted against Sara’s husband, an up-and-coming, ambitious prosecutor in a complicated murder trial.  However, I can get past recycled storylines, so what really bothered me was the fact that this show threatened a thesis that I developed years ago while a graduate student.

            

As a young scholar when I studied this theme I claimed that television shows, because of their serialized format, were more progressive with plots grounded in a female sexual awakening.  While films and novels often ended with some sort of punishment (usually a death), television shows because of their need to continue on were forced to have much more tentative (and tame) punishments for cheating women.  So when Betrayal’s first episode opened with a shot of the main character bleeding out from a gunshot wound, I almost threw my remote at the television screen.  What I didn’t know then, that I know now, is that the show was pitched as a limited-run series comprised of 13 episodes.  (This is probably a good thing because with its dismal ratings, it had no chance of being renewed and some are shocked ABC is letting it finish out its run).  So as a limited-run series, by its construction (and narrative constraints), it makes sense that it falls in line more with film and print narratives centered on this theme.  (If you want to slip back into time and read a little excerpt from my dissertation, feel free to read on and follow the youthful arguments of media scholar newbie).

In my dissertation I studied two literary texts and one film that showcase the way that the feminist sexual awakening theme appeared in romantic narratives throughout the 20^th century.  The first text was written in 1899, kicking off the new century, and the other two were published just as it closed. Surprisingly, or not, the differences were not quite as striking as the similarities.  I then analyzed the way this theme shifts once it hits the televised small screen, arguing that it had more feminist potential in this format.

The Awakening

One of the first literary texts to openly tackle this theme of women’s sexuality was Kate Chopin’s The Awakening. Written at the turn of the twentieth century, this controversial novella is centered on the life of Edna Pontellier.  This text, foreshadowing concerns Betty Freidan would raise in The Feminine Mystique five decades later, deals with the restrictive domestic role of the housewife.  With the critique of patriarchal society, traditional marriage arrangements, and motherhood itself apparent throughout every page of this novel, it is not surprising that second-wave feminists recovered this text and adopted it into their alternate canon during the 1970s.  The narrative starts when the Pontelliers are on summer retreat with various other Creole families.  It is not until an intimate friendship sparks between her and Robert Lebrun that she realizes her unhappiness in that role (or that any other emotion registers within her, in all actuality).  Up until this point, Edna resigned to the fact that she had taken “her place with a certain dignity in the world of reality, closing the portals forever behind her upon the realm of romance and dreams,” and apparently life, love, and passion correspondingly (Chopin 19).  The love affair that awakens Edna, forever altering her life, is actually of the most innocent nature; the two (in the true nature of a Victorian text) never fully act on their feelings.  In order to prevent such indiscretion, Robert Lebrun (the object of Edna’s newly realized desire) leaves for Mexico to pursue a job venture.  Without him she is a deflated being, “her whole existence [is] dulled, like a faded garment which seems to be no longer worth wearing” (Chopin 49).  And despite Robert’s good intentions, the damage is already done, passion, emotion, lust, and sensuality has been awakened in this protagonist and there is no turning back. 

At the summer’s close, Edna returns to the city and discards her societal duties (the entertaining of acquaintances, the caring of the children) and she even refuses to conform to her husband’s direct demands and expectations.  Toward the end of the story her husband is working out of town, her children are residing with other family members, and she has adopted quite the independent lifestyle, one of new social circuits and a (now acted upon) love affair with Alecee Arobin.  Despite this new relationship, her heart still longs for the absent Robert who started her down the sexually charged life-changing path.  As the novel comes to a close, Edna packs up her family household, moves to a small residence on her own, and Robert returns.  Their feelings are finally vocalized but they only materialize in the form of an affectionate embrace and kiss.  Before any further development can occur, Robert disappears yet again.  Edna returns to the scene of the summer, the lake that once intimidated her.  As she reflects on her position in life, and her inability to escape from it, she walks out into the water, committing suicide.

There is much critical debate as to the ultimate meaning of the novel’s close.  Scholars question whether Edna’s suicide is an escape from patriarchy to be celebrated or a resigned retreat to be criticized (both of which would at least highlight her autonomous decision making) or, quite differently, an indirect punishment assigned to her for breaking the ideological norms of her community (which would mean that she is not in control of this last decision but instead is forfeiting control to the larger cultural powers surrounding her).  Some read the ending as a heroic yet tragic escape from oppressive ideology that is only possible in this fictional community through death.  I read the ending as a less than heroic, and certainly tragic, escape from the patriarchal system, but an escape that certainly could be read as a banishment (and hence a type of punishment) from the system that Edna can no longer exist in after her awakening. 

