SATC — Tiny Pleasures

“I Couldn’t Help but Wonder...”: A Sex and the City Column

Season 3 Episode 4: Boy, Girl, Boy, Girl …

Synopsis

Charlotte’s gallery hosts a photography exhibition titled Drag Kings: The collusion of illusion and reality. It features women dressing like men with sideburns and socks in their pants. Charlotte is attracted to the photographer Baird, but she’s too afraid to ask him out. Carrie suggests maybe she “needs a sock in her pants.”

Carrie is dating a 26 year old bisexual man named Sean. She smokes while ice skating with him. At the end of their ice skating date, he lists all of his past romantic relationships and casually includes that he’s dated a man. He asks Carrie if it’s a problem and she tells her friends that she lied by saying it wasn’t.

Miranda doesn’t want Steve to move in with her. She tries to tap into her “inner goddess,” or in 2026 lingo, her “divine feminine.” People who claim that the writers do Miranda a disservice by having her marry Steve are ignoring who she is at her core. An explanation for Miranda and those who cannot reconcile her character arc is Anglo-American feminism, which narrowly focuses on equality in business and the corporate world while accepting capitalist definitions of success and seeking their legitimacy within the constructs of wifehood. Audiences refuse to accept that Miranda, a partner at a law firm, would “settle” for a man like Steve. But, as the show progresses, we all watched her descend into the quintessential cisheteronormative hysteria of “finding the one.” Miranda’s character arc is identical to the choices the women criticizing Miranda make every day.

Samantha hires a young assistant who is rude to her clients while answering the phones. In true Sam fashion, she fires him and sleeps with him. This is the least terrifying storyline in this episode.

The Question

Carrie doesn’t “help but wonder” in this episode. But she does ask a question:

Was sexual flipping the wave of the future? And if it was, could I play that game, or was I over the hill? If women can transform into men and men can become women and we can choose to sleep with everyone, then maybe gender doesn’t exist anymore. If we can take the best of the other sex and make it our own, has the opposite sex become obsolete?

Responding to Carrie’s inane question feels like a form of legitimization for her ignorance and bigotry-laced question; however, I chose this episode as a contrast for how the topics of sexuality and gender presentation are addressed in Sex and the City and Heated Rivalry.

After discovering her new young boyfriend is bisexual, Carrie asserts that she’s “not really sure bisexuality exists.” She says, “I think it’s just a layover on the way to Gaytown.” Throughout the episode, Carrie fixates on Sean’s bisexuality through playground-level questions like asking Sean if he’s staring at a man when they go to a club called “Hair.” On the other hand, she equates bisexuality to “lacking sexual orientation.”

If I had to define Sex and the City to someone who’s never seen it, I’d say that it oscillates between being ahead of its time and portraying a frighteningly rigid depiction of the times. This episode is one of those that is both. It chooses to discuss bisexuality while “liberally” denigrating it. The entire episode is laden with biphobia from start to finish, but most memorably, Miranda refers to bisexuality as “greedy” and “double-dipping” while they discuss Sean’s sexuality. I want to single out Carrie and her friends here, but this is what most cisheterosexuals, gay and lesbian people today, think of bisexual people.

By the end of the episode, Carrie uses the “I’m an old fart” excuse as a euphemism to obfuscate her biphobia and homophobia. While playing spin-the-bottle with Sean and his friends, Carrie gives Alanis Morissette the driest kiss ever filmed for TV. I wish we all didn’t have to see that. About the kiss, Carrie says, “It was like chicken.” She breaks up with Sean by leaving the party without saying goodbye. She concludes with, “I realized they could do whatever they wanted, but deep down, I was too old to play this game. So I took my hot, old fart ass home.”

Times have changed, but not so much, given how prevalent cis-hetero patriarchy still exists in all visual media forms. It’s hard to decide. Do I prefer a time where a professional sex columnist spews openly biphobic and homophobic worldviews with rigid expectations of romantic relational gender roles? Or one where bisexuality is predominantly disregarded by the dominant media and treated as a footnote, like in Heated Rivalry? It’s hard to say.

Even when the topic is handled with dignity, like in Heated Rivalry, the predominant media still struggles to facilitate meaningful colloquy by omitting or glossing over Ilya’s bisexuality as context for understanding the character and how Ilya’s bisexuality affects the couple’s relational dynamics.

The only dignifying aspect of Carrie’s question is wondering if gender exists anymore. She comes close but lets us know firmly where she stands by the end of the episode. It’s evident in the show’s haphazard reboot, And Just Like That, 20 years later, that Carrie and the show’s writers haven’t resolved the question.

Unforgettable lines from the episode

(Without context)

Stanford

See when you’re gay everyone can wear everyone’s underwear.
Charlotte

That’s hygienic.
Carrie to her friends at brunch

He’s [Sean] a bisexual.
Samantha

I could have told you that sweetie. He took you ice skating for god sake.
Carrie

The weird thing was he was so open about it.
Samantha

Y’know, I think it’s [bisexuality] great. He’s open to all sexual experiences, he’s evolved. It’s hot.
Miranda

It’s not hot, he’s greedy. He’s double dipping.
Carrie

When did this happen? When did the sexes get all confused? You know I did the date the bisexual guy thing in college. But in the end, they all ended up with men.
Samantha
So did the bisexual women.
Carrie to Sean

Do I kiss better than a guy?
Sean to Carrie

Could you stop making this all about sex?
Carrie to Miranda

I think in any relationship, one person is the alpha dog. The one that’s in charge. That’s you! You don’t want to share your water dish.
Carrie

10 seconds into making out, I could almost forget Sean’s lack of sexual orientation.
Carrie

I was in Alice in confused sexual orientation land.