“Sex and the City” wasn’t just HBO’s most iconic comedy. The series left an indelible mark on our culture as well as the pay channel’s coffers.
That’s why Washington Times contributor Emily Esfahani Smith says HBO’s new series “Girls” is good news for women everywhere. “Girls” illustrates the fallout from casual sex, a practice the show depicts as demeaning to both men and women.
That’s a far cry from the picture painted by “Sex and the City,” a veritable showcase for promiscuity, Esfahani Smith argues:
But “Girls” is less an extension of “Sex and the City” than it is a response to it – a tacit and even subversive acknowledgement that the sex lives of young post-feminist women are bleak.
Casual sex is not as fun and empowering as Carrie Bradshaw and her entourage of well-dressed friends made it out to be. These glamorous women taught a whole generation of girls that a woman can divorce sex from emotions “and just go out and have sex like a man” (in the words of Samantha Jones).
They taught women a lie.
“I felt like I was cruelly duped by much of the television I saw,” [‘Girls’ Creator Lena] Dunham told the New York Times last month.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.