Sex and What City?

By Arin Greenwood, PopPolitics.com. Posted March 15, 2002.

Let’s forgive and forget the fashions that would invite an ass kicking -- Newsboy cap at a jaunty angle? With suspenders? A short girl with a parasol? I guarantee any woman who tries that in Manhattan is friendless and will be mugged.

We’ll ignore, too, that no one on Sex and the City ever seems to go to the movies, a bookstore, work, any kind of live performance, a park, a diner, a bodega or a Starbucks, though in my world it’s the rare day when at least two or three of these quintessential New York amenities aren’t visited. (There was one day when I somehow made it to EACH thing on this list, though it was a bad day, to be sure, and not one you’d like to see fictionalized for television.)

In these ways I can accept that my New York is different from the New York of our Sunday night gals. After all, I haven’t worn anything strapless since my high school prom, and these women seem to exist in a world where every night, and most days, is the prom, glitter and all. Clearly, our experiences, probably of both sex and the city, would be different. And in a way, I'm quite grateful for the differences between our lives: While my life is certainly less photogenic than theirs and would hardly shape up into gripping half-hour episodes, I have the sense that it would be tiresome to have to work so hard to keep my hair looking nice.

But if the details of their Manhattan lives and mine are understandably divergent, surely on that little 14-mile island we all call home we would at least bump into some of the same things on the street. For example, though that foursome’s set moves a lot faster than mine, if we happened to be passing through, say, 14th St. and 9th Ave., wouldn’t we all see the hotdog cart on the corner? If we all found ourselves on 32nd Street (they going east, I heading west), would we not all be in Little Korea, where one sometimes finds Koreans? Or, if we all passed a synagogue and went inside at the same time by mistake, would it not be filled with the people of the book?

The answer to these and other similar questions is No, of course, as anyone who is as devoted as I to Sex and the City will know. It is a show without blacks, without Hispanics, without Asians (except the occasional appearance by Margaret Cho), without foreigners and, most significantly for this little Semite, it’s a show about New York City taking place in New York City and it’s got no Jews.

Well, not no Jews. There was that episode in Season 2 where the annoying childhood friend (whose husband got to be too much of a disaster) stayed with Carrie for a bit and irritated the hell out of her. Though it was never explicitly mentioned, the woman’s larger than life personality, jewelry and ass seemed designed to present her as a --- (I can’t spell it out because my mother finally convinced me that it’s a somewhat anti-Semitic phrase and I don’t want to contribute to any anti-Semitic sentiment in the world, so let’s just say that it is an acronym that used to be used derogatorily against a certain Asian-Pacific population around WWII and it rhymes with nap).

There was another episode in Season 2 where Samantha went to see a psychiatrist to deal with her boyfriend’s small penis, and the psychiatrist, if I had to guess, was also Jewish. I think I remember one episode from this past season where a sales person seemed like she might be Jewish, too. That’s three Jews in three seasons (I missed Season One, where perhaps there was more flourishing of the tribe).

Let’s compare that to my life: If it’s a weekend, I get up in the morning and want to get brunch, so I call a friend. Probably a Jewish friend, because I’d say around half my friends, especially the ones who might want to get a nice weekend brunch, are Jewish.

Before I leave, my roommate wakes up and saunters into the kitchen. Bam, another Jew. After brunch, perhaps my friend and I go see a movie. We stand in line for the movie, maybe at the Film Forum, where we’ll run into probably around 10 or 15 more Jews. And I don’t mean people who reach out their hand and say, “Good day. I’m Saul, a Jew. I work at Barnes & Noble, but really I’m a painter.” I mean people who you can see are Jews. Jews can pick out other Jews; it’s a gift we have. It’s how I know that there are no Jews on SATC -- I can SEE there aren’t, like that kid from the Sixth Sense sees dead people, except in his case there were dead people to see.

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