Lauren and Stella disagree violently about Sex and the City.

(STELLA: for the prosecution) When Sex and the City started in the UK about two years ago, I watched the press ads and the TV ads and thought, good, maybe this is it. The women’s version of what it’s really like. And hopefully funny and sassy and sexy at that. I always thought Sarah Jessica Parker was pretty good. And Kim Cattrell is definitely sexy. And then I watched it. And yawned and remembered that my hopes for TV truth are always, ALWAYS, too high. So I continued to ignore the programme and didn’t really understand why one or two of my women friends watched it - though admittedly the rest of them felt the same as I did. We just couldn’t be bothered. Then last year I spent three glorious months in New York. And when I got home I really wanted to check out the Manhattan scenery, which I figured I probably could recognise now. And I could, and I did, and the opening credits made me happy. That shiny, beautiful, smoothly sculpted Chrysler Building! But while the scenery was recognisable, the women in the show still remained complete aliens to me. And after three months in New York, I was nowhere near to understanding why - in general - American women think this programme is ground-breaking and amazing, and most British women I know think it’s a pile of old toss. (There are figures to suggest some UK women do watch - I have a sneaking suspicion they’re in their early twenties and hoping that watching it will magically bring them a sex life.) First and foremost is my astonishment that these four leading ladies are seen as empowered women. Fucking does not equal feminism. I know America had pretty Gloria Steinem while Britain had vituperative Germaine Greer (though I’d venture to suggest Germaine always had better legs), and I know that in the States post-feminism has caught on with a terrifying fervour - that evangelical backlash was just waiting to take hold, but come on! A woman getting a shag is a woman getting a shag. Yeah, you’ve really come a long way baby, now you can fuck and smoke at the same time. That is SO not what our mothers and sisters and great aunts thought they were winning for us. Sex and The City is so apolitical it hurts. The four main culprits sit around in their clothes-horse outfits (and there is no word that can be better applied to Sarah Jessica Parker’s clothes than ‘outfits’ - whose dressing up box do these ludicrous monstrosities come from??) and talk about … yep, you guessed it, men!! For God’s sake! Aren’t we past this??? It’s the twenty-first century, this is ludicrous! Fuck them, love them, talk TO men even (not that this happens in S&TC either), but can’t we just sometimes have conversations with our girlfriends??? Sadly, I’ve now seen the Alanis Morrisette/lezzie episode twice. Given that I hated it first time round, this could be construed as ironic. If that was what the word meant. It isn’t. (Get a dictionary, girl!) Anyway, anyway, anyway … Carrie gets scared off kissing a lez? Oh please! Now there’s a liberated sexuality for you! Certain straight girls of Tart City’s acquaintance do girl-snogging in public on every possible occasion; drunk, sober or simply saying hello. I’m not entirely sure if this is because they want to look clever, or just like it, but surely it just isn’t that big a deal? And a character that can fuck a complete man-stranger after the purchase of a single Cosmopolitan surely ought to be able to snog a chick at a party just the once? (And wouldn’t she have done it loads of times in her pissed past anyway? Or are these characters meant to be really so phallo-centric that they haven’t even played around in ‘Madonna-look-at-me-I’m-such-a-slut’ mode??) And don’t even get me started on how these women let men pay for them all the time … weird, weird, weird, where’s the PRIDE??? I think the main problem with S&TC is that it’s American. Calm down - I KNOW there’s more to the States than meets the eye, even in just five months there last year, I sussed that much. But the admitted-to public image is that all Americans think three drinks means you need a Twelve Step programme, marijuana is a hard drug, and recreational cocaine use is the same thing as shooting large amounts of heroin into your eye-ball on a daily basis. American TV had to water down its version of Queer as Folk for public consumption. US TV bosses need to soften Absolutely Fabulous before they can make their own version for the home-viewing public. They think it’s all right for us dirty Brits to behave badly, but prefer their own populace to do so within certain, sadly reactionary, confines. The policeman of the world has to look good in his own backyard. Which results in people really thinking that S&TC is brave. And daring. And interesting. Well of course smoking in public looks brave in California, and fucking a stranger looks daring when the viewer is sitting in the Bible-belt. But it’s not. It’s ordinary. Girls fucking boys is ordinary. And none of this would matter if the programme didn’t come with a built-in neon sign flashing on and off about how groundbreaking it is. Because