I know appropriation is the new buzzword in political circles but I really can’t stand it when anyone refers to Sex And The City as a broadcast – and now cinematic – exercise in female empowerment. So please don’t call it feminist or any of the characters feminist, either.
Sexual voraciousness does not a feminist make. So Samantha’s ability to terrify her fuck buddies doesn’t win her any political trophies. In fact, Samantha’s a character that can’t be herself unless she has multiple sex partners, a strange definition of feminist practice – sexuality should never be anyone’s only self-definition, fun as it is to watch, in this case.
Not very many women make the kind of money required to buy the clothes the Sex And The City Women are so addicted to purchasing. A feminist product of culture has to be something women can to relate to on something other than the fantasy level. And anyway, as fabulous as the clothes are in the movie version, how can anybody be practicing such conspicuously gross consumption and sleep at nights? It’s as if no one notices that there’s an economic crisis in the United States and a green revolution going on all over the planet.
Then again, none of these four women appears to be aware of anything except what’s going on in her personal lives. They talk about nothing that matters in the world, nothing that’s going on outside of a three-meter radius of their own selves. Feminist? I don’t think so. I mean come on – a woman’s running for president of the United States, for chrissakes. But you’d never know it from the way this quartet talks to each other.
To be fair, Sex And The City is, indeed, an ode to female friendship, and in that sense, does press a feminist button. But theses friends seem to connect by dint of the absence of any family. We see practically no parents or siblings. It’s as if these women were birthed in a laboratory.
They were actually conceived by Candace Bushnell, an entertaining scribe, sure, but I don’t think she’d use the F-word to describe herself, either. So respect her, and use the feminist label where it applies.
And read my review of the Sex and the City film.
