I suppose we should have seen this coming, but still: Oh my god. (Hat tip.) The headline is pure scare tactics.
‘Sex and the City’ Fiend: Show Turned Me Into Samantha
I’ve never understood the nation’s paranoid obsession with that show. Well, I do, but I also don’t. This headline really gets at it—there’s a real fear that women across the nation are going to watch the show and start getting ideas about how it’s not only okay not to get married and start having babies fairly young, but that being single and living independently is fun and exciting. Because no matter how some of us feminists wrung our hands because the characters on “Sex and the City” weren’t empowered enough (i.e., two of them openly yearned for marriage and one was somewhat disorganized and compulsive in her life choices), there’s no denying that the show did really portray single women with independent incomes as exciting, fun people. (With flaws, of course, but good lord, if every show portrayed all women as pillars of strength at all time, they’d be too damn boring to watch.) From the point of view of some of us who’ve tasted the life of independent living, we don’t see what the fuss is, but the show was wildly popular with women who went straight from the home to perhaps a college/young adulthood situation with roommates to marriage without ever having that part of your life where you answer to no one but yourself. And it’s those women that are feared might get ideas.
The woman in the story does marginally deny that “SATC” turned her into a strumpet, but then again, she’s Mormon and they put a lot of stock in the idea of free will. Setting aside some of her religious hat tipping, it’s clear we’re meant to take away the message that the show is dangerous to society because it gives the ladies ideas.
At least that’s what happened to “Lisa” (not her real name). She got hooked on “Sex and the City” when she was a 14-year-old growing up on Long Island, N.Y. It was the same year she lost her virginity. She soon graduated to ordering cosmopolitans at bars she snuck into and cheating on her boyfriend with up to seven other guys — in one week.
“When you’re that age you try to emulate people on TV. Carrie smoked, so I smoked, Samantha looked at hooking up with random people as not a big deal, so that’s what I did too,” said Lisa, now 22. “It wasn’t ‘Sex and the City’s’ fault. I love the show, but I think it made it a little easier to justify my behavior.”
It’s a twisted version of monkey see, monkey do. For some 20-something women, “Sex and the City,” which hits theaters in feature film form May 30, served as Dating 101 — lessons in how to hook up, go out and live the fabulous lives of Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Samantha (Kim Cattrall), Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), no strings attached.
“Monkey see, monkey do.” It’s hard to believe that in the 21st century, one of the battles women still have to fight is convincing people that women are not moral and mental children. It’s why it’s so fun to ask anti-choicers how much time women who get abortions should serve in their eyes, because they mostly haven’t thought of abortion as something women choose to do and therefore can be held responsible for under the law. It’s generally understood that sex and birth control are inflicted on women by devious men, and that women can be likened most to animals—if left in the wild and unmanipulated by our mental superiors, we’d happily reproduce over and over again with nary a blip of protest.
But obviously, the idea that women are somewhere between animal and human extends past the reproductive rights debate.
But the show didn’t just make Lisa a smoker and a slut! Oh no, it made her a ax-wielding she-monster of bossiness.
Lisa remembers re-enacting one particular Samantha scene in her own life: Season 3, episode 39, in which the bachelorette-for-life scrunches her face up at her latest suitor and tells him she doesn’t like the way he & tastes.
“That was something that happened to me. I used her exact words: ‘You have funky spunk,’” she said. “I knew from watching the show that it had to do with something he was eating,” so she took a cue from the script and took an ax to a certain item in his diet.
In Normal Land, this is considered a useful side effect of watching some relatively brainless entertainment. I personally think it’s great that this woman learned something from the show, and while she could have been more polite about bringing it up to her lover, it’s better that he knows. Making changes to your diet so you don’t taste bad is no more emasculating than eating Beano so you don’t fart all the time. I’ve heard other stories about people getting educated by random bits on the show, and I think it’s great. But since it was mostly women and it was mostly about sex…..
