A Cycle of Bad Behavior, part 2

...continued from last week

"Sex and the City" is a dangerous show for women and an infuriating show for men and it's going to live on in infamy.

I'm sure of it.

Before I delved into entire seasons of the show, I assumed "Sex and the City" was the female equivalent of "Entourage."

Wealthy men buy pool tables, shiny cars and bigass televisions.
Wealthy women buy shoes, shiny jewelry and bigass purses.

There is a jubliance and laughability in "Entourage" that seems absent from "Sex and the City", despite both shows being half-hour HBO comedies. There is an edge of fear and anger in "Sex and the City" that isn't in "Entourage" or most any comedies, for that matter.

Episode after episode, the quartet of New York socialites "Forrest Gump" their way from man to man to man, finding neurotically 'Seinfeld'-ian reasons to drop them all, buy another pair of shoes, a gallon or ice cream and talk about how bad the guy was in bed.

The characters in "Sex and the City" strike me not as confident and strong, but confused, defensive and uncertain of what they want. And this seems to be the fork-in-the-road at which men and women split. The iconography of this feminine grouping suggest a role model relationship with many of the shows fans. Indeed, few would argue against the hook of the show being female independence, self-satisfaction, self-sufficiency, all-around success and fabulous shoes.

Their jobs are elite. They don't need a man to pay for things.
They're strong-willed enough that men are appropriated for sport rather than intimacy.
There are no more important relationships than the ones forged by these four friends.
Happiness comes in the form of shopping, food, parties or sex.

Me thinks thy fairest gender doth protest too much. These four running themes of the show may be what the characters are selling, but I ain't buying it.

Looking back on six seasons of romantic debauchery, these women were rarely happy, certainly never operating on much more than fleeting contentments. These professional women only sparingly focused on their jobs (as far as the context of the show goes), leaving the viewer to define them, not by their work or their professional interests, but by their primarily vapid, cold and childish social existences. Like children stomping their feet and whining that they are old enough to do whatever they want, these women harp so shrilly on the idea that they don't need men, children or professional identity in order to secure happiness, femininity or self-respect, that there protestations fall on deafened ears.

I'm not claiming this idea is generally fruitless, but I am claiming this idea is a lie when the ladies from "Sex and the City" tell it. With each passing episode, these four characters talked and talked and talked about one philosophy while acting upon another.

Why are men considered the gender that lies?.

Several years ago, I was fascinated with a claim I've heard many women make regarding their "getting ready" habits. For a while, I was under the impression that when women chose their makeup and outfit in preparation for a night on the town, they did so to attract men. A large percentage of women scoffed at this assumption by claiming they were, in fact, dressing to impress their fellow females.

What follows is an amalgam of every conversation on this topic I've ever had with every girl I've befriended, dated or wanted to date.

Me: You mean, you're not trying to attact guys? Are you trying to attract
women?
Them: No. It's a confidence thing.
Me: You want to be confident around women? Men don't play a part?
Them: They play a small part, but we're not competing with men. We're competing with
women –
Me: -For the attention of men.
Them: Men, sure. Sometimes, I guess. But not completely. Men don't judge us like
women. Women are much stricter judges. They know what they're looking
for; what's cheap, what's cute, what's stylish, what's tacky...
Me: Okay. Let's say some girl thinks you look tacky. So what? You're uninterested in
being her friend and you're not interested in dating her, who cares what she
thinks?
Them: Again, it's a confidence thing. Most men don't care what you wear. They care
about how tall you are, how skinny you are, maybe just how drunk you are.
Clothes are important to women because clothes are under our control. If we're
short, have big tummys, stringy hair or bags under our eyes, sometimes
there's not a whole lot we can do about it.
Me: So if you can impress your competition with something you control, like clothes,
it somehow validates you? Because unlike cankles, you had a choice of with
which shoes to ornament your feet?
Them: Yeah kinda, but not really.*
Me: So, it has nothing to do with men?
Them: We don't want you to think we're ugly, but you don't judge us by the same
standards we judge ourselves.
Me: …And women have higher standards?
Them: Do you like it when girls wear ponytails, rock t-shirts and jogging shorts?
Me: Heck yeah.
Them: Then yes, women have higher standards.

1) Based on the above conversation, the popularity of 'The Bachelor' is baffling to me. 2) Women have a biblically deep-seeded hatred for one another. It's nasty and sharpened to a diamond-cutting edge. 3) Men are not important to women. Identity is important to women. Somewhere along the line, men became a part of helping to define a woman's identity.

For men, this sucks, because women will have many more identities throughout their lives than pairs of shoes.

