How Gen Z taught me to stop worrying about gender labels
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Like many other Gen X and millennial ladies, I was a big fan of the cult US series Sex and the City. Not only was it smart, sassy and wickedly funny; it set more 2000s fashion trends than I can count and helped to make New York City seem like the centre of the universe. For years afterwards, the only cocktail I’d ever order was a Cosmopolitan – all because of Carrie & Co.
Yet it was the handling of the subject of female sexuality that was the most groundbreaking. SATC let us follow Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha as they took on the challenges of sex and dating in the 21st century and spoke about it openly as never before. Infertility, anal sex, cancer – nothing was off limits.
Everyone had their favourite character. I most identified with Miranda, the no-nonsense, cynical lawyer, while Carrie spoke to my more eccentric side. Although, being quite an immature 20-year-old, Charlotte’s prudishness struck a chord with me too. These ladies felt like older sisters who were letting me in on their secrets and advice as I tried to get to grips with the strands of my own identity.
Samantha Jones: woman of the future
I couldn’t relate to Samantha at all. Even at 20 years old, I remained deeply uncomfortable with the idea of physical intimacy and Sam’s predatory, overtly sexual persona felt completely alien. I didn’t think she was wrong or morally flawed for enjoying sex and sleeping with a lot of different men. To me, her choices simply reflected another item on a wide-ranging menu which was open to modern women. You could take what you wanted and leave the rest.
Still: the character fed into the already unpleasant pressure I felt to enter a sexual marketplace whose demands I wasn’t sure I could (or wanted to) handle.
Ironic then, that out of all four women, it’s Samantha who still sounds relevant in 2024. I still don’t want to emulate her sexual ways. But in so many ways, the thoughts and views she expressed have stood the test of time.
How did this ever seem groundbreaking?
The others – especially Carrie and Charlotte – now seem like beings from a distant, bygone era. An age where even smart, educated women saw themselves as commodities on a “marriage market”, waiting to be chosen and swept off their feet by a perfect prince who were then responsible for making them happy forever. Cleaving stubbornly (or unconsciously) to traditional gender roles and even being willing to throw their successful careers to the winds in order to be a housewife. How did this ever feel groundbreaking?
Sam was the polar opposite of all this. Where the others slipped too easily into the role of the passive supplicant in their relationships, Samantha made active choices from a place of knowing her own self-worth. Where the others were always trying to change themselves to please men, Samantha expected them to please her. And she didn’t need any man’s money – because, as a career woman with her own PR business, she had her own.
Unshackled from the economic rationale for chasing a mate and happily child-free, men were Sam’s playthings and sex became a fun mode of self-expression. She was confident, financially secure and free. She was the woman of the future.
HBO’s very own prophet
Looking back, some of Samantha’s lines about gender fluidity seem freakily prophetic.
In Season 3, Episode 4, Carrie dates a younger man who she quickly finds out is bisexual. Cue neurotic meltdown, and passionate breakfast debates about sexual ambiguity, gender flexibility and whether this is a relationship which Carrie should pursue.
This scene from the episode (from 2:14 of the video above – apologies for the poor quality) now seems painfully outdated. We listen to the girls openly doubting whether bisexuality is really a “thing” or – in Carrie’s words – “just a layover on the way to Gaytown”.
Again, it’s Samantha who is bang on the money with the way the world is headed. She marvels at how “that generation” (meaning, I guess, Gen X and elder millennials who were coming of age around about then) are far more flexible than their elders as far as sexual orientation and gender identity are concerned. And she was fully on board with that kind of freedom and creativity. Of course she was.
A generational shift
Well, what seemed 25 years ago like a fringe trend among trendy young urbanites turned out to be the start of a profound generational change. Today, binary is just one possibility among a whole range of genders and identities. I must confess that I’m not up to speed on all these new options. And I have a number of doubts about how/if/when one’s chosen gender identity should be recognised in public officialdom and when young people should be allowed to transition.
It’s such a hot-button and sensitive topic, I probably offended a bunch of people just by writing that last sentence. But in essence, I think this new freedom to express one’s unique identity and be celebrated and accepted for it is a hugely positive development.
It has certainly made my own youthful struggles to define who I am as a woman seem like a minor blip along the great continuum of gender possibility. In fact, this free-thinking, diversity-loving younger generation have taught me that I never should have worried.
Nonconformity was a lonely place
But 20 years ago, that great, long colourful continuum was all but invisible; way out in a future we hadn’t got to yet. And so, the quite pedestrian issue of being a straight woman who didn’t conform to traditional gender roles was still a challenge.
Samantha’s exhortation to “just enjoy it and don’t worry about the labels” seemed like an insurmountable hurdle when society was still telling me to be a good girl, then be a good wife and mum, don’t make people uncomfortable by challenging or questioning things. In short: don’t be yourself.
It was lonely. I found it difficult to relate to the other girls at school, but had to rub along and blend in to survive. Hanging out with the boys was OK, but they generally preferred their own company and didn’t want the drag of being seen with the cleverest girl in class (brains definitely weren’t cool at that stage).
From school to university, from living at home to living away, from living in Britain to living in Austria – I went from place to place but never seemed to fit in. While I’ve always been more than fine with my own company, but there is no substitute for finding people who GET IT, who GET YOU and just accept you as you are. This took me quite some time.
