3WW: Deny, smile, uncomfortable: Sex & The City; a sort of critique

My name is Pia. A year ago tomorrow I first came to North Myrtle Beach. Now I'm living here. A year ago next week I went to Wal Mart for the first time. Last Friday I first went to a Target. I know there are Target's all over New York City. They don't fall into my preferred geographic locations except for the one on the Atlantic Avenue stop of the number 2 train in Brooklyn and I forget about that one.

After going to Target my friend CLo and I went to see Sex & The City as it had just opened and we really really had to see it.

It was the first time I have gone to the movies in South Carolina and it was a strange experience. Though it was Friday night we didn't have to do Fandango and still get to the theater 50 minutes to an hour early as I have to do if I want to sit with friends in the city. Usually we still end up in one of the first three rows and I have an elongated neck to prove it.

CLo's main residence is in Atlanta and she can't believe how people in New York go to the movies with giant shopping bags, something I have been guilty of. Movies aren't a really social event but a necessary part of life and something that's never shown on SATC.

Though I pay obscene amounts of money for shoes I have never worn stilletos.
CLo wears designer shoes, including stilletos, but never ever pays full price. She was very upset that Carrie wore gladiator sandals with gowns. Yet I couldn't help but think Madonna, the early years. (tiered sort of puffy skirts, lots of lace) I related to her as we had the same style. Music is something that's never in SATC

I didn't even think it was a nice fantasy. I needed more Chris Noth who looks his best and biggest on the large screen. It wasn't particularly cleverly written and I thought veered far away from Candace Bushnell's original column.

There was a fight between Carrie and one of her friends. They made up too quickly and you knew they had to for the sake of the script. Not one girl has ever slept with anybody else's boyfriend, or a man somebody else wants. I know that's not in the girlfriend code but damn no set of real girlfriends will deny that it happens.

Their gay friend Stanford was given a token role and none of the girls had a straight male friend except each others husbands or Big. In my New York straight male friends play an important role. This makes some women, who marry into friendship uncomfortable at first.

Thing is I was practically born married and separated so my best friend, college to mid 20's, Shelby and my sister were constantly telling me I didn't count in the husband race. One day I thought about it and realized I was in a great position just to have fun. That was probably a mistake but I loved my life that was more S&TC than most peoples, I guess, as I had three best girlfriends, fabulous but imperfect apartments, a very large wardrobe, a job talked about more than worked (not true but sometimes seemed it) and was one with many restaurants, bars and clubs.

But I'm older than Samantha so this was all a decade earlier....In the 80's I wrote what my friends called "Pia's girl stories," about four friends; one Black, one Puerto Rican, one Greek/German, and one Russian Jew. I didn't try to publish them but when I think about it we represent the real city so much more...and nobody wants the real city in Sex & Yet in New York everybody has a hyphenated identity, being Jewish isn't exotic as it seems to be on SATC but normal.

Many girls who are born Jewish resent the Charlotte's of the city who marry in and convert. They're diluting the pool of available Jewish men. I have been to too many holiday dinners where my smile becomes fake or goes as this subject is discussed and discussed and....Personally I would love to meet Charlotte in temple, if I went and she wasn't just Kristin Davis's character. She and Miranda were my favorite characters in the film, aside from Big, and I wasn't expecting that.

So why did I feel so nostalgic? And yes horribly superior to the rest of the audience. Which was sickening of me as I have come to realize that many Manhattanites are much more provincial than people here.

We (Manhattanites) look at life with tunnel vision. We expect everybody to conform to our standards and copy us.

I don't get this whole thing to emulate SATC. It's just a fantay show about the city I love but find increasingly pricey (not that anybody on SATC) has to think about that, and crowded. Carrie, in the TV show, came to a realization she spent all her money on shoes and had none in the bank. Then the crisis was over

In my 30's I didn't worry about my future either, but I did pride myself on the progressively better colored credit cards that arrived, and I had parents to worry for me. The world of family outside the self made family doesn't exist in SATC

I'm a total believer in self-made families. CLo's sister is my bff Lucia. We actually stopped thinking of each other as friends. It's something more and something SATC gets very right. Yet families of origin or upbringing do play a part in life. Even if not seen they're talked about and analyzed to death.

Therapy? Therapy plays a part in every New Yorker's life one time or another. Yes girlfriends are therapy. Girlfriends stage interventions---too true--but I don't know a woman who sometime in her 20's, 30's, or 40's doesn't go to therapy. Meds. Hello, the whole city is a walking medicine cabinet; everybody is going on or off something.

I have never seen one joint on S&TC I know the show is a fantasy but, in many New Yorker's fantasy life, pot isn't illegal nor does it mess up lungs.

Gossip. Do those girls live in a vacuum? Don't they have ex-friends? Frenemys? People they just can't stand?
I know Carrie doesn't cook. Hell I lived in an apartment without a kitchen. Everybody makes breakfast--except when you have the nearest five diners on speeddial and have oatmeal and coffee delivered. You do go into Korean grocers except when you live practically on top of Fairway.

When I lived off Fifth Avenue in the East 60's in my 30's I was petrified that I was going to turn into one of the 40something women I would see in the grocery stores. They all looked so pinched, manless and sad.

Lucia didn't have Little Luce until her late 30's and last Friday was LL's prom at Tavern on The Green. They cut out early and went to The Rocky Horror Show in Chelsea. First there was a dance. Then "newbies" were called to the stage and told to imitate people making love. Then the movie came on. To make it sweeter, their friends who went to the "cool" party had to leave after an hour as the party was busted. I just love that they loved Rocky Horror My generation lives on.

Maybe someday SATC will be ritualized like that but somehow I think wearing stilettos and drinking cosmos just doesn't do it. It's a fantasy you can't wrap yourself up in. Call out all the lines--well maybe SATC, the musical will provide memorable moments.

Really I was expecting SATC to be much more clever. I just realized what I didn't like about it or the last couple of years of the show. It's written and performed to fit a fantasy for non-New Yorkers.

.I found myself listening for the laughter in the movie theater to see if the
women in the theater in Myrtle were laughing at the right places and then wondered who the hell am I to tell women what to laugh at?

The real New York, even for girls who wear stilettos, is much more edgy and interesting. I'm just not into fantasy masquerading as reality masquerading as fantasy.