Dear god, make me a bird, so I can fly far, far away from the inevitable “Sex and the City is now on Netflix and the children are watching!!!” discourse.
Do I really need some twenty-three year old on TikTok lecturing me about Sex and the City being nothing more than an ethnocentric, heteronormative, myopic view of both femininity and New York City?
Not really!
Do I need to be reminded that Carrie could never, ever afford her apartment—much less her Manolo Blahnik collection—via writing one single column per week?
I’m a writer with fifty-seven jobs—trust me—I know.
Do I want to listen to a child declare that “…for a sex columnist, Carrie is a total prude!?!!?!?!?!?!?!” as if this is some brand new critique?
Sure! Why not? Just as soon as said child has watched the episode where Carrie ice skates with the bisexual and kisses Alanis Morrisette 34823098309 times like I have. Buckle up, sister, I’ve put my 10,000 hours in. I’m a forty-four year old white woman—I could write a dissertation on Carrie’s reactions to Friar Fuck, Maria Reyes, Rick9+, the funkiest tasting spunk, etc, etc, etc, or I could simply note that Carrie never, ever takes her bra off.
Being a prude is like, part of it.
Respectfully, I’m fully aware that Sex and the City’s ideas about sex, love, and relationships are heteronormative, retrograde, and overall sorta fucked up. (The uncomfortable course corrections and attempts at modernization in Sex and the City’s sequel And Just Like That are proof enough.) But sorry if I still don’t want the youths picking apart the entertainment that formed all my wrong-headed and embarrassing ideas about heterosexual dating and love because if anyone should be mad about it, it’s me!
Of course SATC can’t take all the credit for my brainwashing—shout out to Sweet Valley High, The Cosby Show, The Breakfast Club, and the many women’s mags of the ‘90s that wrote relentlessly about all the ways I should “turn on my man”—but when I got divorced in 2010, I would be lying if I didn’t say that Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda, and Samantha were top of mind as I ventured into the dating scene.
Especially Samantha.
SATC ended in 2004, long before Michael Patrick King could tell us what to do about dick pics, Tinder, and ghosting. Which is unfortunate, because Sam Jones would’ve loved Tinder. Or perhaps what Sam would’ve really loved would be Grinder, because, let’s get real, Sam fucks like a gay man.
Probably because she was written by one?
Sam fucks whoever she wants, whenever she wants, and rarely does she find it disappointing.
Let me be clear, Samantha is a woman fucking men.
It’s so fucking fanciful it’s, it’s—
Not only does Sam never fear for her safety when she encounters a new sexual partner, the men she fucks are all about making her come. Talk about unrealistic!
In her heyday, Samantha was a symbol of sexual empowerment for women and an important counter balance to both Charlotte and Carrie’s relentless pursuit of the fairytale. Sam embodied the right to “fuck like a man,” meaning, you could have sex and not worry about a relationship or falling in love. And, girl, this shit was radical for the late 90s / early aughts!
So when I re-entered the dating scene, I was thirty years old and thought, of course I can embody this hot hot hot Samantha Jones energy! The world has changed! There are men around every corner just waiting to give me an amazing orgasm I can tell my friends about! There I’d be, sitting at brunch with all my married friends, who’d lost their chance to gorge themselves silly on this smorgasbord of amazing dick, and I’d paint this picture of this incredible night of no strings attached sex, and omg they would be so jealous.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAAHA.
Can I tell you how depressed I was when I realized I had better sex in high school than full grown, adult men were offering me now? Not only were men willing to grope and fumble at your delicate lady bits like it was a search for lost change, all sorts of new elements—fueled by easy 24/7 access to porn—entered the chat. Now they wanted to come in your hair. Choke you. Spank you. Jackhammer you as quickly as possible while you laid there thinking to yourself, “He cannot be serious.”
But, dear reader, he was.
Honestly, while the hope that whenever I was in my feels, the love of my life would show up in a town car with balloons spilling out the windows was sort of a bad expectation to set—
—I’m actually way more angry that I believed having casual sex with men could be an enjoyable experience for women. In all my years as a single woman, my research conclusively shows that for a man to care about your orgasm, he has to care about you. And while my gay friends will casually cut a brunch with friends short because there’s someone hot and ready less than a half mile away, the landscape remains bleak for single women. Maybe it’s time to write a whole entire show about that!
happy endings!
Instagram caught me at 4:00am and sold me this Ogee makeup. Apparently I paid $138 for it???? What in the world. It just arrived today, so I’ll let you know how it goes. The face contouring ads are compelling!!!
I live with a teenager and I know when he’s an adult and complaining about me in therapy, he’s gonna be like, she was obsessed with my blackheads, and he won’t be wrong. Gah! I AM SORRY. But, also, gross! I’ve tried a million products to clear his nose up, and this cutie tooty octopus is currently my favorite one.
Trust me when I tell you, Traitors UK and Traitors Australia are both amazing—so much better than the US version. Available on Peacock!
My book club, Reading Between the Wines, just read The Poisonwood Bible. It was great, highly recommend. Read it with your book club and make themed food: Duncan Hines cake, ants on a log, and one egg split between six people!
My work book club just read Stoner, the greatest American novel you’ve never heard of. What I can say about this book: it felt so fucking true. And the ending wrecked me.
I’m currently reading The Happy Couple, which feels similar to Conversations with Friends mixed with Girls. I’m enjoying it!
Um, buying this book immediately?????
I was hoping for a prime rib complaint when you mentioned a teenager.