What do I think of Sex and the City?

So, for any of you who have been at my husband's and my Cinema Squared site, you have read how much I love Sex and the City the television series and how much the movie let me down. Moreover, you read a cryptic one liner about the "issues" I have with Sex and the City as a whole. I told you... it was complicated.

Let me elaborate.

Before SATC aired in 1998, there was very little on television for women, about women. There was certainly nothing like it when it came to female friendships and female sexuality. On television and in movies, women were sex objects and the butt of sexual jokes and conquests, but rarely if ever did we get to see women discuss sex and make men their own sexual playthings. That all changed with SATC. Suddenly, we had 30 minutes every week devoted entirely to what these particular women were thinking, feeling, and wanting.

Now the complications... often what these women wanted was defined as what men wanted. Ariel Levy astutely points out in her book Female Chauvinist Pigs that Carrie, "usually 'couldn't help but wonder' what was going on in the head of the man she was seeing, and rarely evaluated her own happiness as such." She refers to one specific episode when Carrie says, "I actually catch myself posing... (around her love interest)... its so exhausting." Even though Levy is completely right here, that the women are too often defined or happy by what men think and want, I admire that the show illuminated what many women find themselves agonizing over. To be blunt, I realize it's bogus bullshit to define my worth through male gaze, but yet, Carrie's admission is honest. I, too, have exhausted myself "posing" and wondering what I look like in various forms and acts throughtout a day. I think SATC empowered women by allowing them to see the nonsense they perpetuate.

Another issue for Levy, and one I agree can be problematic--and it's far more problematic in the movie version--is the commodification of women and stuff in general. Sex and the City definitely affords women power through material goods. They acquire happiness and attention not through their thoughts and relationships sometimes as much as through shoes, labels, bags, etc. This is the conundrum that is current womanhood. The only access to power in our current culture is through sex object (either as sex barbie or as designer model) and in our zeal to assauge some sort of keys to the throne for ourselves, we have jumped in bed with our own worst enemy... the unachievable, perfect, materialistic Mattel doll.

Levy's point that SATC blurs the lines of what is male and what is female by assigning the females terms of maleness, especially Samantha who "fucks like a man,' complicates matters. To seize power, the women have to be seen more like a man, and even more problematic is that if we, women, use sex as a tool to access power, we ultimately lose power, for sex is precisely what perpetuates male authority and entitlement. The sex we use is at the hands of the men who make it a commodity. They ultimately decide if its "worth having."

For all the problems that I could analyze in SATC, ultimately I keep coming back to one, very important positive that allows it to remain one of my all time favorite shows. Its about women. Its about women who are not so perfect. Its about women who make mistakes, women who focus on the wrong things sometimes, and its about women who all too often mirror what they think men would want them to be... BUT and its a huge, but, ladies and gentlemen, these women are real and they try to come to terms with why they want what they want. They represent women out there who are good, honest, and deserve to have their voices heard. Sure, they make mistakes and they are not the most pioneering of feminists, but they give value and voice to distinct women who search for love and have real lasting, true friendships with other women. I, frankly, had and still have not since, seen a show which has been about and for women in this way.

So, that is my "complicated" response. Ultimately, I just want stories about women. The women do not have to be feminist cookie cut-outs (although that would be cool, too) ... I just want to see decent, honest, "real" women on screen, in my home and at the cinema.