But the next part clues you into the fact that Lisa has a lot more problems than her TV-viewing habits.
Lisa left her “Samantha” ways behind at 19, when she moved to Utah, became a Mormon, married a man within the church and gave birth to two children. For the first year of her marriage, her husband forbade her to watch “Sex and the City” for fear that it would lure her back to her habits of sex, drugs and one-too-many cosmos.
“I had to sell my DVDs on eBay,” she said. “But now it’s OK. It took a while to get here.”
Like Kyso says, clearly she had really deep problems that caused her to sleep around looking for meaning and then to marry young and convert to Mormonism in a desperate grab for meaning. This is a story about a broken soul without direction being taken advantage of by a sexist pig under the guise of religion.
I’m still impressed that the writer seems to think that this is the most normal thing in the world—having a husband who has power to forbid TV viewing and control your access to the media and probably to the outside world—but that telling a guy to do something minor to improve the bedroom experience for you is scandalous ax-wielding.
I also think a lot of the paranoia about this show and its popularity even with women who’ve never tasted the urban single life portrayed is that the women on it both talk frankly about sex and have a lot of laughs. The sense that women watching the show and howling over some of the raunchy jokes are having a laugh at men’s expense (not really, but you know, paranoia is the key here) feeds a lot of animosity towards it.
60 Responses to “Monkey see, monkey do”
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It woulda been a whole lot cooler if she turned into Kimmy, one of the female members of Omar’s stick-up crew from The Wire, and then settled down to become Kima. Fucking white people.
Anybody who read Scruples in the 80s (okay, okay - I was 14!) knows that Sex in the City wasn’t anything new to begin with!
Except that “Lisa” WAS A CHILD. She was 14 and sneaking into bars. What the fuck? Where were her parents?!!11! Pearl clutching aside, when I was 14 neither I nor anyone I knew was going to bars.
You should be drinking at home with your friends when your folks are out of town. And my overly youthful good looks meant I couldn’t get anywhere near procuring alcohol until I went to college and could be mistaken for a Pali High girl.
So, “Lisa” at 14 is out drinking and having random sex. At 19, she moves to Utah and becomes a slave-wife–>she’s still a teen!
At what point was this “Lisa” a moral and legal adult? Is she making any responsible decisions for herself yet? The women of SATC are all adults, living independently and supporting themselves. They may make the decision to be irresponsible at times, but they have agency.
I fail to see how “Lisa” even comes close to imitating their lives. She may have quoted Samantha, but she’s never been in Samantha’s situation. Simply drinking a cosmo and having sex isn’t it. Samantha chooses to have meaningless sex and she doesn’t regret it b/c it’s her choice. And she’s old enough to understand the choices and to face any consequences.
So why is “Lisa” being used as a cautionary tale? Her inattentive parents should have just V-chipped her. Millions of people watched that show–couldn’t idiot author find an adult to pooh-pooh?
Or were the adult SATC fans too much like the SATC women and refuse to take her shit and pearl clutching.
Bummer. In moderation.
And what is up with SJP. She doesn’t even look like SJP anymore. That last nose job was a bad idea. It’s perfectly straight now, but it makes her face too long.
She’d look better with her bob. And her old nose(s).
Wow, you make SaTC sound like some kind of feminist manifesto. I guess it is, in this context, but Jesus God is it ever irritating to watch these intensely shallow women shop around for rich husbands. It may be elevating the Jebus crowd to a sort of proto-feminism, but it seems to have dragged the urban, college-educated set back into the 1950s.
Funny,I’ve been watching the Simpsons nearly half my life and I have yet to wear my hair in a tower of blue,marry an alcoholic and give birth to three yellow-skinned children.And season after season of the Sopranos,and still I haven’t killed anyone!What’s wrong with me?
I’m no huge fan of SATC, but I did enjoy that it portrayed women’s lives as interesting and exciting, and women’s friendships as strong and vital (and more important than boyfriends, at times). And I liked that it could joke about sex.
