On Becoming Samantha Jones
When you first meet Samantha Jones on the pilot episode of HBO’s Sex and the City, she’s sitting at a round table surrounded by “a group of unmarried female friends” who are all out to celebrate Miranda’s “thirty-something” birthday.
“Look, if you’re a successful saleswoman in this city, you have two choices,” Samantha says. “You can bang your head against the wall and try and find a relationship, or you can say “screw it” and just go out and have sex like a man.”
“You mean with dildos?” asks Charlotte, the art dealer, who also happens to be the most traditional of the group.
“No,” says Samantha as she raises her martini glass. “I mean without feeling.”
Carrie Bradshaw, the show’s narrator and lead character, calls Samantha a “New York inspiration” because she is a public relations executive who “routinely slept with good-looking guys in their twenties.”
The group of women spend the next several minutes passing around chocolate cake and discussing men—“They don’t want to be in a relationship with you, but as soon as you only want them for sex, they don’t like it”—until Carrie pipes in.
“Oh, come on, ladies. Are we really that cynical? What about romance?” she asks.
“Who needs it?” says Samantha with her mouth full.
From the first episode on, Samantha Jones is known for her sexual escapades and IDGAF attitude. She’s disregarded as abrasive, promiscuous, dramatic, raunchy, or just “a slut.” She’s everything society doesn’t want a woman to be—and she makes sure everyone knows it.
But as soon as you remove your holier-than-thou glasses and realize Carrie is actually the most insufferable of the bunch, you see Samantha Jones is confident, independent, outspoken, loyal, honest, hardworking, and a damn good time. She’s open-minded—“I’ll try anything once”— untraditional—“I’m not the kind of woman who sits at home all day waiting for a man!”—and unapologetic — “I love you but I love me more.”
She’s also the least judgmental. Although she remains steadfast on her beliefs— “If you turn into one of those married assholes, I’ll kill you”—she always stands by her friends. When Carrie confesses that she’s cheating on her boyfriend (Aidan) with her married ex-boyfriend (Mr. Big), Samantha reminds her that judging is “not her style” while Charlotte is outraged. And when Miranda has trouble adjusting to motherhood, Samantha gives up her hair appointment—sending Miranda in her place—in order to give her friend a break.
But it is through her relations with men, and her advice to her friends about men, that you get some of the most profound Samantha Jones moments. She offers nuggets of wisdom—“A guy can just as easily dump you if you fuck him on the first date as he can if you wait until the tenth”—always keeps it one hundred—“Go through life like I do: enjoy men, but don’t expect them to fill you up”—and always manages to bring you back to reality— “If he’s too good to be true, he probably is.”
But the beauty of Samantha Jones as a character is that she isn’t perfect. “Yeah, I’m harsh,” she says. “I’m also demanding, stubborn, self-sufficient, and always right.” One of her biggest flaws is that she closes herself off to relationships and any kind of emotional attachment to men—and a woman—for most of the show’s six seasons. Even when she does think she’s found “the one” at the end of season one, she breaks up with him for having a “baby carrot” penis. “I’m done with great love, I’m back to great lovers,” she says.
But eventually, even Samantha Jones finds love—in the form of a “twenty-something” waiter/actor/model named Smith.
When Samantha first sees Smith, she’s at a restaurant with her girl friends. She later returns to the restaurant alone with the sole purpose of taking him home and succeeds. In the weeks that follow, she refers to him only as “Smith” because she doesn’t bother to know his name and they have “out-of-the-box sex” while she avoids getting to know him on a personal level. But eventually, even Samantha can’t deny that she finds herself missing him and genuinely enjoys spending time with him.
Although the relationship is not without its flaws, it turns out Smith is exactly what Samantha needs. He breaks down her walls— “I’ve had enough of this horse shit, just fucking hold my hand”—has patience when her cancer treatment stalls her libido— “Just because trees are bare doesn’t mean they’re dead”—and gets on a plane just to tell her he loves her instead of telling her over the phone. To this, Samantha says, “You have meant more to me than any man I’ve ever known.”
And maybe that’s the true beauty in becoming Samantha Jones. It’s not despite her wild and carefree lifestyle that she finds love, it’s because of it. Throughout the show’s six seasons, Carrie, Charlotte and Miranda are—in one way or another—trying to find themselves. In the men they marry, the men they date, and the men they fuck. But Samantha is herself and knows herself throughout the show’s entirety—until she meets the man who isn’t afraid to call her on her bullshit and love her through it.
As someone who’s held a similar distaste for relationships and deep emotional attachment, it was refreshing to watch someone I identified with face their fears head on with someone who was willing to walk them through it. To watch someone equally as terrified of love have to navigate it like a bull in a china shop—in that messy, intense, and completely unpredictable way that only love can be.
And it was equally as satisfying to watch her fuck up several times: when she humiliates Smith by hooking up with her ex (Richard) at a party her and Smith attended together (which is later followed by a tearful apology), when she throws sushi at him in the middle of an argument (California roll, to be exact), and when she tells him he can hook up with other women while she undergoes cancer treatment (even though she doesn’t really mean it). Every tearful, angry, over-the-top moment reminded me that every love story isn’t going to be a fairy-tale. In fact, most of them rarely are.
But in between the last time I watched the entirety of Sex and the City until now, something happened. I became equal parts Samantha Jones and equal parts myself. Because for every trait of hers I hoped to come into—being unapologetic, unashamed, and untraditional, or being outspoken while giving zero fucks—there was another I hoped to counter. I realized in the months that have passed that I didn’t want to wait until someone was willing to walk me through the quicksand of learning how to fall in love—I wanted to do it myself.
And that was exactly what I did. In the nine months since this realization, I’ve given a whole two (two!) guys a solid chance. And it didn’t work out. And that’s okay. (As Samantha says, “The good ones screw you, the bad ones screw you, and the rest don’t know how.”) In the end, I learned more about myself and the kind of person I’m looking for. I had honest—although sometimes difficult—conversations about what I wanted and what I didn’t. And I walked away from both situations feeling like I was making the right decision—and I didn’t have to throw sushi at anyone to get there.
Although Samantha Jones is a fictional character many women can identify with, there is something satisfying about knowing that I can be all the good parts, and I can be better than all the bad parts, and I can have all my own flaws simultaneously. There is comfort in knowing that I don’t have to compromise myself—that I can live a wild, carefree, and independent lifestyle—and still not miss out.
Because if there’s one thing Samantha Jones taught me, it’s that the goal shouldn’t be finding love for the sake of finding love, it should be living your best life and maybe someday hopefully finding love—the make-you-a-better-version-of-yourself kind of love—somewhere along the way. But even if you don’t, or even if it takes until you’re 52 years old, you’re still fabulous.
“I will not be judged by you or society. I will wear whatever, and blow whomever I want, as long as I can breathe and kneel.” — Samantha Jones, Sex and the City
