The Fantasies we live with, culturally

It’s not just because I’m a married lady and mom, so what do I know about sex?

Or maybe it is. I openly admit to being unhip and old-fashioned. But I have a valid point. Which is: this show is like “Glamour” and “Elle” and “Vogue” magazines and the celebuculture in general: a glitzed up, ersatz, polyester version of life held up to people as a desirable way to live. It has the shmoozy succubus appeal of a beer commercial, where everyone is happy and skinny and has a gazillion friends and an adoring mate. It’s a superficial fantasy, and a pernicious one, like any other narcotic. 

Adults who have some life under their belts, who’ve been around the block and back and have a few bruises to show for it, who’ve suffered from loss and heartache and unfulfilling jobs and broken relationships and the illness of friends and family members–those of us who are achingly present in our lives–we know that “Sex in the City” isn’t real. It’s a junky piece of pink cotton candy to snack on, hopefully without stomach cramps. But there are plenty of young people who don’t understand this yet.

I tell my daughters: “Don’t be fooled by the glam and the pretty clothes! Real women don’t act like that. The “Sex” women’s values are a hip, sitcom charade of what really matters in life.” All that indiscriminate sleeping around. It doesn’t make it less superficial, degrading, and dehumanizing just because the main character ruminates with pseudo-profundity on the meaning of relationships. I really want my daughters to understand this about sex: it’s not the quantity, it’s QUALITY that matters! And hearts and bodies are indivisibly, irrevocably connected, so whatever the body does makes an impact on the heart! Know the consequences when you sleep with even one person!

And a shoe fetish? Please. I’m trying to figure out how to pay school tuition for my youngest daughter, in a city where the public school teachers have been hamstrung by mandated testing into teaching for tests, rather than teaching a curriculum. In the history of American education, here are the three worst, most idiotic notions to be inflicted upon students by otherwise well-intentioned people: the demise of phonics, new math, and “No child left behind.”

For the record: kids need phonics to learn to read. And they need to be drilled in math tables. No matter how boring it is, no matter how much kids suffer from it, kids need to memorize the multiplication tables and be tested on them until “8X7=56” is a part of the DNA of their cells. Because, guess what: life isn’t fun and exciting every single minute. We need to help our children develop some tolerance for that.

And docking teachers for their students’ low performance on tests is NOT going to improve the quality of education. Teachers are underpaid and overworked to begin with. This strategy will simply induce fear, reduce creativity, and produce a classroom geared toward correct answers on a standardized test, rather than a classroom filled with concepts, ideas, and love of learning.

Back to the viruses and fungi we live with and the athlete’s foot (or should I say yeast infection) that is “Sex and the City.” People will go see it. And how many of them will be young women who believe that wearing $5000 dresses and starving themselves into a size O is the key to happiness and fulfillment?