Unfaithful

Although the theme of sexual awakening has been well studied by literary scholars for centuries, film scholarship has also attended to this notion since its explosion in the 1970s.  However, its findings, and the products they study, are a bit different as this motif translates itself across the media divide.  One recent cinematic example that can be read against The Awakening is Adrian Lynne’s Unfaithful (2002) starring Richard Gere and Diane Lane. The narrative of this piece is not much unlike the previous print ones:  a marriage that outwardly looks solid is shaken when the female protagonist, Connie Sumner (Lane), begins a surprising love affair with twenty-eight year old, French book collector, Paul Martel (Olivier Martinez).  Unlike the novel, the wife of this film seems to have even less reason to cheat.  Connie seems happy with her family role, though perhaps bored by the routine, and the film opens with scenes that depict a relatively active and satisfactory bedroom life with her husband, Ed (Gere).  Nonetheless, the excitement of the affair, the seduction by the younger man, the exoticness of his city dwelling, and the new experiences he can offer her lures her into an affair that spirals out of control.

            

Like The Awakening, this film ends with death hinting that infidelity will always result in punishment. This is not surprising, being that scholars like Suzanne Leonard argue that stories about unfaithful women often combine the reinforcement of dominant ideologies with pleasurable feminist subversions of the status quo.  In these situations the pleasure of abandoning marital duties and embarking on sexual voyages could definitely be considered subverting the status quo.  Likewise, the reinforcement of the dominant ideologies is also prominent in both the novel and the film with said reinforcement being accompanied with the death penalty for subverting the status quo to begin with.  However this text deviates from this normal formula in that the death comes in the form not of Connie, but of her lover Paul after her husband discovers the affair.  In a dramatic scene, Ed has not only discovered that Connie has been cheating on him for weeks but that she has given her young lover a gift that he himself had given to her.  This item, a snow globe housing two dancing figures, was meaningful to him because he had enclosed (without her knowledge) in its base a picture of their family and a message stating that she, his beautiful wife, was what made every day worthwhile.  The giving away of this gift pushes the husband over the edge and in the midst of a panic attack he strikes out at Paul and cracks open his skull with the snow globe.  Right after this death, in perfect Hollywood timing, the wife calls and leaves a message on Paul’s answering machine (which Ed hears) stating that she is ending the affair.

            

The film ends with Connie loosely accused by police officials for Paul’s death, which Ed tries to cover up, and she becomes aware that her own husband has caused it.  The couple continues on with the cover up and struggles to get past the event with two poignant scenes indicating that they may be able to do just that.  The first is when Connie discovers the love note inside the snow globe that has survived despite its use as a weapon.  The second is the final scene of the movie.  The couple is at a red light with their son asleep in the backseat and Connie begins begging for them to simply run away and disappear.  The two verbally fantasize about driving off to Mexico and living on the beach.  (The idea of a seaside escape should now seem quite familiar).  The last scene is them embracing in the front seat as the streetlight turns repeatedly green and red during their stalled state.  However, as the camera zooms out viewers see that they are ironically parked at a street light right outside of the police station as the bold letters “P-O-L-I-C-E” glow ominously in their backdrop.  This final scene hints that, despite their renewed solidarity, the couple will not get their Pacific escape and that punishment still might come.  In analyzing this final frame it becomes obvious that the police and legal system function in this film as the didactic housewives and societal conventions of the Creole society in Grand Isle did for Edna in The Awakening.  Although different in form, both authoritative forces rule out the possibility of happiness within the constraints of their culture’s conformity and/or the opportunity for unharmed escape when trying to escape it. 

The Bride Stripped Bare

A century after Chopin’s shocking text, this theme of sexual awakening still thrives.  Although Hollywood is often the prime outlet to explore and refashion this feminist theme, literary texts continue to do so as well.  Originally published anonymously, The Bride Stripped Bare,¹ takes on this motif in slightly different format.   It should be noted that the “anonymous” nature of this book now faces much scrutiny, most often in the form of accusations of it being a clever marketing gimmick.  Within less than a week of the book being sold to publishers, the 36-year old Australian writer, Nikki Gemmell, was “outed” as being the author. To add to the hype, it was not long before it was well known (and even “reluctantly” self-reported) that Gemmell bore a striking resemblance to the main character making the text quasi-autobiographical and all the more interesting to readers and reviewers alike.  Gemmell claims that she had fully intended on putting her name on the novel but realized early on in the writing process that she was censoring herself (2).  Gemmell says her goal was to “say all those thing we may think, but never actually say–especially to our lovers” and that the anonymity allowed her to do this (2).  She suggests that perhaps “complete sexual honesty (is) the last frontier that feminism has to tackle” (Gemmell 2). 

