Gawker
"Samantha looked at hooking up with random people as not a big deal, so that's what I did too." So says "Lisa" in an ABC News story today. A fan of Sex and the City, Lisa took after the hyperbolized New York City ladies when she was just an impressionable 14-year-old living on Long Island. She puffed cigarettes and swilled icky sticky Cosmopolitans (having sneaked into bars) like Carrie and she bed hopped and said things like "you have funky spunk," just like Samantha. (She did not, unfortunately, become a lawyer like Miranda; or, thankfully, become a shrill nuisance like Charlotte). "It wasn't 'Sex and the City's' fault. I love the show, but I think it made it a little easier to justify my behavior," she elaborates. Eventually, Lisa wised up and went and married a Mormon and moved to the blasted wastelands of Utah.
Her husband initially made her get rid of her precious DVDs, but she's slowly gained them back and watches them once in a while. And everything's OK. Phew. "Now that I'm older, looking back, I'm like, 'Oh my gosh, these women are in their 30s. What was I thinking?," she says. "I'm not sure I'd want my little sister seeing the movie — she's 14 — but I think it's a fun show for people my age now, as long as you don't take it too seriously." Exactly. Though, the show is still dangerous! According to a professor of psychiatry at UConn, anyway:
Hm. Well said, I think. I guess the lesson here is to always remember that these women are adults and that they don't actually fucking exist.
With teenagers and young adults, there's a certain degree of role modeling that goes on. There's a certain 'if it's done on the screen then it's OK, it's normal,'" he said. "You watch 'Sex and the City,' you see these women go out for dinner, come back, and wake up in satin sheets with a gorgeous guy. Who wouldn't like that? But it doesn't show what goes on under the surface in real sexual relations. Sex is an extraordinarily complex, emotional process. No one wants to talk about that. They're not going to see the reality.
Comments
I propose we appoint two adults to watch over each child to make sure they don't do things like parrot behavior they see in movies and on TV.
I guess I owe the loathesome SATC a debt of gratitude for making slutty girls sluttier.
wait, someone once said on that show "you have funky spunk" ?
jesus, i'm glad i was watching mystery science theater and crappy anime as a kid.
Wait, so this was the show where the tag line was "I want to believe"?
In my morality plays, the whore always dies from AIDS.
Eventually, Lisa wised up and went and married a Mormon and moved to the blasted wastelands of Utah.
That's my nominee for Best Deadpan Humor of 2008, Richard.
One thing we should all thank John McCain for is the resurgence of the hilarious word "trollop."
And no one should ever drink Cosmos, they're gross. The end.
I hate that I know exactly what episode that picture is from.
There has to be a middle ground between Samanthaism and Mormonism. Seriously. Moderation, America, moderation.
So she went from emulating Sex in the City to Big Love?
So is Lisa the one who dies in the movie?
Mr. One doesn't believe me when I tell him that this show ruined the city by attracting all these airheads here who really believed that they could live like this FICTIONAL CHARACTERS!
I have never had a Cosmo nor have I ever gone to any "hotspot" in the Meatpacking District. In fact, I haven't been to the Meatpacking District ever since it became "hot."
Next time, just watch Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country instead. If there's a Kim Cattrall character to emulate, it's Valeris. Except for the part about the Starfleet coup and the assassination of the Klingon ambassador and the attempted murder of the Federation president, who by the way was played by the same dude who played the dad on That 70's Show, of course.
@semiserious: Really, it's all HBO's fault.
@semiserious: Ironically, Big Love has hotter sex scenes.
@In Other News...: The rape-y mind meld with Spock near the end was a little creepy too.
@The One: these, not this. I can't believe I screwed up like that!
@jaywo: There is a middle ground; Her name is Madonna.
The only HBO character worth emulating is Al Swearengen. As a matter of fact, I gutted two hoopleheads for their claims this morning. Or maybe they were homeless people.
@CaptainHangNail: Nicholas Meyer (best director of the Trek movies, IMHO) re-edited that scene in the newest version to make it clear who Valeris was referring to - "the Romulan Ambassador, Nanclus... Admiral Cartwright... General Chang." The most interesting part was OH SHUT THE HELL UP IN OTHER NEWS... YOU FUCKING STAR TREK NERD!!!
@ronaldpagan: Cosmos are delicious and worth ordering even if people look at you funny and secretly roll their eyes.
@karion: I hate that I know which episode that pic is from *and* the one about funky spunk.
Off for a late afternoon, three cosmo lunch . . .
@karion: Where Smith tries to hold Samantha's hand, and she's so appalled by the gesture that she pulls away to quickly and falls into one of those basement trench things...
sigh.
I hate myself.
@ignats: Deadwood. Alsome.
