63 3 The Carnal Feminine: Consuming Representations of Womanhood in a Contemporary Media Text Lorna Stevens and Pauline Maclaran INTRODUCTION his chapter is derived from a prior study we conducted that explored women’s identiication with carnality and nature in contemporary televi- sion advertisements. To explore this identiication, we drew on the age-old social and cultural underpinnings of this association in order to reveal and begin to understand what we argued was the ubiquitous conlation of womanhood with the body in Western media texts. Furthermore, we argued that media texts such as advertisements served as myth carriers that reinforced deep-seated cultural meanings and that these were indelibly imprinted on our collective cultural psyches. (For a more detailed discus- sion of the carnal feminine, refer to our earlier study: Stevens & Maclaran, 2008.) In the earlier study we debated whether or not we should be con- cerned about the all-pervasive “carnal feminine” in our culture, viewing it as an age-old discrimination against women (Paglia, 1992) or embracing it as symptomatic of a positive, postmodern “return to the body” in cul- tural studies and women’s studies. his latter perspective arguably serves to validate women’s bodies and thereby women’s lives (Davis, 1997). Building from the primary study, we now turn our attention to a difer- ent kind of media text: the ilm Sex and the City and its much-anticipated Au: pls add to ref list Y116144.indb 63 11/22/11 11:56 AM