Unlike Chopin’s regional text, The Bride Stripped Bare, in true neo-postmodern form, is an interesting hybrid of experimental postmodern feminist literature and popular new age romance novel.  Following the postmodern practice of bringing attention to the constructedness of literature, the instability of textual boundaries, and the unreliability of authorship, this text is a story within a story.  The prologue is a letter written, presumably by a fictional character, to a publishing house.  The woman who pens this introductory letter says she is the mother of the anonymous author, and that she found the manuscript (which actual readers then go on to read) on her daughter’s laptop after her mysterious disappearance (and assumed death).  She felt that her daughter would have wanted the piece published.  This is where the story begins.

Although the aesthetic of the piece differs greatly from Chopin’s novella, the plot bears a remarkable likeness, except, as one would expect of the age, for the fact that it is more sexually explicit.  The Bride Stripped Bare begins its unique second person narration with the protagonist “secuming [sic] to the sexual ritual” that is one’s honeymoon (4).  The text first gives voice to sexuality as she remembers her first sexual experience, and right away readers know that this will be a book that does not shy away from frank discussion:  “As for the first time you fucked, well, you remember the sound, as his fingers readied you between your legs, not much else.  Not even a name now” (The Bride 5).  The vignettes expose the marital relationship as comfortable, happy, sexually active, but sexually unfulfilling (although not at first realized as being such) for the wife.  Some of this repressed sexuality starts to seep into the journal-like text passages:  “just the sight of a man’s chest can make you wet.  You’d never say an expression like that to him, makes me wet” (The Bride 10).  The sexual imbalance within the bedroom enters into the journal writings as well:  “Your husband… must make love on his terms, which isn’t often.  You usually make love in the mornings to take advantage of his hardness upon waking.  Cole’s penis often doesn’t feel hard enough, as if it’s thinking of something else,” “… he likes you vulnerable.  And to teach you, to introduce you to new things.  You didn’t look closely at a penis until you were married, didn’t know what a circumcised one looked like.  You wonder, now, how you could’ve had the partners you’ve had and never really looked” (The Bride 16-7, 24-5).  This continues on even more directly in other passages:  “He’s never given you an orgasm.  He assumes he has.  You’re a good actress–a lot of women are, you suspect,” and “sometimes you wonder if your husband really likes women” (The Bride 50, 57).

Some critics have attacked the novel’s use of 2^nd person, claiming it to be “didactic” and/or “disturbing” as it “forces the reader to be part of the story.”  Although many would not disagree with the accusation that the text is didactic (most blatantly during the lessons), I would suggest that part of what makes this novel’s narration enticing is this use of 2^nd person and the activity it requires of the reader in transporting herself imaginatively into the plot.

Not far into the novel, the wife (unnamed like the author) discovers that her husband, Cole, is having some sort of affair (perhaps only emotional) with her best friend Theo, who ironically works as a sex therapist.  This discovery is the catalyst that allows her to stumble into an affair, and hence a Chopin-esque sexual awakening, of her own.  She meets Gabriel Bonilla, a forgotten actor and struggling writer.  They strike up a flirtation and friendship that, despite the attraction, does not develop into a sexual relationship at first.  Of this meeting, she writes:  “you’ve walked back into the sun, it’s warm on your back.  You have a new friend in your life, to play with, to be young again with, to wake you up” (The Bride 104).  And when she momentarily thinks that she will never see him again because she has misplaced his phone number, she feels quite the opposite, as if she might die from that lack of feeling, of possibility.  But they do meet again and yet still do not have sexual relations. 

At this point in the story, the protagonist begins receiving love letters and gifts in the mail sporadically.  The first gift was a vibrator.  Assuming the letter was from him (although it was really from her estranged friend Theo who wanted to give her a sense of wonder, excitement, and flattery) the wife propositions Gabriel only to discover he has never been with a woman.  And here a whole different set of “lessons” begin: 

Where to begin, you are the teacher and before you is the blank slate:  God the responsibility of it.  You gather your thoughts, you mustn’t rush.  You don’t want him experiencing anything of the hurt or disappointment you’ve so often felt.  How many women get the chance to do this, with a man, to break their virginity?  It must be utterly memorable for him, something to savor for the rest of his life.  (The Bride 194-5)

After that, weekly lesson begin; she even categorizes and numbers them:  “One, the removal of clothes,” “Two, the touching, the licking,” “Three, the clandestine public kiss, fully clothed,” “Four,” inanimate objects/props, “Five, the vibrator,” “Six, porn magazines,” “Seven, wrists bound to the bed posts,” “Eight, the shower,” “Nine, sleep,” “Ten, the fuck” (The Bride 201-3).  The experience fulfils the main character and her sexuality awakens as she trains him: 

Gabriel’s not afraid of your sexuality.  Your pleasure is giving him pleasure, it arouses him and he asks nothing physically of you in return:  no one has taught him to do that, to expect.  He’s your first lover who’s utterly selfless, there’s no request to go down on him, it’s purely unselfish, feminine sex.  Your orgasms are becoming increasingly intense… (The Bride 208).

