Why I hate Sex And The City

By Laura Barton

The very first episode of Sex and the City screened while I was at university. It promised to be dazzlingly risqué, with acres of naked flesh and lots of frank talk about sex, and I recall that on that evening pretty much everyone in halls crammed into the common room to watch the show en masse. Afterwards, the entire room seemed to slump, in a mood one could only really describe as disappointedly post-coital: the show had proved to be neither daring nor sexy, nor even interesting. What an anti-climax.

And yet somehow, against all reason, SATC (not since CDT has an acronym inspired so much drizzly boredom in my soul) went on to be astoundingly successful. By the time I graduated and moved to London nearly every woman of my acquaintance had turned into some cocktail-glugging, corsage-wearing City-o-phile who liked nothing more than to go for twittery brunches with their ladyfriends and display their shoes in cabinets like they were the best china.

I lived, then, with three other young women, and it was with a plodding inevitability that every visitor to our scraggy old flat would ask which character from SATC each of us were. It was like 1996 and the Spice Girls all over again; only this time no one wanted to be Miranda, not Mel C.

Time had not softened my feelings towards SATC. To make matters worse it was by this time sponsored by Baileys — a drink that I believed had single-handedly set the women's movement back 20 years. I would, in the interests of household harmony, occasionally join my housemates in watching the show, but I was always confronted by the same old problem: it was impossible to care about a television show when you simply don't give a damn about its characters.

That was it, really: there was nothing in this quartet of women, nor in their apparent friendship that I could identify with. I did not appreciate Carrie's endless pin-balling from computer screen to cocktail lounge to shoe emporium. I did not care for the oleaginous Mr Big. And I thoroughly despaired when she chose Big over Aidan or Adrian or whatever-his-name-was-who-was-once-Chris-out-of-Northern-Exposure [now THERE was a television show worth watching] and who made furniture with his own bare hands! Oh Bradshaw you wazzock.

I did not care about Samantha's wearisome antics in the boudoir; oh so you tried lesbianism this week did you? And videoing? And shagging the UPS guy? Brilliant. Samantha, of all the characters, seemed the least believable; she appeared to exist only for the purpose of sexual experimentation, like some cheap blow-up doll. I hated the endless career-vs-commitment worries of Miranda, and even more the fact that, as the high-flier, she was contractually-bound to wear her hair short and frequently sport trousers. And I had no palate at all for the concerns of the sickly-sweet interior decorating, prince-hunting Charlotte.

More than anything I hated what the show did to my female contemporaries: in public they seemed to believe they now had some kind of responsibility to sit at café tables and talk loudly about SEX, and for a brief, dunderheaded period, vast swathes of the population seemed to genuinely believe that all their problems would be solved if they just spent a month's rent on a single pair of designer shoes.

Oh dear god, I wept, will everyone PLEASE stop talking about shoes?

Indeed in the three hundred years that it seemed to reign over our television screens I do believe that Sex and the City served one – and only one - valuable purpose: it raised the issue of what "spunk" actually tastes like (you may recall the "funky spunk episode" in which Samantha blows a guy whose cum tastes of rotten asparagus). And really, was it worth it? To borrow Ms Bradshaw's inquisitive style: did we honestly need 94 tedious episodes, 319 costume changes and a two and a half hour film to talk openly about gentlemen's bodily juices?

15 comments

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Sean Adams 29 May at 01:43 PM

also

I think it's done more harm to journalism than Clarissa Explains it All. People now think that being a writer is about living a ridiculous life and including yourself in the narrative of the rich and the fake tanned.
What sickened me most was the only thing of worth that any of them seemed to do was write a self-indulgent blog as a column in a magazine.

Meg Greenhorn 29 May at 01:56 PM

hahahahaha

I quite enjoy watching the odd Sex and The City episode, but do also completely agree with everything in this article! amusing.

