Sex and the City, Women and Relationship Reality

I hate to think what empirical evidence would emerge from a statistical comparison of the time I spent studying in college versus the time I've spent consumed by relationships. Talking about them, investing in them, recovering from them, hypothetically creating them in my mind through the lens of other women's experiences and opinions. The most frightening part of this experiment would be a comparable analysis of one of my male counterparts. I hate to imagine the gross disparaties between how men and women spend their post-secondary education, and perhaps even more discouraging is how these same men occupy their time once they're out of college.

I was reminded of this by a conversation I had with one of my intelligent, talented, beautiful, recently graduated friends. She was telling me about her abysmal experiences meeting men since she's been out of college. It's been a mixture of immaturity, dishonesty, indecision and my personal favorite: a grown man in his late twenties who is incapable of communicating on the phone or in person and instead pursues my friend through a variety of disrespectful text messages. Really? Is this what we spend our youth obsessing over? Men who can't or don't want to commit, who are preoccupied, unwilling or incapable of growing up and/or, as I imagine is the source of most of this, who have no semblance of respect for women. It makes me think about all the movies and tv I grew up with that define women's happiness in terms of their attachment to, or relationship with, men. I attempted to brainstorm examples or images of men who are completely consumed/defined by their pursuit of the utlimate relationship. I'm sure if you try the same exercise, you would reach the same conclusion: there just aren't any. So as I reflect on owning and watching the entire series of sex and the city (more times than I'd like to admit), I think about how real/sureal/unreal it is. How just like most media, it reflects and creates reality all at once. How it is both representative and constructive of the way that women think about and experience relationships. Even if we are educated, insightful, creative and capable, for some reason there is some societal or personal vacancy that exists in the absence of a relationship. Not only are these ideas conservative, hetero-normative and dangerously invisible for most women, they are woven into the fabric of how we see, understand and value ourselves.

I remember first hearing about Sex and the City, and since then Desperate Housewives and others, being praised as a source for female empowerment. All female leads, liberal sexual values and women so-called taking control over their lives on-screen for everyone to see and learn from. After hours and hours of immersion in the upper middle-class white world of carrie bradshaw, it's become incredibly apparent to me that Sex and the City (and other manifestations of the same concept) continues to reinforce the idea that women are somehow incomplete, empty or unfulfilled without at least the pursuit of a relationship with a man. So while women are learning important lessons about the relative significance of defining a self and finding a relationship, men operate under the assumption that women will just come along, take care of them, and ultimately marry them, becoming an accessory in their otherwise complete lives.

The other day my rooommate and I found ourselves trapped in the obligatory, "what are you up to right now slash in the near future" conversation with a female acquintance of ours, and as we both tried desperately to feign interest in an entire monologue of information that was neither significant nor relevant to either of us, we were both struck by something: This woman, who is graduating from UCLA in the spring, and has secured a job with one of the most competitive consulting firms in the country, expressed a deep concern about not having enough time to spend with her boyfriend over the summer. Among her explanation of Europe travel plans and job training obligations, she made it clear that her primary investment was in her relationship. Man, even when women manage to escape marginalization and discrimination, we are still preoccupied with finding, keeping or analyzing the men in our lives. That is de-pressing.

I guess the real question is, how do women overcome this phenomenon? Or is it even something that women consider worth overcoming? Or perhaps more realistically, is this something other women have even considered at all? It is especially hard to imagine a change in relationship equity between men and women when there is so much information naturalizing and normalizing the behaviors and attitudes I have addressed. If you turn on the tv, glance through a "women's" magazine or check out most of mainstream American cinema, advertising and education, you will undoubtedly be inundated with constructed ideals of romance, instructions on how to become more desirable (for men), and list after list of things women can alter or enhance in order to be more equipped for a long-term relationship. The consequences of this inundation range from psychological and emotional to societal and incorporate just about everything in between. It affects the way women are educated, how they experience employment and pursue their careers. It affects self-perception, self-esteem and identity and can be potentially damaging and destructive in many ways I haven't even thought about.

Ironically, there's an episode of Sex and the City in which Miranda (the high-powered attorney, single-mother, and chronic relationship misfit) dramatically leaves a table of her three other friends in protest of how "intelligent and interesting women" can find nothing else to talk about but men and relationships. I hope that women everywhere take a similar stand in their own lives, not just in conversation with their intimate female friends, but in the depths of their own mind as well. Here's hoping that someday there's a popular tv character who makes her mark on history by being an incredible mother, powerful human being and/or meaningful contributor to society....now that would be something to talk about.