Sexism and the City.

I recently watched Sex and the City 2, just for kicks. For a show about 5 women, I expected more feminism and less pandering, to be honest. Would I call it outright sexism? Maybe not overtly.. but I don’t think the show went far enough in promoting feminist ideals.

Let us count the ways (SPOILERS).

Remember that scene where Carrie is at Stanford’s wedding, and her name on the invite (or something) is Carrie Preston, instead of Carrie Bradshaw, and Stanford goes on to say something like, “You take his name, because you’re the woman!” when questioned about it, like it’s obvious? Yeah, that scene. There, I expected Carrie to defend herself, to point out the hypocrisy, maybe.. but no. No no. Instead she says some stupid line about her hat being “Bradshaw”esque or some crap.

Really? REALLY? That’s the best they could do to defend her? Write it some shitty line about a shitty hat?

And it doesn’t end there… in another scene where Carrie gets jealous of Big flirting with some other woman, she herself refers to herself as “Carrie Preston”..

Good going, scriptwriters. In one fell swoop, you’ve given a sizeable audience the impression that a woman must take her husband’s last name in order to lay some kind of claim to him, while leaving the notion that women must do this because they’re women, out there uncontradicted.

Second.. remember the scene where the women in burka’s in Abu Dhabi rescue the girls from a horde of angry, sexually repressed men? Then they remove their black garb to reveal New York’s latest fashions underneath?

Is that not going a bit far? It’s one thing to have the show revolve around hopelessly materialistic, shop-a-holic women from New York.. but to suggest that women in Abu Dhabi, who are repressed every day of their lives somehow don the latest fashions under their oppressive gear is insulting to the women of the region.

Lastly, now this isn’t strictly sexism.. but it does showcase, in my opinion, the double-standards for the genders. Aidan, the stereotypical ‘nice guy’ in the movies. A welcome reprieve from the generic asshole Mr. Big.

What does he do? He cheats on his wife, who he has three children with, by kissing Carrie. And he is not even cast in a bad light! He shows no remorse, he showed every intention of planning the cheating, it’s not like it was a spur of the moment thing, and I am simply outraged. WHY would you make the ‘nice guy’ of the series a cheating scumbag? Why?

I’m disappointed, ladies. Very disappointed.