Ordinary women supply steam for 'Sex'
By Ann Hornaday
Washington Post
"Sex: Female," a new show that airs on the Oxygen network (times vary; check daily listings), owes its life to "Sex in the City" and the rest of HBO's libidinous weekend stable. But this hourlong documentary is different in a crucial way. Rather than Sarah Jessica Parker or Kim Cattrall or a bevy of silicone-enhanced strippers imparting too much information about their sex lives, "Sex: Female" features ordinary women talking about their sexuality, from their earliest experiences to the inevitable denouement of middle age and beyond.
Young, old, fat, thin, middle-class, working-class, gay, straight, white, black: The stars of "Sex: Female" are a rambunctious, polyphonic, funny, sometimes wistful group, their confessions often reminiscent of 1960s consciousness-raising sessions.
There's a woman whose husband cheated on her and who has come to dread sex; a young lesbian who cruises for babes at a gay pride march; two alarmingly knowing teenagers who go "boy-scoping" in a New York park; women who proudly show off their mechanical sexual devices. Virtually no sexual practice is off-limits, no words go unspoken, no taboo left un-booed.
Kolker and Alvarez threw a wide net while casting "Sex: Female," and many of their best subjects were referred by friends and relatives. "You'd ask someone, 'Tell me someone who'd be good at talking about sex on camera' and they'd go, 'Oh, my friend,' " recalls Kolker.
"Or 'My college roommate, she slept with everybody,' " says Alvarez. At one point, the team's associate producer visited Memphis, Tenn., and "went on the air during drive time on this radio show and said, 'We're looking for couples who don't have good sex.' " About half a dozen couples phoned in, and two made it into the film.
"Sex: Female" looks at sex from a mostly positive angle — there are no discussions of sexually transmitted diseases, abortion or sexual violence in the film — but the dark side of the sexual revolution hangs over many of the interviews like a barely visible shadow. "We discovered a couple of things," says Alvarez. "One was the age difference. Older women tended to be more libertine than the younger ones. One question we always asked was 'How many lovers have you had?' And a lot of women who came of age in the '60s were in the high double digits. The other ones were, like, four." (Later, Alvarez says that another big discovery was "that vibrators are much more rampant in America than I'd previously thought.")
The team also found that sexual relationships followed a typical arc. "When we started putting (the film) together we started to see that, yeah, to some degree it's a cliche with relationships, that you have really hot sex at the beginning and then it gradually tapers off, then all you do is hold hands at the end and walk into the sunset. In point of fact, that's exactly what's happening," said Kolker.
The filmmakers say the fading of sexual desire in "Sex: Female" may come as a comfort to many. "The image that's out there is that everybody's having great sex," says Kolker. "And why aren't you? And if it's not 'Why aren't you?' you're going, 'Gee, I'm not having sex as good as everybody else.' "