It makes me sad that that’s so threatening to people.
Sigh.
I used to hang with a girl gang who were single party animals with independent incomes. TBH, we had a rockin’ good time of it. (They all also loved Sex and the City, lol.) They’ve pretty much all settled down now (except for the yearly trip to Dewey Beach, about which the less is said, the better, prolly–I went last year and whooooooo!). But I do think there is something to the “sowing your wild oats” time period of young adulthood–of course historically it’s always been something for MEN, but really, it’s something very beneficial for both men AND women–with caveats.
(1) You’re doing it because you find it fun, not because all your friends are, or because you think you’ll find a spouse and babies this way because REALLY that’s what you want at the most basic level.
(2) You do it only with other people who are in the same frame of mind, NOT while ALSO maintaining romantic relationships with people who are looking for a serious committed situation.
(3) You ALWAYS practice safe sex. Rinse, repeat!
(4) You are sure that you really ARE okay with that lifestyle–that you’re not suppressing years of societal conditioning that later in life, if you find yourself unsatisfied with a settled-down role or yours doesn’t end up working out for you for whatever reason, will cause you to have a “revelation” that you were a “slut” and that your “sluttiness” is what has cursed you to failure in life and love. (see also: Dawn Eden)
Oddly, hanging out with my grandkids, I find myself becoming Sponge Bob . . .
My wife always enjoyed that show, as did I. She has a group of friends like that. They were all young & single together and still get together about once a week to laugh, drink & talk about us (the husbands & boyfriends - at least that’s what she tells me they do ;->). I think it’s great. I wish I had known them all at that time. They are still a lot of fun, but the stories from those days would make Samantha blush.
Let me tell you, it was a shock the other morning when I started having a shower and the water was a little cold at first. Turned me into a girl! Luckily the hot water came on soon enough and I turned back. Guess I shouldn’t be watching so much Ranma 1/2.
So, the short version of that story is that a young girl watched Sex in the City and ended up losing any self-empowerment she had and married at 19 to a religious fundamentalist who controls everything about her down to the tv shows she watches to make sure she doesn’t get any silly ideas her female brain couldn’t handle?
I agree that that sounds like a horrific consequence to watch SATC, and I would want to keep young women from such a fate, but I don’t understand what the wingers are so upset about. Sounds like it turned out perfect to them.
The only character I liked was Miranda, because unlike the other three she was never shallow or incapable. When I found out Cynthia Nixon was a lesbian IRL I wondered if that said something about het women.
How do I make it sound like a feminist manifesto? I call it brainless entertainment. Fucking, learn to read.
I also love the way the hand-wringers write that these women just drink and sleep around “no strings attached.” People get pregnant, and STDs and heartbroken on the show, which I imagine as the drawbacks of an independent life with some casual sex. And who lets their 14-year-old watch SitC? I don’t think my 16-year-old sister is allowed to watch even the TBS sanitized version.
Fucking, learn to read.
Wait, does that mean…
a.) The commenter’s name is Fucking, and he should learn to read
b.) You’re fucking right now, so you don’t have time to explain why he’s wrong
(hides grammar smirk)
“When I found out Cynthia Nixon was a lesbian IRL I wondered if that said something about het women.”
Wait, what?
Camille Paglia has some comments about SATC in the May 23 issue of Entertainment Weekly:
“Over time, the show really turned into an accurate anthropological chronicle of the bittersweet dilemma faced by the modern career woman. For every big career gain she makes, there’s a trade-off in her personal life,” Paglia says. Really? That’s not what I picked up from the show.
She continues, “I can see why many older, second-wave feminists were highly critical of Sex and the City in the way it showed women always obsessing about men. But guess what? Wake up, that’s the truth! Most young women are naturally interested in men. Girls together in groups are constantly talking about their relationships. That’s what girlfriends are for!”
