In its
fourth season, “Sex and the City” is a phenomenon.
Receiving three Emmys for Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series
(Michael Patrick King), Outstanding Casting for a Comedy Series,
and Outstanding Costume for a Comedy Series, this Home Box Office
(HBO) hit is certainly worthy of its acclamation by critics and
women alike.
Or is it?
“Sex and the City” depicts the lives of four single women
who are all living successfully in New York City. They are independent
and confident in whom they are emotionally, physically, financially
and sexually.
However, some say that the lifestyle that these women portray is
unrealistic and unattainable and is sending a negative image to
women, particularly young women.
Well, those “some” need to take a long hard look at what
year it is.
Women have the right to be confident in who and what they are, and
the viewing audience needs to get comfortable with seeing this on
television.
In one episode Miranda Hobbes (played by Cynthia Nixon) participates
in a “round robin” dating game. She tells guy after guy
that she is a Harvard Law graduate and is a partner at a private
firm.
Until she tells a guy that she is a stewardess, they all pass her
by intimated by her powerful job.
Are people just intimated by these women who are making it in the
real world and doing it all without a man’s support?
I think so.
Sure, not everyone can sit down with their mothers and watch Samantha
Jones (played by Kim Cattrall) have her way with a delivery boy,
or a Wall Street tycoon, or as experimentation would have it, a
woman.
Is the show perhaps depicting a new sexual revolution? Not one that
is telling women to sleep around, but one that is letting women
know it is okay to be comfortable with the way they choose to lead
their lives?
When I watch this show, it is not leading me to believe that as
a free lance columnist such as Carrie Bradshaw (played by Sarah
Jessica Parker) I will be able to afford to drop $600 on a pair
of Manolo Blahnik shoes.
What it does make me believe is one day I could at least have her
job, her brains or her talent.
Some call Parker’s character unrealistic; I call her character
a role model for young women.
We come to college to educate ourselves about the next step in life.
In this vicious, competitive and fast-paced world we live in, my
hope is that I will survive when I leave Appalachian State.
Although it is just a television show, the fact that these women
are making it on their own is a positive and inspiring image.
This show may help to contradict the true negative images in the
media.
There is an article in this month’s issue of Cosmopolitan titled
the “Incredible Shrinking Stars” discussing the increasing
weight loss in celebrities and the thin body type that society is
pressured to obtain.
If we are going to put down shows like “Sex and the City”
for portraying lives of women that seem unrealistic why don’t
we look at media as a whole?
“Sex and the City” is no less realistic than NBC-TV’s
“Friends,” it just happens to be about four women.
The show goes beyond the clothes, the setting, the money and even
the characters. It talks about things that people would not even
ponder.
It poses questions that people somehow immediately need answered,
and it presents situations and relationships that really happen
every single day to thousands of men and women alike.
The friendships that these women share and the growth they have
accomplished in the past four seasons teach young women to live
and learn.
In tradition with Carrie Bradshaw’s writing style I leave you
with a question.
Does a relationship help define who you are, or is it that time
when you are single like the women of “Sex and the City”
that you truly find out what you are capable of? |
