It's been quite some time since I've had a worst enemy. Now I think I have two at the same time, and they fit snugly within this extended woman-bashing vacation I'm on: Carrie Bradshaw and that accursed Miranda. Bring me their scalps! Yes, I've watched quite a few Sex & The City episodes, mostly out of the hope of seeing the one where Miranda gets her head caught in a rusty bear-trap. Due to an HBO leak, I actually know the entire plot of this episode: Carrie finds this very selfish of Miranda, as she believes that this affects her relationship with men (the twist is, she doesn't know that having a hemorrhaging red-headed friend is a GOOD thing, as it means having red-hair is a little more normal). While Carrie is pouting and trying to come up with a plot motif, Charlotte tries everything she can think of to help release Miranda. This involves taking off her shirt and energetically shooing away the dogs that are chewing on Miranda's ugly. It doesn't help much, so she joins a convent and becomes a naughty nun. There's also some sort of sidestory here about how Samantha is a raging whore: she finds out she is riddled with an air-borne STD called gonodiarrhea. She gets all smug about it, and thinks about trying to help Miranda, but takes her shoes instead. Mr. Big comes along to save the day by skinning chubby Miranda and commissioning a tailor to make a dress out of her. He gives the dress to Carrie, who wears it to a high-school prom and wins prom-queen. BUT IT'S A PRANK!! When she goes up to accept the tiara, instead she gets pigs-blood dumped on her! Carrie loses it and uses her nose to slay every last kid there. Season Finale.
I hereby hold the cast and crew of Sex & the City accountable for every social ill there is: if you look close enough, the themes are only holding women down. They preach conformity, dependence on men (while holding them in objective disdain) and rampant self-obsession. The name for this is Fauxmenism. I would know, as I'm a feminist (I dreamt about marrying Bjork last night, how feminist is that!?)
I'll give my Skeletor action figure to anyone who brings me their scalps. Or earlobes or something. I'm not picky.
3 comments:
Before I fell into the sewer of blog surfing, I had a friend say to me:
"well, it's official, everyone has a blog...which means everyone thinks they have something important to say, which is not consistent with my personal experience".
This friend is seeing the glass half empty, but, after having read through endless shitfilled ejournals, I agree that he has a point. But it's easy to tear down a house...
And so, instead of starting my own blog, I started engaging the few bloggers I found that were interesting (and you call yourself lazy). I'm telling you this, Thomas, because you're post made me feel the need to justify my admittedly presumptuous comments about your blogality. But then, with Bounty Hunt, you've offered a creed on fauxminism that was glorious, frank, and perhaps it even indulged the "thrust of my point". I too have a bad taste for the invasion of feminazism, and not only because of how it has affected the morality of women, but how it has enforced misandry and repressed the traditional use of sex, which, lets not be romantic here, is both as a tool (who needs to buy the cow...), and as a weapon (career building?). It is easy to see that both of these utilities are now lost on liberated, single, childless, unsuccessful, unhappy, unattractive unwomen. Perhaps it has even lead to these anal pubic hair proclivities, which is unforgivable, and no fox from the fifties would've been caught dead with the sphinctered Fu Manchu. But this is beside the point of this response, which was intended to plainly say that I've enjoyed your blog tremendously, I apologize for engaging it/you on a personal level, but that I felt a strong need to do so simply because your boundless creativity is often lost on simple souls like myself.
I should start by saying that I'm finding it difficult to restrain myself from making some snarky comment about nostalgia for the days when women were barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. Admittedly I tend to see red when men comment on the "morality" of women in the context of things like Sex & the City. It tends to make things blurry - I can admit it.
However I would like to make a couple of comments. While I take your point, Tom and Rogering Me, about the conformity promoted by such TV shows, I have to argue that it is no different then that on every other TV show in the form of product placement and marketing in general. The conformity is more about Jimmy Choo, Manolo Blahnik and drinking Cosmopolitans than anything else. The vast majority of women don't need $500 shoes dangled under our noses, because we're tempted - I'm not going to lie.
