the times | Monday December 6 2021 3times2
Cynthia Nixon, Kim
Cattrall, Kristin Davis
and Sarah Jessica
Parker in Sex and
the CityAnd Just Like That...
is on Sky Comedy and
Now from Thursdaythey talked about us men like this
COVER AND BELOW: KOBAL COLLECTION/REX FEATURESI gave my
girlfriend
a Tiffany
bracelet.
‘I hate it,’
she said
with a
laugh
I
n the early Noughties I had one
of my worst Christmases with
someone who turned out to be
my least favourite girlfriend.
I was staying with my mum and
I’d bought my newish girlfriend
what I thought was a very nice
present: a Tiffany bracelet.
And while a gentleman would never
reveal the price of such things, let’s
just say that for a not massively
remunerated journalist it set me back
a few quid. Although it was going to be
worth it, I told myself, because of the
pleasure it would bring, the reflected
glory my generosity would create.
How wrong I was.
“I hate it,” my girlfriend said with
a laugh, asking if she could have the
receipt to return it.
Somewhat compounding this
extraordinary behaviour was the fact
that this line did not even sound
original. It felt borrowed from Sex and
the City, the show she loved and which
made up another present she opened
far more happily (a SATC box set from
her blood relations). I remember theepisode when Sarah Jessica Parker’s
awful Carrie is proposed to and talks
about how much she hates the
engagement ring. And another when
Carrie is given a $900 cashmere scarf
from her friend and asks if she can
take it back and get cash.
But that was SATC in a nutshell, the
show about brunching young women
in New York. A lot of people I knew
lapped it up. But it left me cold. And
the Tiffanygate episode, as I later
called it, convinced me that it wasn’t
doing anyone any good.
They say porn is bad for men
because it presents an unreal view of
women and their bodies and what
they will do in bed. I agree with that
summation and I don’t think lad
culture in the 1990s or shows like Men
Behaving Badly were great for women
either. But I’d also say SATC was guilty
of having a similar corrosive effect —
on women’s view of men and what
they can expect from life.
Yes, on the surface it was all
harmless, glamorous fun, these four
women wondering whether the banker
lover they had was quite rich enough
for their tastes. Carrie had a famously
on-off thing with a man called Mr Big,
played by Chris Noth, his name
seeming to refer not just to his
physique but also, we assumed, the
contents of his underpants.
The problem came when the
Manhattan fantasy started seeping
into the lives of people I knew. And
Tiffanygate showed this in full gloriousTechnicolor as far as I was concerned.
“Just like that,” to quote from the
show, with its gratingly chirpy tone,
oozing entitlement from every pore.
A lot of men I knew who were single
and dating in the 1990s encountered
a zeitgeist that was informed by many
things, not least the Spice Girls, whose
girl power mantra was, I would say,
a generally good, real and very
liberating thing. At least the Spices
felt like real people. SATC exerted
a similar pull on women, but it created
a strange fantasy of perfection that
no one was going to reach. One friend
tells me that going to bed with women
during this era was a bit like sitting an
exam you were never going to pass.
When the drama first came out,
I was single and a friend of mine
organised a speed-dating evening.
I wasn’t particularly successful (by
which I mean I was not at all
successful). But there was one woman
in particular whose beautifully washed
long auburn hair virtually sliced my
eyeballs off, such was the speed with
which she turned on her heels when I
said what I did for a living: “Freelance
journalist.” Was it because I did a
terrible, immoral job? Possibly. I was
pretty sure it was because she thought
I was unlikely to earn enough money.
When Carrie eventually got jilted
on her wedding day and her friends
rushed to her aid, my sympathies were
somewhat limited. As they were for
my soon-to-be ex. We didn’t last very
long and I never gave her the receipt.Ben Dowell
Going to bed
was like sitting
an exam
I
n 1997 I reviewed a small volume
called Sex and the City for the
Financial Times, with the literary
editor and I wrongly expecting it
to be an investigation of sexual
mores in London’s Square Mile.
Realising the mistake before
I’d finished the first sentence,
I ended up dismissing this collection
of New York Observer columns as
lightweight, aspirational lifestyle
journalism that would have little
impact. Ha!
The next year the HBO drama hit,
giving coherence, wit and a (sort of)
feminist edge to the boozy ladette
culture already flowering. Suddenly it
wasn’t about women sinking pints. It
was about cocktails, careers, parenting
choices and a Park Avenue version of
1970s sisterhood. And frocks and
shagging too, of course.
The SATC-quake coincided with me
moving to female-dominated features
journalism and meeting the woman
who would eventually become my
wife. She ran with a pack of
advertising industry glamazons
known as the Support Tights, who at
our first meeting gave me the kind of
once-over physical appraisal that
women have endured for centuries,
followed by an intense vetting
procedure.
I’d come of age in the right-on
1980s, when Doc Martens and
discussions about apartheid were
de rigueur, rather than Manolos and
multiple orgasms. I’d dated smart,
attractive but arguably earnest girls.
Suddenly I was surrounded by women
who were vocal about their ambitions,
hopes and carnal wants who dressed
svelte and sharp, who were far smarter
and funnier than me. It was daunting,
hilarious and absolutely brilliant.
One magazine editor floated the
idea of offering female readers
disposable cameras with which to
photograph their partner’s face at the
moment of orgasm, with a view to
printing the gurning results. At the
newspaper I worked for we’d run
articles on vaginoplasty and quizzes to
determine whether you were a hippy
or a headbanger in bed. We’d get sent
sex toys all the time. I was sent a
Rampant Rabbit and having, er, no
immediate use for it myself, banged
out an all-staff email offering it free,
“first come, first served”.
Of course, there’s a danger of
overstating the case for SATC. Carrie’s
thoughts always returned to Mr Big
and marriage. Samantha was the only
one who had sex with her bra off. The
HBO series was created by a man,
Darren Star. I could go on, but I’d be
mansplaining.
At least SATC originally offered
an energetic, modern, female-led
sensibility that chimed with the 1990s
sense that things were exciting and
could be different.Nick Curtis
I was sent
a Rampant
Rabbit by post