A few years back, I had quite the love affair with the television show Sex and the City. I looked up to the group of friends comprised of Carrie, Miranda (okay, maybe not Miranda), Charlotte (eh, maybe not Charlotte either), and Samantha (okay, definitely not Samantha). So I’ll say I looked up to Carrie. She was the most well-balanced character in the show, after all. Her three best friends, I’m noticing in retrospect, were mere caricatures of various distorted feminine archetypes: the left-brained, hyper-intellectual “power” woman (Miranda); the uptight, neurotic yet adorable “classy” woman (Charlotte); and the sleep-like-a-man hyper-sexualized “liberated” woman (Samantha). 

But, as I’ll discuss over the course of this article, these archetypes are rooted in distorted, or wounded, feminine & masculine energy.

Before we get into that, I feel it’s useful to first define what these energy even are. 

Feminine energy is the energy inside every living being that is receptive, open, and magnetic. In contrast, masculine energy is the energy inside all of us that is penetrating, encompassing, and initiating. We are in our feminine energy when we are open to guidance, led by our intuition, and receptive to the opportunities the Universe brings towards us. We are in our masculine energy when we are actively leading our lives, using our minds to guide our decisions, and actively seeking opportunities that align with our paths in the Universe.

Feminine energy also rules our emotional side, so when we are in touch with our emotions, we are embracing our inner feminine energy.

Masculine energy is not unemotional, however, and this is where things get more nuanced. The thing is: neither masculine energy nor feminine energy exists in a vacuum. They exist in a sacred dance with each other and within all of life itself. 

Divine masculine energy encompasses the feminine energy and is yielding, intuitive, and receptive to guidance as well. Divine feminine energy is surrounded by masculine energy and uses it to exert its will, follow its intuition, and to do all of the creating it sets out to create (pure masculine energy is doing energy; pure feminine energy is being energy).

We need both masculine and feminine energy within ourselves to be whole and to fulfill our destinies. How much masculine or feminine energy we need is unique to each and every one of us, but the fact remains that we need both polarities and both polarities need each other.

The sacred dance of the divine masculine and the divine feminine is mirrored in the 3D realm (our physical reality) in the form of the sacred dance of lovers, i.e: courtship. 

Note: I’m smiling to myself and shaking my head as I type this because—is courtship even a thing anymore? My question to you, dear reader: have you ever been courted? Do you wish to be? I’d love to know in the comments below, but it’ll make me just as happy if you take a moment to journal down your thoughts on the matter.

Back to the matter at hand. 

Traditional courtship is when a masculine being (meaning a person who embodies more masculine energy, regardless of their gender), sets the conscious intention to grow a romantic relationship with a feminine being (meaning a person who embodies more feminine energy, regardless of their gender).

The closest modern word to this phenomenon is dating. Only, dating as we now know it is very far from the concept I’ve just described. 

Why? Because there is a lack of beings who are consciously embodying divine masculine and divine feminine energy. Instead, we have an abundance of beings in wounded masculine and feminine energy. We have an abundance of wounded beings. 😦

Wounded masculine energy can take many forms, but some of the common archetypes of a man in his wounded masculine are:

1. The mama’s boy who enjoys being just that—a boy.
2. The man child who is just that—a child.
3. The misogynist.
4. The abuser.
5. The user.
6. The so-called loser: a man with no ambition, no dreams, and no drive to make any positive shifts in his life.

Now, women can also be in distorted/wounded masculine energy, though it appears in us slightly differently. Some of the common archetypes of a woman in wounded masculine energy are:

1. The overachiever who must prove her worth by the strength of what she does.
2. The perfectionist who never believes she’s good enough.
3. The competitor who is always striving to be the best in the room.
4. The intellectual who is cut off from experiencing and honoring her emotions. 

In Sex and the City, we can see both Miranda and Charlotte embodying wounded masculine energy throughout the series. Miranda is cut off from her emotions, is hyper-competitive and hyper-intellectual. She makes decisions primarily from her mind without consulting her heart. 

Charlotte is an overachieving perfectionist, who strives to build the perfect-looking life and cut out (or curate, as she is in the world of Fine Art) anything she deems as sub-par.

Two of the most disturbing moments I find in Sex and the City are driven by Charlotte’s character.

1. The circumcision. I still shudder at this one. In an episode horrifically called “Old Dogs, New Dicks” (S2e7) Charlotte is seeing a man who, after learning he is uncircumcised, shames him for carrying his penis the way it is (in my opinion) meant to be kept: intact. At brunch, Miranda (distorted masculine maven #2) says: “I’m sorry. [An uncircumcised penis is] not normal.” Not normal? How is it not normal when 99.9999999999999% of male babies are born with that? How?? How, Miranda, how?? Centuries of institutionalized male mutilation is how. But I digress. The man Charlotte’s dating gets circumcised partly for her and partly for himself: he was tired of having every woman he slept with having Charlotte’s (distorted) reaction. The gag? He dumps Charlotte to experience life on the wild, circumcised side. Shudder.
   
2. In Season 1, episode 3 “Bay of Married Pigs,” Charlotte meets a man who she falls for fast. They go to a home goods store and when she learns he has different taste in china, she dumps him. Dumps him over his interior design tastes! What had me shook about that episode was that she was painted as being very happy in that relationship, after searching (as all the women do) tirelessly for love. I was rooting for her! And just because he pointed out a china set he liked and she didn’t, she kicked him to the curb. Ouch. 

