sex in the city

Straw Bradshaw

Wed, 2007-12-26 15:41

Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon says

...it occurred to me that the favorite right wing myth about how feminists are supposedly all overprivileged spoiled brats is an update to the Jewish American Princess stereotype. Replace Prada, Chanel, and Lexus with reproductive rights, equality in the workplace, and anti-rape activism, and you have the 21st century version of an old slur. You don’t hear the words “boutique cause” attached to feminism for just random reasons. The baffling amount of “Sex and the City” references in right wing screeds against feminism is no accident, either.

She said it here.

Sheeyeah right, like Sex in the City was some kind of bastion of feminism. It had a reasonable amount of economic parity, sure. But really that’s only a celebration of feminism in the sense that Little House On the Prairie celebrated it: Caroline Wilder could read and write! Carrie Bradshaw could have a job and choose lovers without social consequence. A pretty big deal if and only if you don’t consider those baseline human traits within civilized society. (Which, admittedly, many conservatives dispute.) But, um… Mr. Big? That and, um, the entire fucking show from beginning to end was an exercise in the persistent beauty-myth belief that the kind of men they were looking for noticed, let alone cared as much as women are supposed to, let alone based their dating decisions on who designs the shoes women wear!

Sorry, but saying Sex In the City was about feminism is sort of like saying “The Price Is Right” is about free-market capitalism. When in fact all you could really say is that neither show would be possible if feminism (SITC) and capitalism (TPIR) didn’t exist.

It’s not that I’ve got anything against Mayonnaise Bhlonk high-heels, there’s nothing wrong about wanting to wear clothes, nor about enjoying wearing such clothes because they make you feel attractive. There is however, something wrong with claiming that one must wear such clothes in order to be attractive. And while I haven’t seen every episode the show certainly seemed to be… mostly about that.

The point being that not only are conservatives trying to brand to some kind of N’othern Jew rich-bitchiness, it’s hedging its bets bet by claiming that’s all there is to it.

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