"Enormous Amount of Damage": Maureen Callahan on Sex and the City's Negative Impact on Women

I found Sex and the City common
The only episode I watched was of Samantha ,looking for someone to help her put her curtains back up and Carrie narrating saying something about being Fd in a curtain
Any show that normalises promiscuity is out

Its all by design... its all a show

The Golden Girls was great. SITC was not.

Maureen is so right! I never liked that show. All they cared about was shoes and orgasms!! How about family and children? How about the homeless around them? After all this was New York, right?

I'm so glad I was never attracted to that show. I saw a short that one of them hit the car in front because she wanted to meet him..." That's sick behavior."

Makeup perfection!!!!

And to this day, even the younger generations of girls are watching it. Soo toxic!

Ah! That’s the explanation! I used to visit NYC quite often during that time (pre cell phone) on business and to see friends. I found both men and women behaving in the oddest way. Men would suggest you were “pursuing” them if you returned a phone call or worse followed up on an invitation to confirm the time. I was just visiting for heavens’ sake. Women would ask to come along if I was invited for dinner after a cocktail. Etc., etc. It was just crazy. Good manners and common sense seemed to have disappeared. I could only conclude single New Yorkers were just desperate. Now I understand. Thanks.

That was a show that dragged women down rather that build them up into strong people.

Meanwhile the protagonist was married only once with 3 kids. Unbelievable

Super love your pink eyeshadow & dangle earrings!! 💕

so true so demoralizing

Finally!! Thank you for verbalizing this.

It’s mindless entertainment & if the women watching it incorporate & replicate, and reenact in their own lives scenes & episodes from the show that speaks volumes about those women. The characters were just that entertaining. Sad that the inability of intelligent women could see through the veil - duh !

47 year old woman that has never watched a single episode of

Sad that women couldn't understand that this show was a poorly written fictional night time soap opera.

I will admit I was a fan but I watched it from afar here in NZ. I just saw it as funny and actually a bit sad at times but I could definitely see the flaws especially Carrie’s relationship with Mr Big. I absolutely hate the new series and only watched the first couple episodes. Can definitely see how young women living in New York may have been sucked into the fantasy of it.

Hated the show. So phoney. Unreal and demeaning to women. IMHO
You are on the money with your comments on that show. I refuse to write the show’s name.

Couldn't stomach watching it! My hillbilly gpa always told me not to let the world use my nose for a handhold! 😂

Agree!!!!!

LOVE the brighter eyes!

I watched two episodes and decided the women were self-centered, egotistical, status driven, and selfish. I couldn't stand the 4 of them.

Thank you! YES! God I HATED the Carrie character and the whole Big “romance” which was so toxic and abusive. I never ever understood the appeal of her character. She was beyond narcissistic

I never got into it.

Watching it in my 20s I was obsessed. Rewatching it in my 40s and I can’t believe how toxic it all was! I refuse to watch AJLT!

So happy I never watched that rubbish 😂

Those women were a total joke….as far from real life as possible. And the new series is rock bottom horrible 😮

You look better every episode Maureen.

I watched the show in the summer of 2004 when a friend of mine was appalled that my husband and I didn’t have cable in our home by choice. She let me borrow her dvds and I watched them with my then junior going to be senior college aged son. We both just shook our heads a lot and fast forwarded through much. I never gave the show much thought but I’m definitely a Charlotte. Without the divorce and conversion and casual sex. 😅

Never watched this show. My best friend was obsessed with it and couldn’t understand why I wasn’t.

That's why I can't stand the K family. They have made billions out of selling cosmetics and underwear and their show encourage young woman to spend their whole lives and all their money to look like them. And just look at them. Fake fake fake fake fake. All 5 of them look like a bot because they have had so much work done. Ghastly family.

and their movies were Awful !

MC I love how you tell it the way it is no BS just boom boom boom and this is it and if you don’t like it too bad love it.

Best thing was all of us being exposed to 'hes just not that into you" book very helpful! ( I'll admit it!l

Hated this show. So toxic. You are absolutely right.

Not to mention that the characters were insipid and cared about the outside instead of true character and intelligence. Ridiculous soap opera in clothes ! UGH ,

The craziest thing about that show was how everywhere they went, they always meet men. They always got asked out. I don't know of anyone who always meets men, and always has dates. It's just not real.

Never watched it and never got the draw

It’s funny I LOVED this show in my 20’s even my early 30’s. I’m 41 now and see it in a whole different light.

It’s a horrible toxic show. This show and the Kartrashians have degraded our society to depths we don’t even comprehend.

Agree I never understood the hype

Is this part of a full ep? I never watched this show and neither did any of my six daughters.

Mr. Big just though of Carry as a back up plan
Then he didn’t like it
Then was too late
Then finally finished 🙏

I guess the appeal when we were younger was because we didn’t know better, and also the fashion and how NYC was the most fabulous backdrop for the show. Never aspired to be like any of them really, just found the show entertaining. But I agree with a lot of the comments here, watching it when you’re older and wiser, particularly when you watch the new series and realise how un evolved and one dimensional the characters continue to be in their late 50s, it’s impossible not to hate the show.

I didn’t care for the show but I’d totally be charlotte, then again I’m from the south. Nobody wants to be Miranda, she looks and acts so strange. lol reminds me of my childhood friends and I playing Charlie’s Angels.I was the feminine, glamorous Kelly (Kate Jackson). Nobody wanted to be the asexual no- nonsense Sabrina with her severe mushroom haircut and feminazi clothing- we took turns so when I think about the times I was forced to be Sabrina I still get pissed😂

Chorine blond hair,heavy black eyebrows dark roots....please do something

Are you reminiscing?

Agree. Also the show was stupid.

At first I loved it but as time goes on I stopped watching it
I found it crazy

It's not often I look at makeup and go wow but wow Maureen you look fantastic