I am also willing to admit that there are women who will watch it and take away from it notions of "dependence on men (while holding them in objective disdain)." I'll get back to those women in a minute.
But my point is that is not what I take away from it, nor my friends, nor the scores of women who I have spoken to about it. And I can't help but think - at the risk of sounding antagonistic - that it's typical of a man (or a feminazi for that matter) to think that TV show IS all about men. Or women's perception of men.
It's not. That TV show is about women. It's about women and friendship and about what it's like to be torn between wanting to be seen as independent, equal, self sufficient and detached - dispelling traditional stereotypes that you abhor, while at the same time knowing that you are emotional, and maternal and dependant and often irrational - embracing in your heart of hearts the traditional notions of womanhood.
Men and sex, and...how did rogering me put it...misandry?? Those are collateral issues. Do we hate you sometimes?? Sure...but then Chateau Bow-wow (aka The Dog House) was around long before Sex and the City came about. Y'all do some stupid sh*t sometimes. Believe it or not, when women get together it's not all about negligees and tickle fights. Maybe it was better when girl-talk was privileged and not on network television.
I won't say that we are socializing girls well - because I don't think that we are. But that is a matter of parenting...of role models, it is not a matter of risque TV shows on HBO. And one final thing - speaking personally (but I know I'm not alone in this thought), girls love their mothers - they do. But they take their social cues, they derive their personal ideology and their notions of self worth from their fathers. This goes back to those women who derive the wrong notions from shows like Sex and the City. If you really are concerned about the "morality" of women, and "fauxminism" then be good to your daughters, and with regard to the other women you interact with...just know that your daughters will observe that, and internalize it, and expect it from the men in their lives. That's how you can make a difference - rather than passing judgement upon something you don't understand.
Sorry for the rant, Mr. C....but you know me...when I get all fired up...I just can't help myself.
Dear Lindz,
Where does one start with a response such as yours? I have this sinking feeling that this is going to feel like moral hygeine...
Though I would certainly like to avoid speaking for the whomunculus that is huwomanity, it is very clear that Sex and the City preaches everything but conformity, unless conformity for you is the radicalized political realm that does not represent the majority of society that has a pulse. And, speaking of chicken pie, I can not understand the connection you made to product placement, unless you're just making some weird cheap shot at (cue music from "Halloween")... CORPERATIONS. And what's this? Barefoot and pregnant used as epithets? I'm going to make some assumptions here: you've never been pregnant, you're not married, you're a (aspiring?) career woman, and you have wicked hot shoes (don't get me wrong, I LOVE wicked hot shoes). How do you think it makes women who are having children feel when you insinuate such behavior as socially backward and inferior? These are, I'm sure you're aware, the ones doing the role modelling that you're concerned about...oops, but wait, girls don't get social cues from their mothers? What bad Freudian psychology course did you take in college? Nextly, you've completely missed the point on my use of the word misandry (and I blame myself for the lack of explanation that went along with it). Of course guys do stoopid shit, as do transvestites, fags, girls, golden retrievers and hermaphrodites, (we won't get into the hermaphrodite golden retrievers...because THEY are retarded). And these stewpid things cause relationship problems. You can see that this is not the topic of discussion. The misandry I speak of is the institutionalized disdain for masculinity, soldiery, territoriality, and male confidence (also known as "chauvinism"). This is quite tightly connected to leftwing socialism that exists in blue america and non-hockey canada, where women are proud and men are nervous. And yes, hick-jockism (to be fairly snide) isn't the best alternative, but at least they're having babies (and they don't have to be paid to do it, as in la belle provence). The real question here is: how can women who do not come with: a) a trailer park or b) hairy legs and a bandana desire families (gosh!) when they cannot escape the social pressure to be..."raging whores" with six figure incomes?
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