With age comes honesty
Happily, as I’ve got older (and the great public forum of the internet took over all our lives), it’s got much easier to meet other women who roll like me. I’ve formed a circle of firm friends who I can relate to – and whom I can count on. It’s a great space to be in.
Women writers my age also seem to have become confident enough in themselves and mature enough in their craft to write openly about their own stories. This article on UnHerd by the writer Marilyn Simon struck a particular chord with me. Reading it, I realised I had unknowingly been a member of an invisible army of millennial women who spent a great deal of time in their formative years keeping their own femininity at arm’s length.
Simon details why, in her late teens, she went from being a typical girly-girl to a tomboy, cutting off her long hair and spending her time with the boys, pursuing typical male pursuits.
One reason for this stark transformation was that Simon found girliness boring. However, the urge to discard the typical markers of femininity and become more ambiguous in her gender was also driven by something darker: a distinct anxiety associated with being a woman.
To be a woman means to be under the male gaze and potentially become the object of male desire. To Simon, that low-level hum underpinning her existence as a female felt threatening. And, the way she dealt with it was to do all she could to iron out those obviously female features that could attract and excite male sexual interest.
Androgyny as risk management
While I was never a “girly” girl (and therefore had no such persona to discard) and never had hordes of guys beating down my door, begging for a date, I definitely felt that black puma of male desire. It stalked around, hovered close, ready to assert itself at any second and threaten my jealously-guarded physical aloneness and the unimpeded pursuit of my career goals.
It intruded even further into my field of vision when I entered full-time employment at age 22. Having always got on better with guys than with women and being far too obsessed with proving a feminist point with my career choices, I went to work for an Austrian commercial law firm in the banking and finance department. In the Austria of the mid-2000s, there were plenty of other women in the office (and even a female partner or two!), but also a few notorious skirt-chasers among the male lawyers.
As a young and driven but inexperienced woman, I knew right away that I had to do everything I could to duck away from any male attention in this environment which could knock me off my career course.
Being openly ambitious was an effective way to scare off the classic womanisers who were almost always interested in more submissive quarry. However, their presence helped to drive my choice to wear trouser suits in the office rather than skirts and dresses in the office. That seemed like a good way to keep thoughts firmly on the job at hand and what I was saying about that, rather than what might be going on in my underwear.
A tricky balance
That was all well and good and smart in risk management terms, but getting on at work also depended on getting along with those guys. With very few female bosses around, it was the men you had to impress. And that’s where stuff started to get even more complicated.
At afterwork drinks or work events, it seemed like the male and female contingents would always separate like oil and water at an early point in the evening. With no interest in talking shopping, weddings or babies and wanting to get in on the conversations that might lead to the interesting projects being handed out, I made an effort to “hang out with the guys”.
Now, I can keep up with the chat, the football gossip, even some of the willy-waving (as far as sports like running and climbing went, I was mostly stronger than they were and therefore had something to boast about). I’ll happily join in with a round of darts (which I’m quite good at) or pool (which I’m not).
Even so, it all felt so fake and strained and inauthentic. I felt like my behaviour at work was either trying to fend off the wrong sort of male attention or trying to ape mens’ behaviour in some kind of absurd attempt get the right sort.
Where do I end, and the act begin?
It started to mess with my head.
Eventually, I couldn’t accurately pinpoint which actions I was taking because I was genuinely being “me” and which ones I was doing to get to where I wanted to be in this very male world. Which actions were simply those of a woman who didn’t fit the traditional gender stereotype and felt more comfortable with the guys and which ones were those of a woman pretending to be a man to achieve career success.
I just wanted to be who I was, be accepted for that and get on in my career. Why was this so hard?
In the end, the question was moot. I threw in the towel on my legal career (and life as a salaried employee) in 2015 when I became a freelance legal translator.
I was the boss now, and I could do whatever I thought was right. I didn’t have anyone to impress except my clients. Questions of gender stereotypes and possible sex discrimination melted like ice in my mind.
Our struggles cleared the path for the next generation
Fast forward another 10 years and gender ambiguity is firmly ensconced among contemporary cultural norms.
Just as Samantha Jones foresaw around the turn of the century when they were being born, Gen Z don’t think anything of blending elements of each gender to form their own unique identities.
Biological males in sparkly minidresses and makeup; biological females with shaved heads and workman’s clothes; a whole list of different pronouns to choose from. You can be a man, you can be a woman, you can go from being one to the other — or be anything in between. Anything goes with members of this generation who insist on being the sole architects of their own private identities.
In fact, it’s Gen Z who have taught me to finally accept and be the woman I am, and “just enjoy it and stop worrying about the labels”.
But I’ll end this essay with a reminder: this freedom did not just arrive overnight, out of the blue. The struggles minor and major and the intellectual work of the elders — millennials, Gen X, the Samanthas of this world — cleared this path for you.
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Related articles:
Confessions of an awkward woman
So I’m an INTJ woman…what now?
The vein on my arm and the unconscious need to be “ladylike”
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Picture credit: Marlene Dietrich, pioneer of androgynous dressing in Hollywood, in “Morocco” (1930)
(Paramount Pictures, Josef von Sternberg, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)