No, I haven’t seen Sex In The City. No, I have no plan to see it, ever, until there is a Peaches Christ Midnight Mass musical version that ends in drag queen soaked bloodshed and someone loses an eye with one of those goddamn Rabbit vibrators that Peaches heated with a Bic lighter and sharpened into a point to fashion a makeshift shiv when she was in jail and had to cut a bitch. And never mind that Go Fug Yourself nailed my feelings on every single stitch of clothing I’ve seen the film’s stars wear for the various premieres: “(…) looks like the rat traps all got set off before Cinderella’s party posse finished making her dress. Should this ever happen to you — and really, who hasn’t had their army of tiny tailors accidentally tempted by fatal peanut-butter traps? — my advice is to wear something else (…)”
No, no, no. Riddle me this, batfriends. Why is there supposedly armies of Kleenex-soaked gratefuls guzzling Cosmos and thanking the lard for women like Sarah Jessica Parker for portraying a character who liberates their sexuality when Parker hates talking about sex, period? It’s okay — all that stuff Parker’s character did to make you feel good about sex and all affirmed about female sexuality to talk openly and positively about it — she really didn’t mean it. In fact, she hates “intimate talk” (watch her unable to even say the word “sex” in the clip below), and she can’t stand being around people who do.
Really — watch this recent clip of Parker on Conan O’Brian (@ Defamer).
You’ve come a long way, baby. Except you haven’t. As far as I’m concerned, those two minutes undermine every positive thing Parker might have represented about female sexuality with her work on Sex In The City, if there ever was anything positive she represented. She obviously thinks *very* little of the type of people who really are the Carrie Bradshaws of the world.
So from now on I think very little of people like her who cash in on all the hard work that the Dan Savages, Tristan Taorminos, Carol Queens, Susie Brights, Rachel Kramer Bussels, the me’s, the oodles of incredible college sex advice columnists that are young and hot and exciting… All the blood, sweat, blog posts, missed payments, late rent checks, lost loves, grateful emails from abuse survivors, and tears — all we’ve worked hard for to make sex a little more normal and okay to talk about to make our culture healthier. All that work so people can play us on TV and then go on national TV and basically say that what we do is dirty and beneath them.
Actor, puh-leaze. Do us all a favor and just go put your opening night dresses back in the Bed Bath and Beyond “Bed In A Bag” packaging they came in, and hope you saved the receipt.
/bitchy post
Does this remind anyone else of the “middle school boy” approach to sex? Lots of talk about raunchy things (specializing in devising what Dan Savage called “sex act[s] that [exist] only in the imaginations of adolescent boys”, like the “Donkey Punch”), but are extremely uncomfortable about any serious discussion of sex which would expose actual feelings.
Thank you, thank you, thank you! I have only been reading your posts for a few weeks now, but now I am a fan… I can’t stop…
I refuse to watch the show solely based on the fact that it is stupid. The writing is bad and really, I cannot relate to the characters. But, when I mention this to my female coworkers or friends they look at me like I’m a pitiful prude. The show has done nothing to “liberate” me sexually, as if I wasn’t already sexual to begin with? It just annoyed me. Anyway… I could go on and on about this topic. Thanks for your posts, I love it!
I completely agree, Violet. I HATE that show. My wife hates it even more *especially* because of the SJP, who she simply hates as being a poor example of a woman.
(Pedantic note: it’s “Sex AND the City”)
Never liked it, never empathised with the characters. I don’t empathise well with characters who define themselves by their high heel shoes.
On top of that, I’m hating the fact that this is being portrayed as the “ultimate women’s movie.” For a start… where are all the OTHER women’s movies? And why this one, when there are so many other perspectives about sex, feminism and women that could be explored?
Shall I rant about how one columnist called it “porn for women” because it was focused on fashion and shoes? Grrr…
quehanna, I’m with you there…I haven’t had cable for years (saw my bit of SATC on borrowed DVDs) and in the last year, when my TV died, I didn’t replace it. You are absolutely right–I’m not missing anything (except for sports, but I can always invite myself to a friend’s or go to a sports bar for that) AND I’m blissfully unaware of celebrities and products and advertisements that only used to piss me off anyways. I watch DVDs on my laptop in bed :)
After seeing ALIENS, it took me 10 years to stop being mad at/afraid of Paul Reiser.
I stopped watching television shows about fifteen years ago and it would seem that I haven’t missed much.
We do have two tv’s, one’s hooked up to the ps2 and the other is for dvd’s.
