Still love the heteroSex girls

AKA: Okay, and now for a white lesbo POV...


I read GayProf's post on Sex and the City (SATC), and the post by Anxious Black Woman (whose blog is a great find--thanx GP!), and I have to respond. I liked the movie because (1) my expectations were VERY low, (2) I had no need for the movie to be able to stand on its own, and (3) I was excited to revisit the characters I have come to really enjoy. That said, I acknowledge the movie would be a complete bust for those who didn't watch the show regularly, and it really felt like a superlong version of the TV show. Nonetheless, I am not sure it is the biggest nonfeminist show, as GayProf and ABW would seem to believe. But first, a little personal SATC background...


I watched SATC with the gf. We started watching the first few seasons on DVD when we moved to the deep South and had a summer to ourselves in a new town where we knew no one. And we both really liked it, so we watched new episodes together every week on HBO. This from a couple of dykes who don't know from designer clothes, wear Birks or masculine shoes, and don't wear makeup. Honestly, the clothes looked outrageous to us most of the time...

We watched the show because we liked the women's relationships with one another, and their openness to and about sex and love. While you boys (GayProf) may be good about separating the two (sex and love), we girls know that they tend to be intertwined for most women. And some dykes, while we push for more of a sense of self and power for women in relationships, we still recognize that love relationships don't have to be stifling, degrading, or oppressive. Why? Because for many of us, our relationships aren't. (Not saying that it is a rule, or that lesbian couples are the coolest, tho of course we are!)


When you have watched the show, you know that each of the lead women characters has a set of personality flaws that are longstanding. Carrie is a little narcissistic and flaky; Charlotte is idealistic and a little naive; Samantha has trouble with emotional intimacy and sometimes makes sexual decisions that don't serve her well; and Miranda is a little too rational and emotionally unavailable. Not having this information, and not having seen their growth on some of these issues, makes the movie hard to understand and the characters hard to accept.


That said, I totally agree about the gratuitous addition of Jennifer Hudson's character to the movie. It was lame, her character had the weakest dialogue, and I wasn't sure what the point was other than to point out more vividly how much older these women, esp. Carrie, were. I also agree that there should have been a better resolution of Samantha's character. In the show, after she left her boyfriend in California to become nonmonogamous again, she would have been rapturously enjoying sex in a kickass loft somewhere in NYC. That would have made her blowing out her candles at 50--surrounded by her friends and their families--a little easier to take. (The gf disagrees, and notes that Samantha's decision to leave the bf and be on her own--and not run out for random sex--showed some of her own growth.)

I don't see the show as completely feminist or anti-feminist, really. It just simply is what it is...materialist, to be sure, and female-focused. And a good time, for those of us who just want to visit with our friends, however flawed they may be.