I recently read an interesting quote by Kim Cattrall. She spoke out about Samantha Jones’s cancer plot in the Sex and the city script. She was against it, because she said it perpetuated the idea that women who are comfortable and free with their sexuality must in some way be punished for it.
If you haven’t watched the show, the character Samantha Jones is basically the female version of a playboy and later in the show, she is diagnosed with breast cancer.
When I was young, I only had crushes on safe, unavailable guys. I was a gangly, nerdy girl with braces and glasses, so it was easy to blend into the background. But when I traded my glasses for contacts, lost the braces, and transformed into a young woman with hips and boobs, suddenly I wasn’t invisible to the unavailable people I had quietly adored. This attention was exciting, scary, and dangerous. I didn’t understand what it meant, but it felt like it was my fault and entirely in my control. I was forced into an impossible puzzle, where I couldn’t feel empowered, safe, and free at the same time. I had to choose.
I made a lot of mistakes after that, and when I got sick, I was convinced that I was being punished for them. This mindset is not something I got out of thin air, it is some Scarlett letter bullshit that is still very loud in our society. If a woman is hit on, whether she wants it or not, it’s something that she brought on, like a siren, voodoo witch temptress luring in helpless men.
I was put in the position to field advances by almost every single man that I trusted in my life, including every close friend of my boyfriend and partner of my friends. And if I didn’t, I had to take on the shame for what did and didn’t happen. And I had to lose friends and gain a reputation, while the men lost nothing. So, for a while, it made sense to me that I would be the only one who got sick. Because my actions, and even just my existence, was the only part of this equation being called into question.
When I read that quote by Kim Cattrall, it all clicked. I am not being punished, I am just sick. We exist in this complex system of bacteria, plants, animals, and people. 1/3 of the world’s population have multiple chronic illnesses and they aren’t all demon spawn getting punished for something they did. And the other 2/3 are not angels. The way we fit into this puzzle is something none of us actually understand, even if we long to.
There are people out there who think that I got what I deserve, but I don’t want to be one of them anymore. I create artwork so I can celebrate my disabled body and empower it again, so I refuse to believe it is to blame. I am working too hard to love it. I want to be Samantha. Samantha was free and uninhibited. Samantha was powerful and confident. And Samantha owned her mistakes, because that is such an important part of being truly free.
Yes Samantha Jones is fictional, but the mentality of being an empowered, safe and free woman should be alive and well. If we don’t believe that it can exist, it never will.