The trouble with "Sex and the City" (if you are in the mindset that there is trouble with "Sex and the City") is that the show holds a mirror up to its viewers, and reflects back at them, a caricatured likeness; just accurate enough for many viewers not to note the inumerous inaccuracies. For better or for worse, New York is a crazy town full of insanity and heartbreak. For better or for worse, women fill gaping emotional voids with clothing accessories.** And for better or for worse, men are women's easiest scapegoats for describing that which makes them dissatisfied.

Men on that show are more innocent bystanders of this neurotic quartet than they are honest bogeymen. On the rare occasion one of them admits that it isn't necessarily a man drumming the rhythm to her dissatisfaction, the surrounding characters react as if the society of women has somehow been compromised.

To understand the nature of this society, we must first understand the members.

The four sides of the average woman? (from left to right) "the princess," "the brat," "the temptress," "the bitch."

Carrie is an inhibited socialite pining for the life of a metropolitan princess with a selfish man who, season after season, allows Carrie to be his punching bag (Mr. Big, duh), while genuinely mistreating (twice) a good man (Aiden). All in the magical search of her elusive 5th Avenue fairytale ending.

Charlotte is an intensely self-involved naïve rationalizing her way to momentary happiness like a child wanton of a cookie. Anything deviating from her idea of perfection is immediately flawed.

Samantha is simultaneously the least realistic character on the show and the character with the least aggressive outlook on the world. I hate her of course because she's hedonistically narcissistic and vapid. Samantha is written as if she were a scared woman deciding to act like an empty male stereotype in hopes of never being hurt. In season 3, when faced with a sudden illness, Samantha desperately wishes she had gotten married and returns to these feelings when she is diagnosed with breast cancer several seasons later. In season 4 she shares a healthy and monogamous relationship that made her happier than she normally found herself to be - of course, that relatiosnhip ended because the man couldn't handle monogamy, because y'know... every single man on earth cheats, right?

Miranda hates men. I don't know why. Men don't know why. Miranda doesn't know why. She's professionally successful and leverages that against her personal ideals as a means of justifying her frustration with why she happier. Frankly, Miranda seems as condeming of herself as she is the men surrounding her. Ironically, Miranda's unexplained absense of self-satisfaction is a more accurate portrayal of many men than Samantha's hedonism. Miranda expells much of her energy berating her friends for focusing so vehemently on the male gender, while simultaneously steaming about whatever failed male encounter she last had. In short, Miranda is a successfully intelligent person whose militant self-denial causes others (including her closest friends) to disregard her.

These are the protagonists of "Sex and the City;" the four faces of everywomanhood. We are asked to empathize with their love lives while excusing their neurosis. And in the process of doing this, we tacitly accept that it is normal for women to be disparaging of men, sheltered and wanton of reality.

But hey, that's New York, right?

The overwhelming popularity of the show suggests that not only do women accept these generally negative characterizations, but they applaud them.

Some would suggest that because it is women behaving like men, I am thus threatened.

Perhaps.

But I'd also be threatened by men behaving this way. What was the last show that unabashedly allowed four male characters to talk, think and act on every neurotic sexual and social impulse they had? "Entourage"? "Seinfeld"? "Bosom Buddies?"

Any recent show with men behaving badly portrays them as buffoons who eventually got what is coming to them. Not "Sex and the City". They create the majority of their own unhappiness and we are asked to shrug it off as a typical bohemian female existence.

Admittedly, the show is not only a collection of pathological referendums against men. "Sex and the City" could never have grabbed millions of interested fans without being smartly written, provocative at least somewhat accurate. Do not mistake my frustration with the show's content as a statement of it's worthlessness. No show that I can recall (although I never saw "Ally McBeal") has been able to capture the ideal of co-female companionship more warmly than the HBO serial, nor has any program offered a similar take on the postfeminine conception of hope, regret and empowerment.

But if each episode is sharpened to a cutting point, it is only the viewer that gets drawn and quartered by the mixed messages the characters carry throughout each season. The protagonists of this show, so ensconced in the idea of identity, never truly pause to figure out what their identity is.

I can hear it now, "Dude. Adam, relax. It's just a television show. It's 28 minutes of harmless entertainment about which you are in the process of writing 3,000 words. The show went off the air almost four years ago. Let it go."

I know, I know. I'm like a 14-year-old just discovering Led Zeppelin and asking his father if he's ever heard of them.

The problem is, I don't know of many more potent television shows than "Sex and the City". Many have been equally, if not more popular, but few have threatened to serve as a behavioral template. It would be harmless if women didn't emulate this behavior. It would be harmless if women didn't see some fun and excitement in treating men the same as shoes: cute obsessions that rarely make it past the new seasonal line.

