Sex And The City

Sex and the City - The Complete Second Season
$29.98
Great price for an entire season of the show. Definitely beats buying the whole collection.

Sex and the City - The Complete Fourth Season
$29.98
I would say any seasons in this series would be a must for fans (except maybe season 1). This is a great season as Carrie is back with Aiden, Samantha actually falls in love, births, divorces, etc. This is when I think the series really hit its stride.

Sex and the City
$7.99
I enjoy these SATC books. But another reading I enjoy is Chelsea Goldstein's Hook-Up Chronicles, Tori Spelling Mommywoodand Chelsea Handlers Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea.

Sex and the City - The Complete First Season
$29.98
I watched a few episodes from the first series again recently, and was struck by how very dated it all seemed. The world SATC depicts is very much the pre-9/11 America of the Clinton era - buoyant, culturally liberal, over-confident and slightly intoxicated with its own economic success. The cumulative impact of 9/11, the Iraq War and a great financial crash have taken their toll and the series now seems emblematic of a quite different, altogether less vulnerable era. Even the film felt dated when it came out (although this did not stop me from enjoying it).

I have to admit that I do find SATC entertaining when I'm in the right mood, and the women are all gorgeous to look at (despite what some male detractors would have us believe). Sometimes the series just seems escapist in a light hearted and enjoyable way. But there is no doubt that it panders to and celebrates the worst stereotypes about air-headed female behaviour, and I can't help feeling slightly ambivalent about this. The women whine and cogitate endlessly about the failings of their boyfriends and their own lack of self-fulfilment, and the audience is, by implication, expected to empathise with their angst, when in fact it is blindingly obvious that all four women already possess all the ingredients of a happy, fulfilled life, if they could only let go of some of their dysfunctional attitudes and behaviour. Why a fetishistic obsession with expensive shoes and designer labels should be thought 'empowering' in a modern woman beats me. But then again I find it difficult to understand why women like this would ever feel oppressed in the first place. From any external (particularly non-US) perspective they would appear to be some of the most privileged and sheltered human beings on the planet. The gay characters in the series are also crude stereotypes. Invariably highly effeminate and employed in the fashion industry, they like nothing better than to gossip with straight women and share their deepest confidences. This is a Hollywood fantasy about how gay men behave. In reality most - well, certainly the ones I've met - are unremarkably masculine in behaviour and strongly prefer the company of other men.

SATC is perhaps best accepted for what it aims to be - harmless, escapist entertainment featuring neurotic, sexually hyper-active people you would never really want to meet in real life - Woody Allen for the 1990s but without the NY Jewish humour that kept Allen's best films so firmly anchored in real life. A manifesto for feminism or female self-empowerment it most certainly 'aint.