"Quit It With The Cosmos!" - 5 Ways SATC Has You Acting Plum Crazy

I may be burned at the altar of Louboutin for this one, but I can't hold it in anymore. Ladies...

Sex And The City is making you act plum-dumb crazy.

*ducks stilettos*

I know, I know, some of you are going to demand to revoke my woman card, but this is America and I have my second first amendment rights, so back up. Let me speak.

Let's look at the celluloid life led by Samantha, Miranda, Charlotte, and Carrie: The clothes. The parties. The seemingly endless flow of disposable income. Oh, and of course the men. Yes, it certainly is delicious. It's also fake. Phony. Pure Hollywood. The Sex And The City franchise, while highly entertaining, is an elaborate color-by-numbers venture which has average American women of average means reaching for their fantasy glitter crayons. It's one thing to lose yourself in the fantasy. It's another to try to live it.

It's kinda nutty, to be honest. But since you're too busy J'adoring Dior, let me point out a few of the ways Sex and The City has you acting a little silly:

1.) SATC is making you dress up for the Magic Johnson 7. It's cool to get cute and put on your hottest frock for social gatherings. You'll be mixing, mingling, and you'll definitely be seen, so why not put your best stiletto-strapped foot forward. But for a movie theater viewing (read: not the actual premiere avec celebs), where the oldest person on staff is a 20-year-old humanities major and the selection of fine food includes overpriced jumbo dogs? Are you really gonna put on your best Baby Phat Calvin Klein, sit in a dark theater for two hours and then strike a pose next to the life-size cut-out for Marmaduke? I'm with my boys on this one -- it don't make no got-damb sense. Or as Roger Ebert puts it, "Do women wear their lowest-cut frocks for each other?" Which brings me to my next point...

2.) SATC has you dating your girls. Thanks to the girlfriend-power directive of SATC, women are going everywhere... with other women. To happy hour. To brunch. To the grocery store. To the laundromat. To Jiffy Lube. To the gynocologist. It's like every outing has turned into a field trip with no less than three but no more than five grown, female participants. ("Does everyone have their permission slip? Okay, now find your line buddy!") And then there's the inevitable wondering why you can't seem to attract the same kind of male attention you got when you spent solitary nights in the library during undergrad. Simple: y'all are cockblocking each other. A male acquaintance ended up on the wrong end of a side-eye last summer when he quipped, "Single women keep each other single." But now I'm seeing his point. It won't kill you to venture into the outside world on your own. If you're sitting in a lounge, flanked by two to four other women, all holding Cosmos wearing your best I'm-being-sexy-in-the-city faces, don't be surprised when everyone else leaves you in your dim corner. It doesn't look like you're out to meet people, it looks like you're taking your four best friends on that crucial third date. Who's going to insert themselves into that? (Other than this guy, I mean.) A perfect segue into #3....

3.) SATC has you looking for Mr. Big. I know. He was tall, dark, rich, handsome and irresistible. He was also flaky, arrogant, noncommittal and a bit of a narcissist. Why do you want Carrie Bradshaw's man again? Are you looking forward spending a decade hoping for a proposal? Do you like the idea of him marrying a sour-faced model in the meantime? Or will it all be worth the Manolos at the end of the rainbow? Not judging, just asking. Speaking of shoes, though...

4.) SATC is enabling Jimmy Choo dreams in a JC Penney reality. Let's talk. I know one of the biggest draws of SATC is the fashion. It's decadent and delirious and delicioso. (And I, personally, am a huge fan of Patricia Field.) But trying to re-create these looks in real life? Like, rent-is-due-the-toilet's-backed-up-and-I-got-hella-parking-tickets real life? Fail. As KP has seen first-hand, that will have you looking more crazy than couture. Either you'll mess up your credit score buying designer pieces that the general populace couldn't give two Greek dollars about, or you'll be raiding Filene's Basement looking for irregular duds to cobble together a Carrie Bradshaw "look" that could be better described as a "loss." Learn how to look good in jeans and a tee. Simple really is chic.

5.) Lastly... SATC is making you think you're Carrie Bradshaw. You're not -- let me say it again... you're not -- Carrie Bradshaw. Sarah Jessica Parker isn't even Carrie Bradshaw -- she's Sarah Jessica Parker in a Halston dress. The concept of proclaiming yourself to be the Black, Asian, or Aleutian Carrie Bradshaw has, quite honestly, always befuddled me. Mostly because Carrie Bradshaw is a character -- a fictional person with limited depth and complexity created to be used as a vehicle for a story. Aside from liking clothes and shoes and men, how much do you really have in common with Carrie (or Charlotte, or Miranda, or Samantha, or whoever the Facebook quiz says you are this week)? You are a real person, with real depth, quirks and complexities, and I shudder to think you'd want to sum up the whole of your being by taking on the name of a fictional character and sticking it on yourself like a shirt label. Be you. Ain't nothing wrong with being THE LeKeisha Marisela McFadden. Just own it. Nothing is more fashionable than that.

*Author's Note: I will go see SATC2 this week -- mostly to check out the clothes and find out whether Carrie bones Aidan. However, it'll likely be a matinee, and I'll be wearing Uggs, swigging beer and shouting obscenities at the screen. Gotta keep it gully.

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