It would be difficult to pinpoint specific examples of the show's stranglehold on American female society, but it is nevertheless as palpable as the smoke in a room set ablaze.

"Sex and the City" was a popular book because it touched upon something pre-existing in women, but the show became an instant hit because it acted as an iconic pied piper to millions of women unaware of how to be "fabulous". Twenty years ago, the word diva carried wholly negative connotations. How many young women, tongue only slightly planted in cheek, strive to become fierce 'n' fabulous divas? To be looked at as uncompromising and unapologetic?

"Sex and the City" plays the "man game", a game that women have been fighting to abolish for centuries. And by doing its part to level the playing field, it is helping to create a side of women that is no less despicable than the same powerful, uncompromising, unapologetic side men have stereotypically displayed for milleniums.

But it's a side I've never had. It's a side I've always felt should be destroyed, not counterbalanced in women; and certainly not celebrated in a serial of misandristic yuppies.

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* This is a clever trick, girls have concocted. Even when you're desperately listening and clinging to their every word and formulating an analysis based on what they say – and often what they say begs to be filtered through analysis – you will never completely understand. Women will always, always, always tweak what you say. Sometimes you'll even catch them tweaking what you say by repeating a phrase you just used. When this happens (and it will), be sure to savor it. Don't let the conversation drift away from this; roll around in this moment like a pig in slop. Marinate in the glorious juice of seeing the women realize her mistake, regret it and immediately look around for an open door or window to which she might flee.

** Before you formulate a Women Against Adam Assembly (appropriately abbreviated to WAAA) because of this last comment, remember that Charlotte (Kristen Davis) expressed this very sentiment in the 12th episode of season 2.


For further exploration of this topic, I suggest checking this site: http://www.genders.org/g39/g39_negra.html. This article is more scholarly and passes less judgement than mine, but it's nowhere near as funny.

A Cycle of Bad Behavior, part 1

"First, I take a man; then I strip away all reason and accountability."
   -Melvin Udall (Jack Nicholson) in "As Good As It Gets" responding to an adoring female fan wondering how he writes such accurate female protagonists in his books.

If you've read my blog over the past 16 months with any regularity, then you're fairly familiar with my insatiable curiosity about women. Specifically, the driving force that shapes female personalities. I realize that intending to make sense of women is as fruitless as an apple orchard in February, but searching for discoveries where none are thought to be found didn't stop Magellan and it's not going to stop me.

In conversing with girls, gals, chicks, broads, dames, cuties and women, the general consensus seems to be that men are easy to handle.

We're rather simple creatures.

While I wouldn't equate simplicity to stupidity, I am under the impression that men also feel this way about themselves; especially when compared to women..

There isn't a single aspect about women that should be misconstrued as simple. When I use the word "simple," I am not speaking of intelligence. This gender analysis is focused on emotions, not intellect.

And emotionally speaking, what tic-tac-toe is to Rubik's Cube, men are to women.

I've been feeling a bit male-bashed lately and the great bulk of it can be attributed to Candace Bushnell...

...That bitch.

For those of you unfamiliar with Ms. Bushnell, she's the author of four popular books, all comprised of roughly the same content, aimed at roughly the same demographic and none more popular than her first novel entitled, "Sex in the City." Nine years ago, HBO thought the book would make a wonderful television series and hired the tyke from "Square Pegs"; the woman from "Big Trouble In Little China" (who later played Britney Spears' mom in "Crossroads"); the actress guilty of brushing her teeth with a toothbrush dropped in Jerry Seinfeld's toilet during his show's heyday; and Gozer the Gozarian from "Ghostbusters" (see fig. 1.1).

      

Fig.1.1: Typical New York monster (left) and typical New York Gozarian (right)

"Sex in the City" eventually proved phenominally popular. I never had HBO while the show aired, but look around the apartment of any late-20s/ early-30s bohemian female and you'll find at least one season of the show living on in infamy somewhere on the premesis. It's like "Dirty Dancing", "Pretty In Pink" and "Erin Brockovich" rolled into one. What is it about certain movies that draw women in like lemmings off a cliff?

Four years after the show called it quits, I wanted to learn what the hubbub was all about; I wanted to find enlightenment. I wanted to know how a half-hour situation comedy managed to grab the hearts and minds of every women between 18 and 40. Watching women in real life wasn't cultivating enough answers for me. Women are far too aware of themselves, far to worried who is watching and who is judging. I could only hope that the reflective qualities of "Sex in the City" would allow me to catch American women with their guard down.

