For some reason I get really aggravated when women castigate Sex and the City for being a horrible example of feminism. I think it’s because I own season two and three on dvd. Umm, I went to a seven sister school, okay! I read Camille Paglia! (that’s a lie).

Lindsey Gerdes’s Businessweek piece lambasts the tv show for its vapid depiction of women obsessing over men and sex.

Umm, yeah, I think it’s because the show is called SEX and the city not FERMAT’S THEOREM and the city.

While Gerdes was a fan of the show in college (”The four chic, single, thirty-to-fortysomething central characters seemed like sexually liberated, glamorous exemplars of modern femininity”), her interest eventually declined:

My own disillusionment with the show began with my post-grad move to New York City (BusinessWeek.com, 10/11/06), which turned out to be anything but the exciting, glamorous metropolis so romanticized by Carrie & Co.


First of all, people who believe that life in New York City is going to be just like a tv show are in for a rude awakening. I suggest you avoid watching the sitcom Friends.

Also, the fictitious characters on the show were in their mid to late thirties. They had the money and influence to galavant around the meatpacking district and wear Manolos. Except Carrie. People still wonder how girlfriend could afford those shoes on a journalist’s salary. But the show did hint at her massive credit card debt. Maybe she’s to blame for the sub-prime crisis.

But here’s what I don’t understand about people who complain that New York is not as glitzy and glamorous as it’s portrayed by HBO.

When I was living in New york post-college, I wasn’t making that much money, but I still managed to go to all these parties where open bar and long limbed girls in precipitous heels were staples.

Maybe Gerdes would have had a much more Carrie Bradshaw-esque experience if she had just learned to mooch off people with influence like I did. She would’ve had more fun. And more hangovers.

One of her friends proposed boycotting the movie.

I say, there are bigger issues worth boycotting. Like patchouli. Ugh, lets boycott men who wear patchouli!