@karion: Is she slipping on "funky spunk" there?
So, hypothetically, showing sex and the city to underage girls is a good way to get laid?
@ignats: No way. I'm an Ari.
Well...I'm the guy they go to dinner with who has the satin sheets and I learned everything I know from watching SATC with my ex's. Seriously. No lie here.
I watched the Mormon episodes and they totally sucked. Shirly Tabrinacles instead of Cosmos, practical little-house-on-the-prairie shoes instead of Manolos, magic underwear instead of sexy lingerie. Oddly though, just as much sex. And Mr. Big looked a lot like Mittens Romney.
You know, it's really easy for something like this to happen. I saw Star Wars and went out and became a Jedi Knight. But the lure of the Dark Side was just so destructive, I had to give it all up. I too married a mormon, and have slowly been able to rebuild my collection of Ewan MacGregor DVDs without going into convulsions.
And coming from Long Island, it's not like she could have had anyother negative examples around her.
But hold on. She said she was watching it at 14. So since SATC started in 1998, she can be no older than 24 now. How worldly and mature she must be.
satc seems like women trying to live like men except shopping more
don't want
And at least this girl can truthfully say she was the Samantha of her group, even if her group was just group sex.
I couldn't help but wonder if Lisa realized that Fleet Week begins today. Will she continue down the path to reformation or will she succumb to the all Dickies on the docks?
@The One: Those girls are easy prey for hot Manhattan guys like me.
Remember that SATC episode where Samantha had to get warts burned off her anus, Charlotte had a total breakdown and was committed to Bellevue after living off of rats and roaches in the basement of PS 46 for two months, and Carrie got fleeced of her apartment and savings by an offshoot of the Aum cult?
Damn rich inner life vs. reality.
@Goober_Pea: The Mormon makes her feel that way. Have you ever been to Utah???
Does this mean the Anvil doesn't count anymore as a hot spot? I feel a phone call from the past coming on...
@jann9884: And the "funky spunk" belonged to adorable guest star Bobby Cannavale...sigh. My poor brain.
@Knucklehead Babylon: There was that episode where Charlotte had to bath in a prescription pesticide to kill the crabs living in her trimmed pubes.
Did ABC really say "a generation of sluts"? That article was like reading a poorly written expose in a high school newspaper.
@In Other News...: Yes! And no question about Nicholas Meyer - I can to this day do line by line recitations from Wrath of Khan, and while I appreciate Nimoy's direction in The Voyage Home, it was Meyer's screenplay additions that really made that film.
Oh excuse me, the bullies want my lunch money and are threatening to break my glasses again if I don't give it up. And there's the wedgie.
@In Other News...: With all your freaky deaky Star Trek beep bop boop, I think you made Moff's day. Unless you were factually inaccurate, in which case you made him mad, and you wouldn't like him when he's mad. Me? I have no clue what you were saying. But you were funny saying it.
@if_i_only_had_a_heart: Wait. What? I don't understand. Are you being sexist about both sexes at the same time? Regarding a show you've apparently never watched? That is really kinda admirable in its badness.
Remember the Rosie O'Donnell show from the late nineties? I remember being sick from school one day and watching this awkward, jewy girl in her late teens who was a guest on the show for God knows what reason sitting next to SJP and telling SJP about how much she loved her show. And SJP was all like, aren't you too young for that. And I was like, it's 2008 and I got drunk during my lunch hour! Woot!
Dude I wish I had a TV show to blame on the fact that I was a potty-mouthed, chain smoking, alcohol swilling chick when I 14. Alas, I'll just use the old-fashioned excuse: my silly oblivious parents!
@bridgeburner: got plans for later?
@CodePink: um, yes; thnx for noticing
first wave feminism, second wave feminism, do me feminism; until there are things that restructure the nature of careers, family, leave (paid), and work, it's all just fucking ... and women taking on the old roles of men, with no new advances in how people can actually grow up
@FracturedAcetabulum: Moff? He doesn't scare me, him and his 'Death Star.' Yeah, the 'Death Star'? It's dead. The 'Star Destroyers'? Haven't destroyed any stars as far as I've seen. It's all Imperial bluster. Besides, us folks in Starfleet don't wear funny hats like Imperial officers do. Biker Scouts? More like Biker Shorts. And oh yeah, one more thing - WAY TO PROTECT THAT SHIELD GENERATOR FROM THE EWOKS, DUDES!
Hey, where's Alderaan?
@it takes a train to cry: Too funny. When did parenting stop becoming an option? My initial reaction was where were the parents during all this? I mean, how could they let her marry a Mormon?! (oh, and that other stuff they completely missed like the liquor and lovemakin'!)
The ABC article could also mean that some