Joan Swirsky
Thursday, July 24, 2003

It’s bad enough, as I mentioned recently in “The Death of Feminism,” that both girls and women now accept being called “guys” and that women who have tried for years to get pregnant – and when they do, acknowledge that sonograms of their 3-week-old fetuses represent their most cherished hopes for motherhood – still think that the “right” to abortion is sacrosanct (i.e., that it’s okay for other women to kill their 3-week-old fetuses).

Yet another example that feminism is dead is the popularity of “Sex and the City,” the HBO show that features 30- and 40-something woman sending out the unmistakable messages to females both younger and older that careers, money, looks and, ostensibly, intelligence are nothing compared to doing anything to get a man, including endlessly obsessing about the subject, engaging in loveless or even likeless sexual encounters and also agonizing endlessly over “intimacy” (which they have no trouble engaging in routinely with their shoes and outfits).

In general, the show’s message to viewers like me is clear: The career path women have chosen over the past several decades has failed. Yes, they make money, but has there ever been an episode in which any of them have spent that money on charity? Yes, they’re “successful,” but have any of them shared the so-called secrets of their successes with, for instance, underprivileged girls who yearn for guidance? Yes, they’re pretty, but have they ever done volunteer work for The National Foundation for Facial Reconstruction? No, no and no again.

Call me a prude or call me retro. But from the first episode I watched of “Sex and the City” – and I’ve watched only a few since then – I reviled the show. I didn’t want to revile it, especially because I thought it would depict the very real and very difficult “singles scene” in which earnest women quite desperately tried to find what was missing in their lives: a genuine, committed, loving relationship.

What do the show’s viewers get instead? Carrie, the sex columnist, sees her old boyfriend carrying a baby. “I had a baby,” he beams proudly, to which she responds in all of her narcissistic cluelessness: “I had a date.” So there it was – a successful (and, we assume, literate) magazine columnist well into her mid-30s revealing that life has taught her nothing about graciousness, joy in other people’s happiness, grace under pressure, class.

Then there is Charlotte, the show’s prim-and-proper art dealer and, at first glance, a throwback to a more conservative era, whose marriage has failed and who is now in a relationship with a Jewish guy (yes, a man is a guy) who ostensibly loves her but doesn’t want to marry her for religious reasons. And what is her strategy to break him down? Sex, of course. Great message to Catholics and Protestants and Jews and Muslims everywhere: If your man has convictions, oral sex might break them down.

Samantha, the PR executive, still thinks that indiscriminate oral sex is the way to go. What a wonderful lesson for the young women in her audience. Sashaying more like a drag-queen version of a femme fatale than a real one, she gives both desire and sex a bad name.

Enter Miranda, a de rigueur out-of-wedlock mother who clearly hates the new role she has to juggle with being a lawyer. Another wonderful message: Hanging out with sex-obsessed friends is much better than having baby doodoo smeared on your forehead, which is clearly a symbol to her of everything that Miranda thinks is wrong about motherhood – forget about nurturing, loving, sacrificing, evolving. Better to talk about your own and your friends’ failed relationships.

A lot of people I know “love” the show but when I ask them why, they say, “It’s fun,” “It’s probably true,” “This is the world we live in.” If this is the world we live in, that world can certainly stand significant change.

But just as intriguing to me is why the women on this show have, in any way, captured the imagination of the public. They are not humorous or interesting or original or provocative or deep or even fun.

The other day I bumped into a 60-something friend on the street and asked her what was new. She told me she was raising funds to restore the desecrated cemeteries of Eastern Europe. A 50-something widow friend told me she was going on Sierra Club walks and “cleaning up the environment.” A 40-something friend told me she was involved in trying to raise awareness about the Innocence Project, which uses DNA to free “lifers” who were imprisoned based on faulty evidence. And a 20-something master’s degree candidate friend told me that she was bringing “the power of clowns” to inner-city children to “make kids laugh.”

Character still prevails. But you would never know it from watching “Sex and the City,” a smarmy show that would like everyone to believe that indiscriminate sex, inane conversation and Manolo Blahnik shoes were all that counted. I’d still like to think that most of the country thinks they don’t!

Joan Swirsky is a New York–based journalist and author who can be reached at joansharon@aol.com.

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