Doc reveals attitudes toward sex, women

With the number of Sex And The City women in today's society, it's obvious men aren't the only ones with sex on their minds.

But have those women given up on finding a soul mate?

Today, women as sexual conquerors have become the norm. Everywhere you look women are exhibiting their sexuality: in books, television shows, in the movies and even in the workplace.

Though the Sex And The City woman has made sex a big part of her life, TV journalist and filmmaker Francine Pelletier says most women have not divorced love from sex.

"Most women are romantics and that hasn't changed. Even when they're taking bets with their friends in a bar about getting this guy at the end of the night ... at the end of it all, they're still looking for the right guy," says Pelletier, writer and director of Sex, Truth And Videotape, a six-part documentary series about women and sex.

Pelletier takes a detailed look into the most visible change in women's lives in the last 50 years, attitudes toward women and sex.

In each episode, six women tell it like it is, using their own experiences to help support opinions on various aspects of sex, love and lust.

"Over the past decades, there have been myriad signs of a cultural revolution in terms of female sexuality," Pelletier says. "But I realized that there hadn't actually been any sustained or serious look at the subject. Is all the hype about women and their newfound sexual freedom for real? No."

The filmmaker's biggest revelation was that women are still unhappy with themselves and their self-image, so they use sex to settle scores with themselves.

"They're under tremendous pressure to conform to a certain model, which is unattainable in 90 per cent of the cases amongst ordinary women and so they're uncomfortable with their bodies and that has a direct influence on their sex lives," she says.

Sandy Garcia/Metro Toronto