June 1, 2008

I went to see the Sex and the City movie tonight (the picture is a very blurry representation of my ticket stub).

I discovered Sex and the City sometime in my early twenties, when Bravo aired episodes really late on Friday and Saturday nights. Since that time I've managed to collect the entire series on DVD, so I guess I qualify as a fan of the series.

I've been thinking about why I enjoy the series so much. It's definitely not because I'm a fashion diva obsessed with Chanel and Manolo Blahniks - far from it. I have a hard time believing that a freelance sex columnist makes enough money to keep herself outfitted head-to-toe in designer labels. And I pretty sure that life in New York, while wonderful I'm sure, is very little like what is portrayed on the show.

Looking back, I realized that I started watching the show at a time in my life when I thoroughly believed all men were assholes (bad breakup). I had never seen a television series that depicted not only one but four strong, single, female characters. I won't go as far as to say that Sex and the City helped heal me or anything so dramatic, but the strong and funny portrayal of 4 intelligent single women did help empower me to a small degree. I have to admit that I can see aspects of myself in all of the four lead characters, however improbable the series may have been.

I once read a summary (that I'm pretty sure was written by a man) of the entire series of Sex and the City that read "This stupid, fluffy, and sometimes stale "comedy" with the shelf life of an open bag of chips on a rainy day made a heroine out of a neurotic, skinny shrieker-monkey who had bad affairs for reasons inexplicable to her three mismatched friends, Slutty, Prissy, and Bossy." Yes, both the series and the movie were stupid, fluffy, and stale at times but it contained a charm all its own and an ability to connect with millions of women that few Hollywood productions will be able to reproduce.