Kathryn Hudson 29 May at 04:54 PM

I HATED the first season

it took a while to find its feet and became a lot more engaging in later years. It was good to see a show celebrating female friendship as well as their relationships with men and I think that the ubiquity of it that was annoying rather than the show itself. And as for Aiden.....god that man was awful.....I support Carrie's love for Big all the way

29 May at 05:17 PM

shoes

I'm glad to have my hope confirmed that not every lady in the land is obsessed with shoes and the acquisition thereof!

A lot of product placement in the show did well for BlahBlahBlahnik, and although I did enjoy watching it, I am a boy, so it was probably for the wrong reasons.

29 May at 05:31 PM

so...

...I take it you're not going to watch the film then, Laura?

Gillian 29 May at 08:24 PM

Sex-positive my Aunt Fanny

Just heard an advert on Talk Sport for their branded radios:

..."it even has a volume button for drowning out that annoying cow in the kitchen" (cue unintelligible hi pitched nagging voice).

Was I the only one (nb. I only caught the odd episode) who would watch Samantha and think 'Yeah...that's not that out there.' To me it seemed to show how prudish (for want of a better word) US fictional girls are compared to the UK.

(Laura, I think you and I went to the same university, btw, but The Salon seemed to be the big thing then.)

Eleanor Morgan 30 May at 10:52 AM

I agree

With almost everything Laura has said. However, the comment about SATC doing 'more harm to journalism than Clarissa Explains it All', falls on deaf ears here, I'm afraid. Are we all not of sane enough mind to understand that Carrie's 'career' isn't <actually> the reality of 99.9% of journalists? I like indulging myself in SATC's warped reality sometimes, and I don't necessarily think it makes me irresponsible. I don't think 'people', as a generalisation, think that being a writer affords one a life of affluence like Bradshaw's. Sex And The City IS ridiculous - it creates nonsensical paradigms about women and how they live with each other, but I can think of worse things than making girls talk about their boyfriend's willies and how many times they came last night.

Laura Barton 30 May at 11:07 AM

heels

are aces castlekate, i do very much agree and i wear 'em often. but SATC inspired a new level of shoe-veneration that i found kinda repellent, as if buying very expensive high heels was the ultimate expression of female independence. you know?
hey_mippy i totally totally agree about the prudishness. i felt precisely the same. also i could never escape the nagging feeling that the show objectified men in the same way that women have long been objectified, and yunno, two wrongs don't make a right, do they?
thankfully i succeeded in avoiding the whole Salon thing...

30 May at 11:08 AM

Boooo to the Aiden

Aiden as attractive?! He was soft as a bag of tits and a poor excuse for a human being. And was about as funny as a BBC1 friday evening sitcom. AND tried to change her. Boooo to the Aiden.

I saw the movie last night and was a bit dissapointed, to be honest. In parts it was dead funny, but the grotesque product placement was just embarassing and the crow-barring in of a token black character was equally cringe-worthy. Not as good as the good episodes, but worth seeing anyway.

Oliver Shepherd 30 May at 12:00 PM

I like Sex and the City

but can't let this opportunity pass to quote Brian from Family Guy:

"So it's a show about three hookers and their mom?"

30 May at 06:31 PM

Well said.

It was basically as unwatchable as Red Dwarf (officially the Worst Show On TV Ever). In fact, it's Red Dwarf with anal sex and Jimmy Choo 'gags'.

Niki Shisler 31 May at 02:55 PM

Thank you.

I have never been able to identify with any of the women in the show (thank god). With their empty, pointless lives and absurd non-worries. I cannot understand why intelligent women I know find them so aspirational. They weren't even nice people - selfish, shallow and self-absorbed. As for being a great model of female friendship? Seriously, I'd like to think that my friendships have a little more depth. The current media frenzy over the movie is bewildering to me, and if I read one more article about some journalist trying the 'Carrie look' for a day, I will scream. So, again, thank you Laura.

Helen 3 Jun at 02:40 PM