This sexual awakening, however, is unable to be restricted to just her novice lover.  Her new bold desires carry over back to the husband from whom she has been abstaining.  When she has her first orgasm with her husband and starts sexual experimentation within her marriage, her lover becomes jealous, and increasingly does so until she decides she must stop the lessons, but not the extramarital sex.  In fact, the relations she strikes up next completely lacks the intimacy that she had with Gabriel; she embarks on meaningless sex with a group of cab drivers.  Her initial invitation showcases this:  “I want to have sex, do you want to sleep with me, I need it, please…  Two of you would be good, you add” (The Bride 229-30).  And the experience is what she expected:  “They don’t respect you.  You are nothing but a vessel, a series of holes to be filled up” (The Bride 231). 

As the sexual exchanges continue and vary throughout the story, the novel draws attention to the narrator’s purposeful rejection of the monogamous relationship structure traditionally mandated by society.  Catherine Lumby argues that even though “70s feminism released women from the expectation of having only one sexual partner, serial monogamy has remained the norm for most people” and this book is exists as an “experimentation” in what exactly it would mean to remove monogamy from a relationship.  But to be clear, even in teasing out the notion of what could exist in the absence of monogamy, The Bride Stripped Bare still can only offer up the alternatives of promiscuity and adultery.  In all actuality it is a short-lived experiment since even the awakened main character abandons her quest to envision relationship possibilities outside of monogamy.  The story shifts in the last third when the main character becomes pregnant.  At first she is content in this new role.  However, Gabriel is still in her mind.  At nine months pregnant, after her husband suspects that she has, indeed, been unfaithful, she travels out of the country to have one last encounter with her trained lover.  Following lesson 131, the wife has her baby, a son.  Seven entries later the novel ends abruptly after the wife, Cole, and baby have crossed paths on the busy city streets with Gabriel:  “you catch each other’s eyes, you pass each other without a flicker of recognition, just as you’d promised each other once.  But you both turn back. He smiles secrets at you, for a fleeting moment.  The crowd closes over you, and he’s gone” (The Bride 369).  According to the mother’s postscript, her daughter disappeared later that afternoon with the infant.  The cliffside abandonment of the stroller suggests suicide or foul play, although the possibility remains that she may have faked her own death and run away.

The Bride Stripped Bare, Unfaithful, and The Awakening explore women’s sexuality and the ways it is stifled in traditional heteronormative relationships.  However, despite their celebration of women’s sexuality, both novels close with the deaths of the main character and the film with the substitute death of her lover.  They seem to carry the warning:  look wives at what will happen if you do wander and embark on infidelity.  You will be punished, you will forfeit your life (or that of your love) for your temporary love affair.  In a harsh, yet amusing, online review of The Bride Stripped Bare, one critic also noted this underlying message against adultery.  Parodying the text’s actual layout, the reviewer writes:  “Lesson 139.  If you think about having an orgasm as a woman, you will destroy your stable married life which can only be a woman’s true calling, be abducted by aliens, and burn in a fiery pit of hell.”

The difference between the outcomes of the print texts and the cinematic one is not great, but it is still worthy of note.  In his work on erotic thrillers, David Andrews argues that the adultery storyline (or female “awakening” plot) almost always “proves disastrous in the short term” but “usually effects a positive” (albeit) “post-feminist resolution in the end.”  The post-feminist attempted return to the nuclear family order, as seen in Unfaithful, is indeed tragic but not in the same sense as the endings of The Awakening and The Bride Stripped Bare where the main characters really do (supposedly) meet their tragic downfall (i.e. death) due to consequences prompted by their own actions.