unfortunately the people who make this programme just seem to think they’re a bit too damn wonderful. Smugness is not a nice thing in a script. And S&TC simply oozes smug. No jokes though. Which is a real pity. Basically the women of S&TC are just grown-up Spice Girls. Nothing more and nothing less. They may have a degree of girl power (nice jobs, nice - ?? - clothes), but they’re never going to take those kitten-heeled strides on into woman power without developing an interest in something - anything - that goes beyond the meeting point of cock and clit. (LAUREN: for the defense) Ach, Stella! It IS ground-breaking! When have you EVER seen women on TV discussing what to do when sperm tastes bad, or when you love your boyfriend desperately but his dick's the size of a chipolata? You don't watch Sex and the City to 'magically get a sex life', you watch it to see all your own sex dilemmas - and those your friends have shared with you in drunken confiding moments - laid out on prime-time TV. Hooray! Finally women's sexuality is out in the open! Do British women REALLY think it's a 'pile of old toss' (you're so fucking delicate, Stell)? I doubt that. I can't see any woman with an active sex life not identifying with at least part of this. When I was circulating an online quiz to see which character you identified with, the responses from my Britchick mates were just as impassioned as the US ones (embarrassment at being Carrie, mainly. But my Brit editor was Miranda. She's fab. I was actually GLAD I was Carrie - I kept answering questions "shoe-shopping" and "princess" and I was terrified I was going to be Charlotte. NB: all the gay guys were Samantha. Surprise...) And no, Stell, fucking doesn't equal feminism, but by God it's one of the areas where you can clearly see how far we've come - quite literally. Thanks to Nancy Friday our worst fantasies are out there and we know lots of other women share them too. And thanks to Sex and the City, we've found the Rabbit vibrator (everything they say about it in that episode is true, OK?) Liberating women's right to their sexuality was, and is, one of the main personal-is-political goals of feminism. I bet our mothers and great-aunts would have been bloody glad to live in a world where you could show S&TC on the telly. God, my grandmother had a terrible time with my grandfather (remind me to tell you the wddding-night story some time.) I don't think he was a bad guy, they were just both pig-ignorant. We HAVE come a long way! Only just now have (women) scientists discovered that the set of nerve-endings that lead to the clitoris are TWICE as large as previously thought! Imagine no-one even bothering to check that out before! We had a man on the moon before we had decent sanitary towels - the ones without the enormous nappy pins - for Christ's sake! Programmes which champion women's sexual liberation ARE still political, goddammit! OK, I give you the fact that they never talk about anything but sex and guys (no other politics). But hey, that's the show. We can't expect flagships to be everything. Men don't expect their shows to talk about politics - they're quite happy with basketball, chicks and beer. If we want shows that have fashion, studs and martinis, why the hell shouldn't we have them?? I now concede that I am of course talking from a straight chick point of view (so far, you never know when Gina Gershon may suddenly drop round & decide to take my gay virginity). And if I were a gay girl, I'd probably be a lot crosser with the series. I haven't seen the Alanis episode and the way you describe it does sound ridiculous. I snog you all the time for Christ's sake. (My BOYFRIEND has even snogged Val MacDermid.) The oh-my-God-she's-a-lesbian terror you describe sounds baffling. And offensive. And silly. (Side note: I actually haven't snogged ANY girls, straight or gay, who kiss badly - are we better in general or am I just a good picker? because there are a lot of men who are v bad snoggers.) I agree that Americans prefer Brits to behave badly, rather than do it themselves (hence my books actually selling over here!) but in this case the Yanks have been the standard-bearer. What British show, for instance, shows a woman having sex with a guy whose dick is just too big, and smoking large quantities of dope to try to, um, loosen herself up? One weirdness though - no cocaine. Don't tell me those chicks are keeping that slim without help (Carrie and Samantha. Miranda's obviously skinny anyway and Charlotte's so perfect she eats right all the time, I betcha). But we do agree on something - Carrie's dress sense. GOD. One part teenage whore, one part drag queen (doesn't Sarah Jessica's face look drag-queeny in the title sequence??), one part fashion junkie, one part would-be wacky. Nausea. No wonder Big left her. Oh yeah, and she's a whiny stalker too. But hey, it makes for good drama....
Past spankings
Jane Haddam takes on those who cry 'faux feminist!'
Issues that capture our interest in Bitch Session
Lauren whips Women who whore themselves
See all the rants and spankings here.



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