Thank God there are other women out there who not go gooey over SATC…I really had a hard time with the series because I just couldn’t relate…I gave it a try, I really did, but it just made me feel (again) like I’m just not cut out for this “female” thing. I agree, some of those “fashion” outfits were atrocious, but then people do wear some weird $hit in NYC trying to be a step ahead of whatever trend is in for 10 minutes. Other beefs include that fact that even if I somehow miraculously became rich, I don’t think I could bring myself to pay hundreds of dollars for shoes that I know I’d want to take off within an hour b/c they hurt so bad (I love me some nice sexy heels from time to time, but a couple of “go to” pairs does it for me…I’m not Imelda Marcos). It also bugs me that the smartest, most successful character career-wise, Miranda, was also the least good looking/least smartly dressed of the four…sort of plays to the stereotype that if you’re too smart or too ambitious, then that automatically subtracts from your hotness factor. Bah…
I tried to watch that show, but hated it. SJP’s character was a whiner and not very adventurous. It was all about selling sex and fashion porn to an America the grew up on Dynasty. Speaking of old shows, the only really great SJP performance was in Square Pegs, which just got released on DVD. No, I don’t work for any company associated with it. Rather, I run a liquor store and served plenty of women who were buying cheap vodka to sneak into the SITC filming this weekend and talking about what rebels they are. Label me jaded, but not about Square Pegs.
OMG please sell an eye or a kidney but never a tit.
GFY told me all I needed to know to confirm my impressions of this movie, when they called it “fashion and home-decorating porn.” YAWN.
Tried to watch a couple episodes of the series, but I must be too jaded: The show seemed like just a bit of slightly bolder sexual tokenism buried in a sea of typical TV fare. I understand your frustration. The fact that SATC is considered a standout of sex-positivity just underscores how sexually constipated we are in this country.
I see your point in venting about SJP. OK, actors are just actors: They don’t often embody the characters they play in their real lives. But the mainstream media and/or SATC’s Marketing Dept. has chosen her as the primary face, the personification, of this show, and everything it represents. If the marketing juggernaut behind the series/movie really wanted to effect any change, they would’ve pushed a different spokesperson from the group, one who wouldn’t so actively and squeamishly go against SATC’s message. I’m not really their intended audience, but I know women who are. I don’t want them seeing the actress whose character they admire being such a negative, judging prude.
BTW, if Peaches Christ EVER puts on the kind of Midnight Mass showing you suggest in your post, I’ll sell my left tit to fly there! Thanks especially for giving me the visual of rabbit vibe as shiv! LOL
THANK YOU, I fucking hate that show. I hate pathetic watered down faux feminism.
thanks for your great comments, everyone. now, here’s what I said in the SFBG:
“But it’s important to realize there’s a fantasy dynamic in there. If I found out that a guy in one of those scenes really was a misogynist bastard that likes to choke girls because he hates women, I’d wanna break his kneecaps with a tire iron. But I can accept it as a fantasy, especially now that I know professional submissives who enjoy that part of their work. It’s not until you meet someone who really enjoys something that turns you off that you start to realize you shouldn’t fully reject those things.
(…) It’s important to remember that those people are actors. I mean they don’t show porn stars going out and getting their HIV tests.”
first let me say I have nothing against SJP, or actors. but imagine if I spent ten years building a career with a lot of secondary meaning to a lot of people, based on a certain kind of actor. and then outside of my career’s secondary meaning, I did interviews where I was so uncomfortable by acting, I couldn’t even say the word “actor”. what does that say about how I’ve used acting to build my career, and also what does it say about how I really feel about all the people who’ve identified strongly and personally with my career’s secondary meaning?
it’s food for thought, you know? porn performers may have different kinds of sex in their personal lives — or not — but they aren’t hypocrites about the fact that they fuck for a living (and have sex IRL). SJP, to me, has embodied Hollywood’s hypocrisy about selling sex and actually being honest about what they’re selling.
that said, it’s may be possible that SJP and I have agents in common, and I’ll be hearing about this one… ;P
JS has a good point. I have never really been one to associate the actor with their output. I don’t necessarily think that her lame interview, and it was lame, lessens anything that she did on her HBO series. Her overrated HBO series, I should say.
I take sex seriously and “Sex and the City” is far from what I would call serious. More of a comic-strip version of sex.
That being said, I met SJP one evening and she was both lovely and friendly, even if I thought her series was a a bit of a joke. And I took great offense to one of those men’s magazines calling her the most un-sexy woman in the world. Ridiculous stuff, to say the least.
I would rather that people form their own opinions about sex though experimentation and research than from some “actor” or their series, is all I’m sayin’. I just don’t think that “Sex and the City” was/is all that important. Except for the Cosmo, of course. ;)
Bwah ha ha. Who wants to hear about her rash? Ew, not me, I’d rather talk about vaginas.
“Sex sex sex sex! Sex sex sex sex!”
btw, my spellcheck says there are no vaginas, only “vaginae”. :D
And yet, in your recent SFBG interview, made a really fair defense of porn actors by drawing a distinction between what they do off-screen and on-screen. Doesn’t SJP get the same defense? Can’t she embody positive things on-screen without embodying them off-screen?