In short, I hoped that "Sex in the City's" national acceptance would illuminate the neo-feminist pathology without pulling any punches; without censoring for the benefit of the fragile male ego. And while I'd venture to guess that fans of the show believe "Sex in the City" does exactly that, I'm of the belief that the show voids itself by creating caricatures out of the hundreds of male guest stars that traipse in and out of the series.

People - both men and women - want to see a reflection of themselves in pop culture characters. When enough people identify with these characters, they become icons. Certainly enough women (and homosexual males) seemed to have found their reflection in Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte that it didn't take long for the show to encapsulate an air of iconography. But if we want to watch versions of ourselves represented on screen and in magazines in order to feel validated, isn't there a danger of letting the cart run the horse? What if people, in an effort to be accepted and understood, look toward shows like this for guidance on how to be better versions of themselves?

Friends, family and professionals sometimes withhold this guidance, or insure that it be released with a price. Television never judges. It allows us all to take what we want, if we want - while asking nothing in return.

So what does "Sex In the City" give and more importantly, what do women take?

Well, slip off your $800 Christian Louboutin patent mary janes and toss your Marc Jacobs pocket hobo aside and lemme tell you what I've gathered…

...to be continued on Friday. June 22, 2007
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The Misconceptions of Cleanly Eating

I can no longer eat my food properly.

I'm such a messy eater that I have recently become unwilling to eat while driving a car. While many might never imagine attempting to eat food while operating a car, I, not too long ago, used to nurture this instinct. I wouldn't just eat in a car, I'd feast in the damn thing. I'd balance my McNuggets on the dashboard, stick my Slurpee in the cup holder, rest my Cheesy Gordita Crunch in the door flap where maps were stored and stuffed all my candy where I was supposed to be stuffing all my change.

Turning a corner sharply or stomping the brakes would have caused a mess of Seussical proportions.

These days, I won't even open my Taco Bell drive-thru bag until I get home. I've got a deplorable streak of six or seven trips wherein I's unwrap my taco, spill meat on my pants and complain about it the rest of the way home.

I'm just not going to subject myself to such agitation anymore.

But my problems don't stop with vehicle interiors. It's getting to the point where I can't eat inside restaurants either.
I was recently sitting at the window seat of a Chipotle in the heart of Downtown Chicago. It isn't smart for me to sit in a window seat anywhere while eating anything. First of all, I eat alone. That's not a cue to pity me, I prefer to eat alone. I get a lot of reading done.

Sitting at an open window on a beautiful summer afternoon however, my reading gets distracted by the myriad of interesting people walking by.

But along with my reading, so does my eating become something almost unbearably difficult for me.

Part of it, I think, is that I've never fully memorized where my mouth is in proportion to the rest of my face. Sometimes, when drinking out of a cup with a straw, I open my big gaping mouth in preparation of accepting the straw. I move my mouth over the area where the straw is and I close, ready to feel the smooth weak plastic in between my lips.

You'd be surprised how many times I miss my mark and allow the straw to jab my cheek or poke my eye.

Or maybe you wouldn't be surprised. I guess that just depends on your opinion of me.

Missing your mouth is embarrassing though; there's really no coming back from it. Poking your own eye with a straw hurts and everyone laughs.

You wouldn't think that something so prominently displayed at the front of one's face would be so difficult to locate. I mean, I've been eating for quite a while and I should have mastered my mouth by now.

But I haven't and with each passerby with a sharp new short-sleeved button-up shirt or fresh pedicure, my eyes grows raw with straw jabs and my lap grows heavy with taco fixin's.

Tacos are messy to begin with.

Tacos in a hard tortilla shell have never been eaten cleanly in the history of food. Don't write in and tell me that you once ate a taco without spilling or that your best friend makes perfectly tidy tacos each Tuesday.

You're lying.

Tacos are impossible to eat without spilling.

This is universal.

This is undeniable.

This goes for everyone.

On any given day lately, you'll find me with lettuce hanging off my lower lip reminiscent of my tortoise, Tillie. I'll also have cheese sprinkled all over my slacks and chunks of fallen steak plummet through the cracks in the hard shell tortilla like cars disappearing through splitting asphalt during an earthquake.

It's gotten to the point where I wear my dark ties on days I plan to eat at Chipotle.

It's that inevitable.

But that's tacos for you.

Everyone knows how messy tacos are, right?

So why then, when I've got corn salsa dabbled on my chin like a supermodel mole and lettuce draping the spot on my lap where I should have put my napkin, do passersby on the street still look at me as if they can clean 'n' clear my taco better than me?

They can't. Tacos are messy. They cannot be eaten cleanly. Don't act like I'm alone in my inability to keep taco
ingredients in their original casing.

Pretending your tacos are clean is uppity.

Don't be uppity.

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