Cosmo Confession: I Hate Sex and the City

With a definitive lack of material to blog about, I thought I would reveal a secret that has burdened my frail shoulders for so long - I hate Sex and the City - from the characters to the horrific culture that it spawned. Now of course there is the obvious reason I hate the show - my prudish sensibilities deem it "sophisticated, Emmy-winning porn" for girls who like their adult entertainment to have more character and plot development than the average Girls Gone Wild by Joe Francis or Coed Confidential. But my hatred runs deeper.

Since every girl I know loved the show, I watched many episodes but found the characters really annoying. Samantha's cougar activities and affected staccato voice were grating on my nerves, and Charlotte's domesticated wholesomeness was really tiresome. Carrie's voice-overs that were supposed to reveal the secrets of relationships to the viewer were shallow, insipid, and nonsensical if you really sat there and listened to the content of her "column." If I were Samantha, Miranda, or Charlotte, I would have stopped sharing intimate secrets with my blabber mouth columnist friend a long ass time ago.

But beyond just the show, I hated the audience that were such fervent believers in the show - middle class girls who lived in the heartland and longed for a sexy, cool life in NYC, as they longed for Manolos with the religious fervor of a Catholic at the Vatican, and they bought the Steve Madden knock-offs in their desperate way to achieve the aspirational lifestyle of the characters. What was particularly sad was when girls compared themselves to the glamorous characters on the show - "I'm a Carrie!" their Facebook profiles would cheesily declare after they had taken a 4-quiz questionnaire.

Probably the saddest thing of all was when I read that a tourist could take a Sex and the City tour in NYC. Out-of-towners could get a glimpse at all the hot spots seen on the show, from Carrie's apartment to the sex shop where Charlotte got her rabbit vibrator. The tour then ended with pink Cosmos that were made infamous by the show. When I read this article in Radar, I realized how capitalist America suckered tourists into paying $50 during a recession to experience the life of the show in a third-hand way.

The bottom line was this: people didn't just gleam shitty relationship advice about becoming "romance intolerant," but they saw the fabulous wardrobe Patricia Field created for her characters as something that was attainable at the local H&M or Express. And the tragic truth of the world is this: Carrie's wardrobe in the movie or show were not attainable at a local Midwestern mall near you - as far as I can tell, the craft of Dries van Noten or Christian Dior couture are pretty hard to replicate decently even by the evil geniuses at Steve Madden and Forever 21 (both stores which have been slapped with lawsuits for their knock-offs).

And so, it's just so sad for young girls to aspire to supposedly "liberated" NYC life, filled with a stream of eligible men and a closet full of Jimmy Choo's and Giuseppe Zanotti's when the lives of the four characters are just shallow, superficial, and decidedly un-liberated. Because take this into account: these supposedly feminist women just sit around at lunch at a fancy chi-chi restaurant and define their identities around the men they date and their expensive "power" wardrobes rather than anything of real substance.

--By Mariam, who totally sounds like a pretentious, women's studies professor at some liberal arts college who hates fashion and looking cute. Sadly, that is really not the case as she has a shopping problem in reality.