These acts of superficiality teach viewers a few not-so-nice things. It teaches us and our fragile, subconscious minds, to view men as expendable—whether it’s a part of their body or their part in our lives. We’re taught by Charlotte’s examples that if there’s a detail about them we don’t like, we’re better of ditching them and seeing what else is out there. If anything better is out there. Because, when you’re in the perfectionist mentality, nothing is ever good enough for you. This stems from the internal belief that deep, down, you’re not actually good enough. 

As a woman who struggled with perfectionism, I don’t need a role model in my life enforcing the patterns I seek to leave behind. So that’s a big reason why I stopped watching Sex and the City.

Now, we’ve explored wounded masculine energy, but what does wounded feminine energy look like? Some archetypes of women carrying distorted feminine energy are:

1. The femme fatale – a cold-hearted woman who uses her sexuality to manipulate and overpower men.
2. The Daddy’s girl who is just that: a little girl who uses her vulnerability to manipulate others, usually men.
3. The gold-digger who uses her femininity to manipulate a man, marrying not for love, but money.
4. The gossip and/or judgmental woman, who uses her intuitive knowing to point out the weaknesses of others.
5. The banshee, who is overrun by her emotions and unleashes the full power of her feelings on others while being insensitive to how her actions impacts those she lets loose on.

In terms of Sex and the City, Samantha’s character is more in distorted feminine energy, embodying the femme-fatale archetype disguised as the liberated woman. Samantha routinely uses men for their bodies in an effort to “do it like a man.” Let’s take a look at this clip from Season 1, episode 1 for further insight into the matter. 

As you can see, Samantha recounts the time she slept with a man and “felt nothing,” completely cutting herself from her feelings and her divine feminine energy. Miranda, equally cut off from her feelings, recounts a man she slept with where “the sex was incredible,” but who turned her off by wanting to read her his poetry and take her out to dinner.

The irony of all of this is that Miranda spends most of the series looking for a relationship. She even appears in the clip before this scene complaining that there are no good men left in Manhattan, which brings me to a huge issue I have with the show: it’s long history of fat shaming.

From Season 1, episode 1, we are inundated with the show’s anti-fat propaganda, where Carrie’s friend a “toxic bachelor” asks her, “Why don’t these women marry a big, fat guy? Why don’t they just marry a big, fat tub of lard.” See the clip below to see his words in action and then to see Miranda mirror that same sentiment.

Ironically enough, it is Miranda who then heralds the second wave of the show’s fat-phobic plot lines, when she holds onto weight after giving birth and joins a weight loss group to help her through it. She meets a fellow member and ends up dating him, though they both struggle with internalized self-loathing due to their bodies. The worst moment in this Miranda character arc (which I hated) was when she ate a donut out of the trash. Yes, she ate a donut out of the trash, thus confirming the show’s low opinion of people with higher waistlines. The message behind this is that all bigger bodied individuals (Miranda didn’t even look bigger, by the way), have an intense food addiction and would eat out of the trash if it came down to it. And the fact that they lacked any other character with a bigger size to negate that message only reinforces it.

Later, in the Sex and the City movie, fat-shaming comes back once again, this time with Samantha. After moving to Los Angeles to support her longtime boyfriend’s acting career, she returns to New York with a puppy and a pooch—one her friends all comment on as if it’s a bad thing and she needs an intervention. 

The tricky thing about this story arc is that the reason Samantha gained weight was because she turned to eating instead of sleeping around in order to stay faithful to her partner while he was busy being a movie star. This again is an example of the show painting bigger bodies and weight gain as a coping mechanism and/or addiction, instead of a natural part of life. 

Weight gain is normal. Weight loss is normal. Bodies changing is normal, and we don’t need any more Hollywood funded productions convincing us it’s not. Or at least, I don’t. 

So, my dears ones, there you have it: why I stopped watching Sex and the City. To sum it all up, I stopped watching Sex and the City because:

1. It celebrates distorted masculine and feminine energy
2. The relationships these wounded women manifest are all toxic yet heralded as healthy/normal (I didn’t dive into this but can explore a few examples in a later post. If you’re interested, comment down below!)
3. It’s fat-shaming tendencies are an insult to bigger bodied individuals everywhere and a blow to my self-esteem.

For these reasons I cannot, and will not watch Sex and the City. No shame to the actors, creative team, etc. It’s just that this show was not made for someone like me. 

Two secrets I’ll share just with you:

1. The catalyst for me quitting the show cold-turkey came in a dream! In it, a man appeared to me on the astral plane holding up a Sex and the City DVD and making a face that I can only describe as “dunce-like.” I woke up and thought, “Is he saying that show makes us dumber?” Maybe not intellectually, but emotionally less intelligent, for sure.
   
2. I tried to re-watch an episode in order to write this article (S1e1) but couldn’t get past the first ten minutes (if I even made it that long)! Luckily, I remember TV shows and movies rather well, and a quick search on the web helps fill any holes in my memory. 

My second Q for you: do you watch Sex and the City? In researching for this article, I discovered that their spinoff, And Just Like That, will be returning to HBO very soon, probably this summer. Will you watch it?

I, for one, will certainly not. By now, you know all the reasons why 😛

Thank you so much for reading and considering my thoughts. It means the world.

Catch you at the next post.

XO,

Spirit