Dear Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte,
We fell out of touch for a few years, shortly before Sex And The City bit the dust in 2004. We all got pretty busy — I know people can change in six years, but it’s like I don’t even know you four anymore … flying off to Abu Dhabi, joking about Lawrence of my Labia, drunkenly karaoke singing “I Am Woman,” and meeting locals who throw off their black abayas to reveal fabulous designer gowns underneath.
Like, really? In parts of the UAE, it’s legal for men to beat their wives, and women have been charged with illegal sex after reporting rape. Being Woman in Abu Dhabi is no all-expenses paid trip for the average gal.
You aren’t the self-assured, sometimes neurotic, sharp-tongued, emotionally sensitive New Yorkers I once knew. You’ve turned into a four-headed beast that spews crass stereotypes and it’s time for an intervention.
I want you four to remember who you once were; I want the old Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte back.
You’re collectively the Freudian four-way dissection of the modern, Western woman — the romantic, the nymph, the workaholic, and the insecure ditz — which is what endears you to all of us. You are us.
The show’s not without problems; you four live in demographically monochromatic upper class Manhattan, and your problems (men, where to have drinks, the lineup for weekend brunch) are definitely first world. It’s not feminist, but it has surprised me.
Consider the era that ushered you in: The show launched alongside the careers of underage, oversexed pop starlets. While Dubya was waging his abstinence-only education program, you guys were crude but frank about the realities of female sexuality, aging, workaholism and the concept of beauty.
Sure, all of you at one point or another slept with the wrong guy, or forgot to use protection, but there were never recriminations that any of you were slutty, flawed, or bad. Seen in the context of its time, SATC was groundbreaking.
Like muscle cars, explosions, Clint Eastwood and Steve McQueen are to men, your world was ours to escape to, 40 minutes at a time. Can’t we just go back to all that? I miss you girls, I really do.
Yours always,
Canice