These three different texts each develop the recycled theme of the female sexual awakening.  What is interesting however, is not the fact that, despite their different delivery formats or the time periods from which they derive, they share this common feminist theme, but rather that these diverse texts are able to develop this theme efficiently because of a shared textual characteristic–their singularity or textual autonomy.  Taking on the finished form of novel or film these examples function as isolated texts.  Their narratives exists free-standing with no direct relation to other dependent texts; they are consumed as isolated wholes with rather limited exposure/duration time and, as a result, this makes them quite different from sequential narratives like the series or serial with its interdependency, habitual consumption, and extended exposure/duration time.  After looking at this latter type of text (programs from prime-time television and daytime drama) in the next section of this essay, it will become obvious that the theme of the sexual awakening fits the media logic of the isolated/singular text well but that the motif must be modified in order to fit the media logic of the interdependent/habitual text.

The Sexual Awakening Theme on TV (e.g. Sex in the City)

When studying the small screen in regards to this common theme of sexual awakening, it is clear that that the motif often shifts into sexual revitalization, sexual exploration, or sexual amplification.  In televisual texts this motif is expressed through various types of relationships, situations, and outcomes.  For example, unlike the tragic outcome of The Awakening, Unfaithful, and The Bride Stripped Bare, this theme need not be developed solely through showcasing extra-marital relations.  Nor, correspondingly, do these texts seem to require the didactic lesson against the dangers of sexual satisfaction and the resulting end punishment if one acquires it.   Sex in the City, which played a crucial role in cementing HBO’s cable dominance in the late 1990s, is a clear example of television programming with an obvious focus on female sexuality that escapes this practice common in the isolated texts.    Although many television shows have played up sexual encounters, none did so with such regularity (and with such a gendered focus) in the primetime until the late postmodern period.  Sex in the City, although focused on more than just the titled act alone, fails to offer an episode free of it in its six seasons on air.  The show unapologetically shows its four main characters in various relations monogamous and not, intimate and casual, traditional and experimental, and so forth.  Secondly, no sexual trope is left unaired and the characters are rarely punished as seen in the previous examples.  The four main characters often struggle with the inability to secure a long-term mate (which may or may not be seen as a result of their sexual activity) and Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall) has to fight off labels such as slut and whore because of her open promiscuity.  The closest thing to a direct “punishment” that results from unleashed sexuality is Aiden Shaw (John Corbett) leaving Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) when she cheats on him with on-again-off-again lover Big (Chris North). 

This open treatment of women and sexuality in primetime soaps (of which arguably a show such as Sex in the City can be seen as a variation) can be attributed to its sister daytime counterpart.  Daytime soaps have been showcasing the sexual awakenings of female characters with increased regularity and explicitness for decades.  And, again, in this genre the punishment is lacking or minimal and personalized.  While soap divas do face the consequences of adultery like the protagonists of The Awakening, The Bride Stripped Bare, or Unfaithful, they are often minimal.  A husband might leave, a friendship may end, an illegitimate child will most likely be conceived (and the paternity will, of course, be in question), but these personalized punishments are as short-lived as the relationships that proceed and follow them.  Without such a forgiving stance toward infidelity, soap operas simply would not have a plot–monogamous, happy marriages simply do not hold the viewers’ attention.

             

So, if the examples from these two groups are looked at as falling on a thematic continuum, one can see that the examples of romantic narratives pulled from the isolated media range (works consumed in one segment, usually with little frequency–a novel or film experienced once) are more drastic in their punishments for women’s unrestricted sexuality.  The examples taken from the sequential media range (works consumed in serial segments, usually with regular frequency–a primetime weekly soap or a daily daytime drama) are less severe when judging women’s sexual choices.  Although the free-standing texts are often touted as being ideal feminist artifacts, they have less utility than their sequential counterparts.  The media logic of the singular text provides the potential for a “great” narrative tale, a catharsis even, but it is a short-lived, isolated experience that does little to change the consumer in the long run.  While one can feel the thrill of bucking patriarchy by living vicariously through Edna, Connie, or the adulterous bride, that thrill is fleeting, as is the limited critique these texts offer up concerning the dominant ideological system.  What is even worse is that these singular texts appear prone to escapist themes (and experiences) that feminist scholars caution against.  With the tragic suicide/death endings, the three texts analyzed at the beginning of this essay provide tales of temporary escape from heteronormative relationships and then they end (negatively at that).  Crucial to feminist work is the notion of non-escape, of working within the patriarchal system to change it.  It is not a temporary task but a non-ending endeavor that fits the thematic possibilities and structural logic of sequential media.

If these examples are reliable examples of a larger sample, then it might be safe to claim that the popular cultural products consumed more regularly are offering up more possibilities for exploring female sexuality.  If this is so, the utility of the serial, despite its lower cultural ranking, is greater.  Television shows may have the potential to be powerful feminist tools to explore female sexuality.