Sex and the City, Gold Miners, and the Ab Lounge
Thoughts of the evening:
1. I like Sex and the City for malicious reasons.
The TBS censored episode I saw this evening that triggered this response involved the girls going to the Hamptons. While there, Charlotte, the WASP, hooks up with a promiscuous 25 year old who ends up giving her crabs. Carrie, the writer, meanwhile, meets a 25 year old female groupie. In one scene, the groupie tells Carrie she's a virgin and the older generation has devalued sex by sleeping with everything that moves.
I wish more of the episode had been Carrie pondering what the 25 year old groupie had said. She was basically treated as an insignificant, if puzzling, aberration. I think she had a valid point. But then, I, a 26 year old virgin, would. :-) Unlike the groupie, I'm not waiting for marriage. I'm just waiting for a Relationship. So far, no one of substance has expressed an interest.
For a while, I thought I liked this show because I could live vicariously through the characters. They are all beautiful, successful, rich, and constantly meeting handsome and interesting men. Although this is still part of the appeal, I realized tonight that the stronger allure was that I could watch them suffer - the complete inverse of my original theory! In this case, because they are beautiful, successful, rich, and constantly meeting handsome and interesting men, I'm jealous of them and want them to hurt.
And I'm not the only envious soul. I've heard - although I'd have to do some research to substantiate the claim - there are many, many people out there who have become depressed from watching Friends and Sex and the City. Apparently, they don't feel good about themselves because their lives don't match up with the fabulous expectations created by the characters of these two popular shows. How much more unrealistic standards could we come up with?! Six pretty people who live in huge apartments in New York and interact like they're living in a college dorm or, the even further-fetched, four pretty, successful women in New York changing partners every week.
I suppose what I understand least is that the character I can relate to most, Charlotte, gives it away nearly as often as the most sexually adventurous character, Samantha. Charlotte seems to want to find Prince Charming and, being beautiful, sophisticated, rich, and running an art gallery, she has plenty of applicants for the job. For some reason this makes me think she would be a little choosier about who she sleeps with, but it doesn't appear to. She won't date more than one person at a time, which is something, I guess. But if she's ever gone by anything like the 'Third Date Rule' - which I think is a ridiculously short waiting period to begin with - the viewer only sees her after the time is up. I guess since she and Cynthia, the lawyer, seem so up-tight about everything else, I would have expected them to be a little more discriminating about lovers. Maybe she worries that if she doesn't put out the perfect man won't stick around long enough for her to determine that he's the perfect man. Maybe I've fallen into the trap of psychoanalyzing fictional characters. :-) I'll stop now.
None of this, of course, will stop me from watching the show.
2. I recently said Catherine Zeta-Jone's character in Intolerable Cruelty was a gold miner as opposed to a gold digger.
Makes for a very different story, no? :-D
3. The Ab Lounge looks like some kind of medieval torture device.
No real reason for the statement. Just an observation. And kinda apropos.