For better or for worse, I've acquired a few summer addictions: booking vacation lodging, reading Hillary Mantel's novels, and watching Sex and the City reruns. First, I must confess that I came close to banning my daughters from watching this show when it first appeared, based on the only scene I'd viewed, which featured Samantha, Richard Wright, and a public space. If you know Samantha, you get the idea. So why then, after so many years (details unimportant), have I become an S+C junkie? Can't really say. But salvaging a bit of pride, I can say that there's more to learn about female self-actualizing from Carrie, Miranda, Samantha, and (even) Charlotte than I'd ever imagined. Or maybe I'm just rationalizing. Today's show, "Sex and the Ex," hit the jackpot. It's that worse moment of a failed romance when you're desperately trying to claim/blame that he was commitment phobic and deny that he just wasn't that into you. Even if you broke up with him, you still can't accept that he has finally committed to a woman. But it ain't you. So you badger and harangue your friends, "Why?" "Why her?" "Why not me?" until one of them finally has the guts to tell you the truth. Usually, it's brutal. Always, it's what everyone--including you--already knows. In Carrie's case, Miranda bottom-lines the brutal truth: "Hubbell." Charlotte, astonished, echoes, "Hubbell." Carrie explodes, "Oh, my God, Hubbell! It is. It is so Hubbell!" Maybe you're as clueless as Samantha admits she is. Let me fill you in. http://www.fanpop.com/clubs/sex-and-the-city/videos/8165834/title/sex-city-hubbell
To recap...Mr. Big = Hubbell; Carrie = Katie. More importantly, Carrie declares she's having an "epiphany": "The world is made up of two kinds of girls--the simple girls and the Katie girls."
The Katie Girls don't always get what they deserve in the romance department. In truth, it's their own fault. They set themselves up for failure by embracing the fantasy of the romance--the master narrative that has always and will always work against Katie Girls. Here's why...According to Romance 101, the guys who see relationships with Katie Girls as too "hard," like Big explains. Hubbels find Katies to be too much trouble and leave them in the rubble.
Ironically, at the end of the movie, we feel sorry for Hubbell--not Katie. We already know that it's Hubbell's life--not Katie's--that will be diminished. It's the same with Big's life, as we learn in a later episode. After only one year of marriage, he's trapped in his bachelor pad that his Simple Girl wife has redecorated in beige--all beige. He says, "beige" like it's 3 syllables, so disdainful is he. In such a way, the Simple Girl gets the guy and imposes her beigeness on his world.
And what does our Katie Girl get if not the guy and power to beige his world? At the time of the break-up, Katie (no last name revealed), feels like one big fat loser. She has lost Hubbell and, therefore, according to the romance hype Love. Mamma Mia! illustrates the loser's loss of Love. Toward the movie's end , the romance hype overwhelms our middle-aged leading lady Donna (again, no last name, what up?), who bursts into a lyrical lament:
The gods may throw a dice
Their minds as cold as ice
And someone way down here
Loses someone dear
The winner takes it all
The loser has to fall
It's simple and it's plain
Why should I complain?
Donna asks herself why she should complain when it's the cold-minded gods who have conspired against her. No one else is to blame. Certainly not these male twits, goading her. Certainly not herself, a self-actualized woman. It's all so unfair. Is there no way she can win? Couldn't she simply stop self-actualizing and adore/adorn the twittiest twit? That's her only hope for winning, according to the script. So she stops self-actualizing and becomes syrupy simple. And it works. Hurrah! She wins the twit and the game of romance. But she loses the spotlight. You'll notice that the true Simple Girl--Donna's young, hot daughter--appears alone on the cover. There's no spotlight in a romance after the girl gets her guy. She won't even appear in the shadows. Am I suggesting that you can't self-actualize while coveting the romance? Yes, I am. No, you can't. If you want a fuller life, you need to be a Katie Girl. You can have lovers. You can have boyfriends. You can have husbands. But you can't have male rescuers, who sweep in, sweep the decaying villa clean, and sweep you off your feet.
What you can have is a fuller life--with or without a lover. Let's face it...being the Katie Girl is the only hope that women have for self-actualizing. Being the Katie Girl requires doing the dumping--of the romance ruse. And this doesn't mean Erin Brockovich-style. Rather, while self-actualizers reject unhealthy master narratives, they remain classy. Think Trouble with the Curve Clint Eastwood, not Unforgiven Eastwood. Without revenge, or even resentment, self-actualizers regard themselves as just too caring, intelligent, truthful, and virtuous to succumb to society's vision of them as pawns in this olde patriarchal game masquerading as love.
Gracefully, Carrie adopts Katie's final words to Hubbell and releases Mr. Big: "Your girl is lovely..." She is gracious and classy, realizing that, like Katie before her, she chooses to be the consummate "good loser." She chooses to lose at a game that isn't run by fickle rulers who coldly punish and reward but is run by an outdated, constricting patriarchy that, like slavery, diminishes all involved.
Choosing to keep her curls (remain complicated), Carrie chooses to lose. And what, exactly does our Katie Girl lose? Plot-wise, she loses Mr. Big. Character-wise, even the distraught Carrie knows he's no great loss. What she will come to learn is that she's lost only the culture's romance fantasy. In her case, she has known all along--from the beginning of their romance to the end--that he is not her soul mate. Why else has she reduced him to the nickname "Mr. Big"?
What of Carrie's future? Will there be a soul mate for her? Will there be a Mr. Bradshaw? :)
For the most part, the series doesn't endorse romance as the quick fix. Ironically, it doesn't endorse sex either as the panacea for all women's aches and ills. Rather, what I'm discovering (after giving the show more than one cursory viewing) is that in its own way, Sex and the City has a great deal to say about female empowerment, that is, about female self-actualization.
At the end of this episode, Carrie stands alone on an NYC street corner while watching Mr. Big being driven off with his much younger Simple Girl. Miss Bradshaw turns toward home. She walks confidently (and looks fabulous). She seems prepared to rescue her own broken heart. We can only hope that she will set to work developing her "soul" as the prerequisite to finding her soul mate. "Know thyself," the Greeks would advise.
With self-knowledge learnt, Aristotle proclaimed more work. To achieve eudaemonia, Aristotle knew that it's our intentions, habitual actions, and our virtuous friends that come together to create our future self. Good intentions, good actions, and good friends create good selves.
The way we were isn't nearly as important as the way we will be.
