Sex and (a little bit of) the City

So, tonight I decided to give my ovaries a treat and go see the Sex and the City movie with my older sister, Lauryn. I know, right? Sisterly bonding time was held before hand. We dished out our latest man-gossip (I only had good things to say about you, Jon, don't worry!) over sushi from Whole Foods, and we sat in Edgewater (at the edge of the water) and overlooked the City skyline we were about to pay $11 to see on a giant screen.
It was mostly worth it.
The build up for the show has been the media focusing mostly on their amazement to realize that girls want to see the movie in groups. Oh God! I never could have surmised that myself.
And that sort of irks me. I didn't go in a group. Actually, I know two other people who went in pairs to see it (I mean, they went with their significant others, but still. Not a group.). The show did pretty remarkable things for women in terms of entertainment; it focused entirely on women, and focused a lot on sex. And let's face it; a lot of people still see sex as sort of a taboo thing for women to openly discuss. Lots of women do, but they also tend to get a lot of shit about it. A guy talks about some one night stand he had and he's awesome. A girl does that, and she's a slut. The show sort of encouraged girls to be more open about their sexuality with the sentiment "hey, if girls can talk about it on TV, why can't you talk about it in real life?" That's not a philosophy I normally believe for myself, but that's how society tends to work. If it's on TV, it's okay.
At any rate.
The movie itself was pretty much a giant glob of five episodes of the show, which is what I expected it to be. I mean, how else could they have done it? What made the movie enjoyable to me was the experience of seeing it with my older sister. The movie as a movie was far too long and predictable because, yeah, it was four and half 40-minute episodes in a row without commercial breaks. Half the time I was mentally putting in the ending credits where they will be when the movie undoubtedly is released in on television.
But it wasn't so much the fact that "ohmigawd I love this show, I'm so psyched it's a movie now!" that made me like it; though judging from the rather obnoxious applauding, gasping, "you go girl!"-ing, and chatter going on the entire time through out the theater, that's what most people were excited about.
I didn't even start watching the show until about two or three years ago, when TBS started to show it once a week. I used to sit in the living room with Lauryn and we'd take over the TV to watch it together. We'd spend the commercial breaks and sometimes hours afterwards to talk about our latest guy-gossip. For her, it was a chance to talk to me about her boyfriend and any issues going on. For me, it was a chance to gripe about the latest boy who screwed me over somehow.
Hell, it was sort of therapeutic. And I acknowledged that at the time.
We'd watch the episodes and remark on the hideous outfits, on the completely unrealistically hot guys these relatively average (or ugly) girls always dated, and could always identify with them when shit went bad. I mean, that's the real hook of the show, isn't it? Four strong independent women in New York City struggling for love; getting dumped, tricked, lied to, sometimes doing the tricking and the lying themselves... but then, ultimately, it's a happy ending.
For me, it was almost punishment. I'd had pretty terrible luck in the dating department my entire life (till now!), and I liked the show when the characters were getting screwed over, because I could identify with that. Once the happy endings started happening, the show only upset me because it set unrealistic standards as far as I was concerned. I needed the show to have some unhappy endings, because I was tired of hoping for a happy one for myself. Hell, I'm still a pessimist at heart; even at my happiest, I'm braced for disaster to try and soften the blow when it comes.
But I would watch the show once a week with her, with my big sister, and she'd talk and help me with all those problems. I needed that time with her, and as lame as it is that a TV show is what got me to have it, that's how it played out. And I'm grateful for it.
I've been so busy since going to college, and Lauryn's been so busy since moving away from home and beginning her life in that murky and shadowy Real World I dread entering in a few years, we don't get to have the regular sisterly bonding time I came to rely on so much. But the movie coming out gave us a big night to set aside for it. We had dinner, time to sit and talk and relax with each other and discuss everything on our minds lately. Then, there was a movie, which gave us more to discuss afterward.
I loved the movie, and not because of the movie at all. I loved it because of the company, and the time that we were both able to set aside, to splurge some of our hard-earned and oughten't be spent money, and talk.


Man, I am so lame and cheesey lately, it's ridiculous.
This was originally going to be a sort of review of the movie, and I guess in a way it is. Nothing ever ends up how I want it to when I write.
It looks like the entry I started at the beginning but then it changes. It gets lost somewhere in the middle. In the forest.
Heh.