When Glamour asked me to write an article about sexual empowerment, my first thought was, Oh, holy God—I have no idea. I mean, I have had some really bad sex in my life. Mostly because the cultural message I received as I grew up, both explicitly and implicitly, was that sex was a pleasure and prerogative reserved for men. I crafted my bedroom behavior around what I had seen women do on television: lots of excessive moaning and hair tossing but very little personal satisfaction.
Funny, then, that my first big TV job was on a show called Masters of Sex. My character, Libby Masters, began the series entirely under her husband’s thumb—she literally called him Daddy. He didn’t view her as a sexual creature at all. Libby goes on to have an emotional and physical affair and, through that experience, begins the journey toward self-discovery. At the end of season four, we find her loudly fucking her new boyfriend in the back of a VW van right before telling him she’s moving to California to pursue her dream of going to law school. “But I love you!” he says. Her response? “I’m no longer organizing my life around a man.”
At first blush, my newest character, Simone in Sweetbitter (Starz’s adaptation of Stephanie Danler’s best-selling 2016 novel), begins where Libby left off. As a seasoned waitress at an iconic modern-day New York City restaurant, Simone appears to be living a life of bohemian splendor. Instead of finding a man to marry her and whisk her away to a big house in Connecticut, she’s chosen a life of poetry and art, good food, and better wine. She appears to be a master of the sensual and therefore, we assume, the sexual. But as you dig deeper, it becomes increasingly clear that Simone uses the people around her—especially Jake, a much younger coworker with whom she shares a murky sexual history—to reinforce the mysterious, alluring image she’s built for herself. If Libby Masters found freedom from her “safe” life through her sexuality, Simone longs to find a sense of control with hers, by seducing everyone but never letting anyone get close.
I relate to both Libby and Simone; they are complex, flawed, interesting women. But they’re also a bit problematic. Why is it that, in order for a female character to appear empowered, she must always choose herself over a relationship? Why can’t there be room for stories about empowered heterosexual women who also experience love and intimacy with a man? And during this moment of cultural upheaval, how do we crack the whole thing open to make more room for all kinds of sexual narratives? All kinds of pleasures and preferences, all kinds of bodies?
The truth is, I don’t know what makes a sexually empowered woman, and I would be a little suspicious of anyone who can outline it in under 800 words. What I do believe is that sexuality and empowerment have to be defined by each of us, on our own terms. No one else, on TV or elsewhere, has the power to tell us what good sex feels or looks like.
I remember, in one of my first naked scenes as Libby Masters, I had to drop my robe and stare at my bare body in a bathroom mirror. All alone. No co-star there to sexualize the moment, no moaning, no hair tossing. Just me and my body and the mirror. Sweating about it beforehand, I made some comment to my co-star Lizzy Caplan about how I wished I had hit the gym a little harder, maybe laid off the breakfast burritos. She replied, “Oh, please. There’s never, ever enough time to prepare for a naked scene.” She was right: No matter what I did, I was never going to feel “perfect” enough for TV nakedness, for TV “sexiness.” I would have to be good enough exactly as I was. When I rewatch the scene now, it seems as if Libby is seeing herself for the first time, and in many ways I was too. Oh, I thought, as the robe hit the floor, we are all just bodies. How fun.
Caitlin FitzGerald is a New York City–based actress. Sweetbitter premieres on Starz this month. This essay originally appeared in the May 2018 issue of Glamour.
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