The other day my sister was attempting to give me some worldly advice and she started referencing, as she always does, Sex and the City. My brother-in-law and I instantly started groaning. I am definitely in the minority of women in that I find Sex and the City objectionable and harmful, not to mention poorly written.
My sister always insists that “it’s only a fantasy.” I definitely see that it is a fantasy, but I do not know of any other fantasies that have such influence over the everyday actions of millions of people. As I’ve written before, Star Wars is a fantasy, but we don’t get self-help books and relationship advice books with titles like, “May the Force be With You,” whereas we do have the Sex and the City spawned major relationship advice book He’s Just Not That Into You. The danger of Sex and the City is that a clearly fantastical premise has taken up in women’s brains as a realistic portrait of the world. Fantasy is by definition not reality, yet that message has gotten lost in translation as women seek to define their lives according to Carrie Bradshaw. You can take Sex and the City themed tours of New York City, and there we can see clearly how fantasy and reality have become confused. You take a tour of a real city inhabited by real people by day, but inhabited by TV-night by egregiously over-the-top caricatures of fantastical proportions.
Let me talk about those caricatures. For all the supposedly feminist overtones of Sex and the City, it actually does a disfavor to women by holding to two stereotypical, one-dimensional views of women, as embodied by Charlotte and Samantha: the Madonna and the whore, respectively. Samantha and Charlotte are of course at opposite ends of the femininity spectrum, but they still are frustratingly narrowly defined. Samantha wants only sex, sex, sex, and doesn’t care about love. Charlotte just wants her upper-West-Side townhouse, her perfect husband, and her Ralph Lauren cocktail dresses. As I see it, the major triumph of feminism was that women could be many different things at once: professionals, mothers, athletes, nurturers, etc. Feminism says that women can be both the Madonna and the whore—they can be mothers but still use sex for power and pleasure. The writers of Sex and the City draw Samantha and Charlotte in such thin lines—neither of seem to ever grow or change much or deviate from their carefully defined character boxes.
Miranda, on the other hand, is refreshingly three-dimensional. She actually has to deal with playing the multiple roles of the modern women: the professional, the mother, the sexpot, the intellectual. She has brains, a high-powered job, and her own money, but those things come into conflict with her femininity, sexual identity, and relationships with men. Getting Miranda pregnant was the only truly daring, relevant storyline on the show, because it actually addressed the challenges of the 21st century woman.
And Carrie? Or, as my brother-in-law calls her, The Horse? The thing that bothers me about Carrie is how, for all her supposed quirkiness and supposed sexual liberation, she is actually quite conservative. She fears kissing a girl when playing spin-the-bottle and rarely, if ever, takes the initiative to ask a guy out. While she seems to have everything under control in her personal life, she has no idea about her finances. And frankly, I question her supposed writing ability. I can’t help but wonder, can you really make an entire column out of rhetorical questions?
The biggest puzzler comes when you compare what men think of Carrie/Sarah Jessica Parker and what happens on the show. The show would have us believe that men just collapse in rapture at the Manolo-clad feet of Carrie, that men just can’t get enough of her, that she is very desirable. And yet no less an authority than Maxim magazine recently named Sarah Jessica Parker the “unsexiest woman in the world.” My brother-in-law, whom I consider a very normal guy, openly calls her Horse. Women, on the other hand, love Carrie’s unorthodox looks and personal style. So what explains this disparity? I don’t have an answer for that, but I think this disparity leads to confusion for many women. If men and women have such polar opposite views of what qualifies as beautiful and desirable, then we need to, as a society, have a little confab to communicate to the other side just what we all want.
My other problem with Carrie is that she is a bit of a shrew. She nags her men, particularly Aidan. She picks over the flaws of every man she gets, but she never focuses that microscope upon herself. What if Carrie examined her own flaws with the same intensity with which she dissected Mr. Big’s or Aidan’s or Berger’s? Would her narcissism and materialism shock her? Carrie criticized Mr. Big so much for his self-involvement, but never noticed that she herself is one of the most self-involved people ever. How can she pretend to be such an astute observer of human nature when she never analyzes her own (often self-destructive) behavior?
And finally, the materialism really gets to me. The fashion on this show adds greatly to its fantasy. Who would really dress like Carrie? And who could really afford to? The show never explains how Carrie can afford to buy so many shoes, eat at so many trendy restaurants, and drink so many overpriced Cosmopolitans at overpriced bars on a surely measly writer’s salary. This is another place where the fantasy interferes dangerously with reality. Women all over America suddenly think that they need Manolo Blahnik shoes and Chanel blazers and giant flower pins. One pair of Manolo Blahniks will set you back at least $700 (at Neiman Marcus). And Carrie of course has hundreds of pairs of shoes. Not only is this materialism just plain bad in itself, but it sets a horrible example for anyone who watches the show and buys (literally) into its lifestyle. Yes, again, it’s fantasy, but I would call it “aspirational fantasy.” Women aspire to live the Carrie fantasy lifestyle. But that aspiration actually costs something.
So unlike many of my 20-something sisters, I do not take Carrie Bradshaw as one of my examples to live by. I do occasionally watch some of the TV show, and my sister did drag me along to the movie on opening night. But I watch it with an analytical eye. I of course accept full responsibility for indulging in fantasy movies/books of my own. And certainly I will at some point write about how Lord of the Rings ruined my life, albeit ruined in a very positive and romantic way. Sex and the City’s fantasy does not appeal to me because it has negative repercussions in the real world.
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