I’ve never felt that uncomfortable/misplaced, unless you count freshmen or sophomore year in High School during my mandatory aquatics class; those damn blue swim trunks were unforgiving in every way imaginable...
So, why did I feel uncomfortable? I’ve never been that close to so many well dressed and under dressed women at the same time; pajama tops all the way down to high heels. When I add in the nachos, drink, and the relative obscurity of the whole thing, it starts to sound fun in the guilty pleasure kind of way. But, no, it was neither more nor less than a movie to me. However, I came to realize, this was so much more than a movie to everyone else in the theater.
Sex in the City is the hallmark of a cinema movement towards protagonist female characters that suffer at the whim of the antagonist male. I remember watching my first episode and thinking, "wow, I don't know women like that..."…at least that’s what I thought before going to the midnight premier of Sex in the City, the movie at the request of my wife.
If you are a guy, think The Matrix. If you are a girl…well, um, I’m not sure how to explain it beyond think about the men in your life and their relationship to the original, The Matrix. I was at the opening night of the Matrix Reloaded, which was as far as I know the top grossing opening weekend for a rated R movie. I remember the buzz in the theater as I watched the first Matrix on my laptop before it began with hollers from behind me to “hold it up so everyone else can watch”. The screen darkened. A hush fell over the audience. Then came the tell tale cascade of glowing green digits and the audience exploded.
Fast-forward some five years; there I was at the premier of Sex in the City, the Movie. Honestly, I was caught off guard by the audible gasps, moans, laughing out loud, and huge intakes of breath at the mere name of a famous designer, a slighted female, a dress in all of it’s…dressy glory, or a pair of shoes. And right beside me, my dear wife gasped too. At one point I had to check myself, because my chuckles at all of the sighing and gasping around me threatened to garner me the unwanted stares of hundreds of offended females, and had already earned me a few slaps from my smiling wife. Honestly, I never imagined that a dress or a pair of shoes could be occasioned with so much feminine admiration. But then it clicked. This must be the same reason why stop-motion filming, the bullet flying over Neo as the camera spins around him, and the utter coolness and “wow’s” that are heard across "masculinandom" are so incomprehensible to those of the typical feminine persuasion.
“Whoa, did you see that?” - “Oh no he didn’t!”
“That punch!” - “Those shoes!”
“Those guns!” - “That dress!”
“Nice leather body suit!” - “Mr. Big!”
I’m not sure how to quantify what I gained through my experience, although I do know whatever it was, none of my buddies have been one with the feminine mind for a full two plus hours (something that typically lasts them no more than five or ten minutes).
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