Final Paper: The Female Sex as Radical

As this semester comes to a close, I attempt to compose a final thought structure on all of the components that were given to me throughout this sixteen week period. I was drawn to the aspect of defining the female sex and gender; not only to identify it but to approach the concept with a radical approach. In the movie Sex and The City as well as My Best Friends Wedding, there are certain themes in both that parallel the ideas that were discussed in class. There are facets of empowerment, financial independence, success and power that radiate in these movies, and that are not the social norm for women.
Tamar McDonald book Romantic Comedy: Boy Meets Girl Meets Genre makes a relevant point that “(Romantic Comedies) satisfy because they provide easy, uncomplicated pleasures” (McDonald: 7).When I would watch a movie, I never realized that I enjoyed them immensely because they came with no urge to use my brain cells. As I sat down to watch a classic Julia Roberts movie, and the ultra popular television series Sex and the City, I recognized that it fits into that mold; the mold of the generic love story that has been done once, twice, a million times. In My Best Friends Wedding its plot is centered on Julianne Potter (Julia Roberts), a 27-year-old New York restaurant critic who receives a call from her long-time friend Michael O'Neal .In College, the two made an agreement that if neither of them were married by the time they turned 28, they would marry each other. Three weeks before her 28th birthday, Michael tells her he has fallen in love with and is about to marry a 20-year-old college student from a wealthy family. This causes Julianne to realize she has always been in love with Michael and cannot stand to see him wed another woman.
Sex and The City also allows the viewer to engulf themselves in a guilty pleasure that requires little thought process. Set in New York City, the show focused on four women, three in their mid-thirties and one in her forties. The quirky drama/comedy had multiple continuing story lines and tackled socially relevant issues such as sexually transmitted diseases, safe sex, multiple partners and promiscuity. It specifically examined the lives of big-city professional women in the late 1990s and how changing roles and expectations for women affected the characters.

In both films, the women are extremely successful as well as independent; breaking the mold for the norm. Chris Barker discusses the issues of subjectivity and identity in his book Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice, “The discourse of sex is one that through reception of the acts it guides brings sex into view as a necessary norm. Sex is a construction, but an indisputable one that forms us as subjects and governs the materialization of bodies” (Barker: 238). This particular quote shows relevance to the films because these women were able to break the gender constraints and create their own identity.
McDonald further states that another element of a romantic comedy is there will always be visual characteristics. These characteristics are identifiable in most movies and create a symbol for the particular genre. He states that “Consider the reception within the genre of articles associated with weddings, as well as chocolates, candlelight, beds…” (11). Having a movie’s setting placed predominantly around a wedding shows that love and romance is the main plot; it is a subconscious facet that love is saturated in some aspect throughout the entire movie. Obviously, My Best Friends Wedding is revolved around a wedding, seeing that it is in the title. Sex and the City revolved around the concept of love and what it represents. In the theatrical movie version of Sex and the City, the concept of love is abundant. One of the main characters, Carrie, has been on a conquest of finding true love. One of her main men was “Mr. Big”, and they were constantly falling in and out of love for ten years. Finally, the movie unveils that Carrie and Mr. Big are engaged, and the wedding is shown throughout. However, Carrie’s fairytale wedding is not what she thinks it would be, when Big doesn’t show up to the wedding, leaving her alone at the altar and giving the movie one of it’s most raw moments.
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One aspect that doesn’t really match up with McDonald theory is “Romantic comedies are boy meets, loses, regains girl” (12). In this particular movie, boy does meet and loose girl, however it is the girl that attempts to regain boy. As stated earlier, the plot revolves Julia Roberts going to profess her undying love to her ex-boyfriend in hopes to break up his wedding. Although it does not fit the perfect mold, there is the same structure just switched sexes at the end. In Sex and The City, there are a plethora of examples where the women are the ones approaching the men, and have male like tendencies. One specific example is when the outgoing, sexually promiscuous Samantha does not want to hold the hand of her boyfriend. She does not want to have public displays of affection and she also does not want engage in such frivolity.


According to Foucault, “Subjectivity is a discursive production… Sexuality was a focal point for the exercise of power and the production of subjectivity in western societies. Subjectivity is coterminous with sexuality since subjects are constituted thought the production of sex and the control of the body” (291). In both scenarios, the women of Sex and The City, as well as Julia Roberts in My Best Friends Wedding use their sexual drive to positively get ahead in life. Not in a domineering way, just to use the assets they were given in the proper time and place. Whether it is to achieve an aspect of success, or to achieve a new beau, these women embrace their sexuality.
Everyone wants to have hoped that someday they soon will find true love. Perhaps that is the lure of romantic comedies; they offer the insight and fantasy of finding your soul mate but is it realistic? McDonald says that “In giving the audience a high degree of closure with the happy ending in films of this genre, are romantic comedies benign, supplying an on-screen fantasy of perpetual bliss usually lacking in real life?” (14). One aspect I enjoyed about My Best Friend’s Wedding ,is the movies did not end up in the usual fairy tale happy ending. When Julia Roberts character finally musters up enough courage to tell Michael how much she wants to be with him, the audience feels like it will end up the “normal” way. However, Michael ends up marrying his 20-something fiancé, leaving Julia Roberts embarrassed and alone; which doesn’t happen normally. I really liked that even though she didn’t end up with her “prince”, she still stood up for what she believed in and she received closure.
Another characteristic that needs to be considered is that My Best Friends Wedding as well as Sex and the City are quite radical. The definition of radical romance states that "It is often willing to abandon the emphasis on making sure the couple ends up together, regardless of likelihood, instead striving to interrogate the ideology of romance" (59). The movie applies to this theory because the entire movie is based on Julia Roberts as well as the four girls of Sex and they City, are pursuing the man, not the other way around; the generic way movies have been for decades before the radical romance comedies. Another aspect that gives the movie a radical twist is Julia Roberts’s character does not end up with the man in the end; she ends up dancing with a gay man. Both of those scenarios are extremely radical at this time because the 'happily every after' dream does not come true, and homosexuality was not very prevalent during this period.
For the most part romantic comedies are light hearted, and predominantly made for women; however they offer a sense of hope for those looking for love, and give commonality to those who are in love and can relate to the movie.
Both of these different movies offer parallelism and insight into a concept of radical romance for the female sex and gender. Even though these two movies represent different types of women, it allows the view to witness the commonalty that all women have; power to better themselves through themselves.



Barker, Chris. Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice. Sage Publications. California. 2000.

Hogan, PJ. My Best Friends Wedding

McDonald, Tamar. Romantic Comedy: Boy Meets Girl Meets Genre. Wallflower press. London. 2007