Then there’s the worst of the four friends, Miranda Hobbes, played by Cynthia Nixon. Miranda, even more so than Samantha, is the definition of what is wrong with the women’s movement. She openly despises men, sleeps with everything she can find and when she does run into a guy who really does care for her she goes out of her way to abuse his feelings.
She’s so single minded about her “career” that the idea of being a mother terrifies her. When she does get pregnant she immediately decides she needs to end the pregnancy because the baby’s inconvenient. The idea of even telling the baby’s father, her eventual husband Steve, is considered proscribed – after all what does the father have to do with it, it is her body, right?
But the bizarre thing is Miranda keeps the baby. Which brings up another question for another blog: how come these hard faced, angry, leftist females, who screech about abortion in TV shows and movies, when their characters get pregnant end up keeping the baby? Think about it.
Miranda says things like, “I know how to please a man, give him most of your power.” And the Women’s Studies departments across America’s far flung campuses slap their mitts together like trained Seals. In real life, there is no way the bar owner, Steve Brady, would have ever married her. She kicked him out of her life, abused his friendship, and gets angry when he tries to help her when she needs help. In real life, Miranda Hobbes, esquire would be a very lonely woman.
So what did I learn watching this show? I learned it was funny, I also learned these are four women I’d never want to be like or could be friends with because they are unable to talk about anything but themselves; and if they do talk about something other than themselves the conversation begins to sound like the banter of a teenager.
Of course certain things that occur in the show and dialogue come off as real life. All women who have been single until their early to mid-thirties have had experiences in the dating world that are similar to many of the experiences each of the girls have had. Of course, most of us don’t wear Manolo Blahniks, or the silk Dior news print dress while apologizing to our ex-boyfriend’s ex-wife for breaking up the marriage. Most of us with a sense of decency and honor would never have an affair with a married ex-boyfriend.
Sex and the City is the radical feminist view of how successful career women should live and the message is loud and clear: women you have your choices but the choices you have are to be like these four, because having any real self-respect and a real emotional attachment to a man isn’t a choice. The sad thing is this show matters because so many women between the ages of 13 and whatever have seen it and heard that message. We’ve heard the wrong messages for over 40 years and the show, and even after it has been off the air for nearly a decade, is the refined missive from the woman’s movement and that missive is not good.
Stephanie Janiczek is a former Capitol Hill Staff Assistant, Schedule C Appointee and Leadership Institute alum. Military Wife, Hunter, Horse enthusiast, dog owner, writer and feminist kryptonite.
