This Valentines Day, indulge her fantasies… SEX AND THE CITY: THE COMPLETE SERIES
I found this to be an educational advertisement, as apparently women’s fantasies primarily revolve around behaving in a totally conventional manner while presenting a falsely adventurous front to the world.
Sex in the City was rather like a hopelessly inept porn movie, where at the last moment, the clothes stay on and no one except the cautionary figure out of the traditional morality tale actually does anything but have missionary-style sex with the boyfriend. Thus, Charlotte and Miranda flirt with the idea of having threesomes but don’t, Carrie can’t have a fling without attempting to turn the mystified guy into a fixture and the eternal transgressor, Samantha, is punished with betrayal and cancer. Charlotte, we are given to understand, can’t even bear to give blow jobs, and Miranda, her inexplicable affairs notwithstanding, is about as sexually intriguing as a legal brief on import tax.
There are other fantasies, too, from the Beast’s inevitable taming in the end to the idea that a man will be so enraptured with a woman that he will leap from his younger, prettier new lover’s bed to rush to her side should she beckon. And then, there was the biggest fantasy of all… that four (presumably) attractive women whose primary connection was social would stay friends through thick and thin.
This was TV for the F/F – Friends Forever – crowd. What’s mystifying isn’t its popularity since escapist fantasy has always been popular, whether it is set in Manhattan or a Galaxy Far Far Away. What is mystifying is how anyone could take it seriously as a cultural icon, a guide to personal behavior or a realistic representation of modern American women.