“Constantly,” Camille? Really? Huh. Funny, my friends and I—well, first off, we’re women, not “girls.” And much of the time, my friends have not been in relationships, and yet they manage to get through the day without having all their conversations being about searching for a man. We must all be freaks, because Camille Paglia knows the truth. (Pshaw!)
By the way, in a bit of “full circle” coincidence, the complete Square Pegs series DVD comes out this week. It’s too bad Amy Linker has been forgotten about as much as that other dude from the cinematic version of Weird Science.
Anecdote vs. self-serving generalization steel cage match! BEGIN!
I was also one that totally identified with Miranda (even more so now that Cynthia Nixon has come out) given her career focus, and her independence. Not to mention I adored the minimalism of her apartment.
But yes, when SaTC came out, it was one of the few things that showed strong women that were independent, unashamedly sexual, and assertive. Sure, it was also brainless and had some huge problems, including it’s focus on “men, Men, MEN!!! ZOMG MENNNN!!!” but it was fun, and it really filled a niche.
For those of us for whom an urban single (and by single I mean the wider definition, in terms of maybe having a partner, but not cohabiting) independent lifestyle, it provided a nice, if distorted, mirror of what we were experiencing. For those that did high-school, college-dorm, marriage in high speed succession, it provided an escape and allowed them to fantasise about what might have been.
I think we need to celebrate SaTC for where it was at a historical moment, and what it provided for us. Course, we also need to do so pragmatically, as there were a LOT of problems with the show, as I said above.
But this ‘Lisa’ chick … woah … sister has some issues. Personally I’m not surprised she dived into Mormonism with a domineering husband (/father). Looks like she was latching on to whatever could tell her what to do, and how to live her life. If it hadn’t been SaTC, it would have been something else, which her later pod-person approach to Mormonism kinda shows. That said, what she did was kinda the antithesis of any character on the show, so I think that speaks not to SaTC so much, but more to just her, and how little critical thinking is taught in our culture.
Mind you, I’m not sure she’s all that exceptional, as I’m pretty sure she’s the kind of person that ends up in dogmatic religions all the time: they mean you don’t have to think for yourself. Oh, and get to feel superior to everyone else.
Even assuming this kind of stupid whinging about media influence had useful validity (and as everybody points out, that wouldn’t be with a sob story about an adolescent with absent parents and — apparently — a deep need for supervision) I gotta say SATC has to be way down the list. After you’ve purged Jackass, Fox News and all of pro wrestling, come back and we’ll talk.
HA, nicely done, norbizness.
Let me tell you, it was a shock the other morning when I started having a shower and the water was a little cold at first. Turned me into a girl! Luckily the hot water came on soon enough and I turned back. Guess I shouldn’t be watching so much Ranma 1/2.
Epic, epic win. You may collect your prize of 1 Internet.
When you’re getting a constant drumbeat from that national media that you’re ugly, it’s going to affect you. It clearly hasn’t affected her enough to make her do anything drastic, but it must be like having water dripped on you for hours (is it PC to still call it Chinese water torture?) You resist as long as you can, but it’s going to get to you eventually.
Of course, I can hear the subtext of what all the guys calling her ugly really is: “Too Jewish.”
Lisa KS: Dewey shout out! I know what you mean. Talk about the swinging single life…I still spend summers down there. With no regrets! It’s like shooting fish in a barrel. It’s even better when you get to kick the dude out cause your house has a “no drag-backs” rule.
And, FWIW, I’ve never had cable, so I’ve never watched SatC, unless it was at somebody else’s house by accident. How do they explain me?
Okay, lets put on our thinking caps here. Before there were computer games and violent movies, people glommed on to bible stuff as a scaffolding for sociopathic behavior. Had this 14 year old girl not glommed onto Sex in the City, or had she lived before TV, which biblical woman would she have obsessed about/tried to emulate in order to escape boredom and/or sexual repression?
