May
2008
Sex And The City Rears It’s Botoxed Head
The newspapers seem to have gone into a gurgling meltdown this week over the upcoming Sex and The City Movie. Which prompts me to rant.
Me and Sex and The City were not friends. It pissed me off. I think I only managed to watch a couple of episodes before I gave up in frustration.
Sure, it was nice to have a show that talked so openly about sex, but I just had no time for any of the female characters. I had no empathy with them, no central point of reference. These single, shoe-obsessed, cocktail drinking city women seemed exactly like the kind of Cosmopolitan chicks I gave up on years ago. They seemed horribly self-obsessed, too thin and kind of vapid. Their relationships with men were shallow and painful to watch.
So I found it increasingly frustrating when SATC become a standard media signifier for the “liberation of women’s sexuality.” Every article and TV show saw the series as a zeitgeist, something that all young women loved. The four main female characters were women we were supposed to admire.
The thing is this: I don’t live in a city. I don’t lust after high heel shoes, go on diets or drink expensive cocktails. I actually drink chardonnay and wear pyjamas to work (though not necessarily at the same time). I don’t spend hours complaining that my date was “too nice” because I’m happily married to the nicest, most wonderful man in the world. And I am perfectly sexually liberated, thank you very much.
And now it’s all back, with extra plastic surgery on top. And the media will soon be making the same statements about “post feminism” (ugh) and how it’s OK for women to have a vibrator because it was on Sex and The City. Sigh.
The other thing is this: Sarah Jessica Parker… what happened? I used to put her on my teenage lists of coolest ever girls, back when she had a big nose and starred in ditzy 80s movies like Girls Just Want To Have Fun. God I loved that movie when I was 13. It was Dirty Dancing before anyone knew who Patrick Swayze was. Sarah and Helen Hunt were just it on a stick to me and I used to dream of going on Dance TV and winning the competition and the gorgeous hunk’s heart. (Cue big dreamy girly sigh).
You know, when So You Think You Can Dance started I actually found myself thinking of that movie, musing that it was only 20 years too late for me.
You know what else? I’ve successfully turned this angry rant into a trip down memory lane. Time to go and drink some chardonnay…