Wait, what?
Basically what Sarah in Chi said. The other women seemed to define themselves by their relationships with men. Miranda had them, but her life chugged along just fine either way.
Norbizness wins all threads today!
“Had this 14 year old girl not glommed onto Sex in the City, or had she lived before TV, which biblical woman would she have obsessed about/tried to emulate in order to escape boredom and/or sexual repression?”
Tamar?
In Kathleen Turner’s immortal words, after a certain age women have to choose between making their ass look good or their face. (Gaining a little weight takes the wrinkles out of your face; losing a little weight makes your butt look better in jeans.) SJP chose her butt and worked on toning her body.
I had a monster crush on sjp when Square Pegs was on.
the show was wildly popular with women who went straight from the home to perhaps a college/young adulthood situation with roommates to marriage without ever having that part of your life where you answer to no one but yourself. And it’s those women that are feared might get ideas.
Thanks for finally putting into words what has always struck me about SATC.
Every time I go back down south, some female relative corners me, pumps me for details about my big fancy NYC life (which is only big and fancy in the most marginal of ways), and concludes the interrogation with something like, “Oh, wow, you’re just like Sex And The City! I wish I could come visit you in New York and we could go out and do all kind of crazy stuff like the girls on that show…” To a woman, all of them married young, had a lot of children right away, and have never so much as lived away from their parents and/or husbands.
On the other hand, my friends and I are pretty neutral on it.
“Over time, the show really turned into an accurate anthropological chronicle of the bittersweet dilemma faced by the modern career woman. For every big career gain she makes, there’s a trade-off in her personal life,” Paglia says.
That doesn’t sound like SATC. Maybe she accidentally watched an episode of Grey’s Anatomy instead?
IT’S. A. SHOW. The fuck?!
Of course, I can hear the subtext of what all the guys calling her ugly really is: “Too Jewish.”
Bingo. I’m kind of fascinated by the fact that so many men are repulsed by SJP. That’s a highly likely explanation as to why.
Matthew, you made me laugh long and loud. I was just watching Ranma last night and had such a mental image.
When I was 14, trying to emulate Doctor Who (Tom Baker version) helped me break through my introversion and stop caring if people thought I was weird. 14 y.o. pick odd role models. But why write an article about *one* girl who regrets her behavior and blame it on the show? How about blame for the bars that served a child cosmopolitans?
(3) You ALWAYS practice safe sex. Rinse, repeat!
You should really use a new one each time. Just rinsing it out is not enough.
I didn’t want to imply, by the way, that the show’s only fans were women fantasizing about big city single life. I know women who have lived it, like me, who like the show, and men who like it, too. Its main appeal is it’s funny and raunchy. But no one worries about the influence on “liberated” women and men.
As a man I was always taken with the fact that the show didn’t put Go Girlz! halos over the main characters. They often made appalling choices or did or said stupid things, and then they often handled those mistakes (or brand-new situations) badly but this was never a cheap contrivance to make them or confirm them as Bad People.
The one that sticks out in my mind is where Carrie is out at the bf’s cabin and Big drives out, drunk, to talk to her. A gross infringement of territoriality, an asshole move on Big’s part . (And did Carrie want it to happen by telling him where she’d be and why? Who knows, but fun to wonder, which is part of the appeal of the show.) Where it got amusingly Real is that the next day she pisses all over the bf for being insufficiently hospitable to somebody important to her! Projection and transference written all over her. In many other shows that would be the cue to hang the Bitch sign on her but in SATC it was simply horrid behaviour from a usually decent person.
Nuance darlings, that is one of the reasons, thus far unmentioned, that the wingers and the — wingy and whingy — really hate the show.
Bingo. I remember reading some blog post somewhere about SJP as the archetypal “skinny white bitch” and I was like, uh, no.
Bah, SATC grates on me so much. I watched the whole series in a marathon in early 2004 and I’m still not entirely sure why.
Um, she could just as easily have emulated Charlotte.
OK, so now the TV show “Sex and the City” is officially considered threatening by our nation’s pathetic excuses for journalists?
Damn.
I mean, in my book, Camille Paglia can do no right, but I’m always amazed when other journalists are just as dishonest and clueless as she is.
I don’t think the show turned her into a sex maniac, but I’m sure it was more influential to her since she was only 14 when she started watching it. SATC cover topics that above a 14 year olds maturity level. That fact her parents let her watch it is more of a symptom that things were not good in her home, than the cause of her behavior.
Nuance darlings, that is one of the reasons, thus far unmentioned, that the wingers and the — wingy and whingy — really hate the show.
Yeah, that’s another reason I have always liked the show. The writing is simply better than a lot of other shows. The characters are actually kind of 3D.
No worries, Amanda — I didn’t get that you were implying that, at all.
I like the show, myself, for what it is — fluffy fun entertainment. I am also LOVING the fact that one of my best male friends confessed that he really wants to see the movie and wanted to know if I would tag along.
My female relatives see it as some kind of fantasy world they pine for but could never actually inhabit (and I’m not talking about the Manolos and such, which I certainly don’t have).
It’s kind of like if, when I was a nerdy teenager stuck in rural Louisiana, a crewmember of the Starship Enterprise had turned up at a family reunion. Except weirder because big city independent womanhood actually exists, and is not even really that much of an “achievement”.
When I was 14, trying to emulate Doctor Who (Tom Baker version) helped me break through my introversion and stop caring if people thought I was weird
Doctor Who is a pretty cool idol for a young’un to have, if a bit out there.
On a slightly related note, ISTR reading about an “ex-gay” leader who claimed that Dark Shadows turned him into a homosexual. Conservatives are weird.
“I had a monster crush on sjp when Square Pegs was on.”
Hector, you’re not the only one. ::sigh:: I >>like
Uh, people, reread the letter–it’s a put on. It reminds me of the letters the original Dear Abby used to get that she’d print and then tear apart for their obvious contrivances.
I say one dumbass moronmon wrote this as some kind of morals life lesson and it’s now making the rounds.
I think the show’s biggest and most annoying influence on popular culture was the insufferable SaTC ring tone!
All in all, I never really watched the show. But I doubt that behavior portrayed on TV would be enough to drive any sane person to emulate it. Although actually, my brother did set his leg on fire while playing “McGuyver” once… but he was a very young kid.
SJP was on Square Pegs??? Who knew? I think she is unattractive in a non-Jewish way.
I feel like i’m the only mo who didn’t like the show.
Brian the dog: “So, this is about three hookers and their mother?”
I could never relate to the show. Those characters spend more on a pair of shoes than I do on rent.
Having said that, I can see why it’s mindless fun for a lot of people.
I’ve seen episodes and I understand why it was a popular show and a highly regarded show, too.
Couldn’t ever get into it myself, though. I find SJP’s character to be extremely annoying, and I just can’t relate to all this urban put on in the first place.
Then again, what can you expect from someone planning a compass rose tattoo composed of kayaks and a chainring? Who caught shit from her new yawker fellow travelers for navigating by the sun in lower Manhattan?
Not my speed, but cool enough for those who got onto it.
You want to know the only thing that really, really bugs me about SATC? It’s not about feminism, not about working class values (they spend so much on shoes!), not about the cliches it inspired.
WTF is with all that voice-over? I mean I get it, each episode centers around the column Carrie happens to be working on, and the voice-over weaves the various strains of the narrative together and shows how and why they are relevant to the central theme. But:
A) well made TV should not need a crutch like voice-over to accomplish any of that (and in all other respects, SATC is well made TV), and
B) it is just. so. contrived. Every time the voice over starts in towards the end of an episode, I just think OK, And Here’s The Moral Of This Week’s Story. Which is dumb. I’m not 6. I don’t need all entertainment to be structured like the Brady Bunch.
OK, that is all you’re going to get from me on deeper analyses of Sex and the City. Just like the networks have their versions edited to take out the sex, nudity, and swearing, I want to have my own version edited to take out the narrative abomination that is voice over.
I remember during my high school days that watching Sex and the City was a *big* thing among the “popular” and very preppy female students. Especially the ones in my A.P. classes, who bragged about being accepted into either one of the Seven Sisters colleges or an Ivy League university. As I look back now, I’m actually proud of the fact that many of them said, “God! I can’t wait to get a career like those women and just have loads of fun with my single friends in a big city, and have lots of great sex!” as they gossiped about the show. And I also saw this attitude expressed among a lot of the young women in my college dorm(s). So, yeah…I think it inspired a lot of young women in my generation to think that it’s okay to strive for life-goals, other than wifedom, mommyhood-in-the-suburbs, financial dependency on a man, and domesticity. Which is definitely why I understand wingnuts have their collective tighty-whities and panies in a bunch….we wimminfolk are sculpting our own destinies and striving for goals that don’t involve a Stepford lifestyle. Witchcraft!
Aside from Miranda the corporate lawyer, I don’t think you have to have an Ivy League education to do any of the things the women on SATC do.
I hate the idea that the “privilege” of being an independent woman is granted only to the very wealthy. Because it’s just not true. Granted I don’t own any Jimmy Choos, am lucky to eat in one fancy restaurant or splurge on one spa treatment per year (if even), live in Brooklyn and have a roommate, and generally get to go to fancy parties and such as someone’s ‘plus one’ rather than because I’m some kind of VIP. But I have a every bit as much fun as these fictional women are depicted having (without any pressure to settle down), and I hold a mere B.A. from an obscure public school.
It really bugs me the way that this show conflates class, money, and consumerism with ‘independence’ for women. Wait, didn’t I just say I wasn’t going to delve deeper into Sex and the City?
Meh. Neither have done much for me, so I’m working on making lots of money instead. I’m looking forward to a time when this dichotomy is as much a problem to future women as it is for men now.
Ugh, I know, and the freaking stupid puns and name-dropping that go along with it. I found Carrie so abominably whiny that I would cringe when the inevitable column question showed up, particularly in the later seasons. And then the show would frequently wrap up with something like “But sometimes in New York, you’ve got to carry an umbrella when it’s raining out.”
It was better (and, I think, raunchier) in the earlier seasons. By the time Charlotte married her first husband it was going downhill.
Aaaah, but you do need to have that education and those connections and Daddy’s friends to get the jobs that Samantha and Carrie have.Repeat after me: “Legacy admissions rule the world.” Repeat.
but you do need to have that education and those connections and Daddy’s friends to get the jobs that Samantha and Carrie have.
Not really… I know people in both of their fields who certainly don’t.
Though my point was more that simply don’t have to have an Ivy league education and a boatload of family connections to have an independent life in a big city with a cool job.
“Sleeping around” at age 14 isn’t always really deep problems and a broken soul. Sometimes it’s just figuring out the sex and attractiveness thing.
Note that they said
“Cheating on”? Or just having sex with seven men in one week, without her bf’s “consent”?
The whole “women’s sexuality is super-meaningful and tied up with LUUURRRRVVEEE and can’t be trifled with and they need one steady partner” is a meme that feeds into the virginity at marriage craze. Women are supposed to have sex only with really emotionally important men, unless they’re broken-ass sluts, right? Wrong.
Someone probably “explained” to her that she was sleeping around because she had problems. Not because she was curious and sexual, like teen guys. And she bought it.
In short, a sexist pig claimed her sexuality for her. Please don’t do the same.
BTW, many months ago, I asked my husband which of the four SATC women I was most like, and he said, without hesitation, “Samantha.” Without rancor or weirdness or judgment.