Independent Women: Scary or Sexy?

So I've been debating with myself about feminism. Many look to the suffragette movement as the origin of the word, the pinicle of what it meant to be a 'feminist'.

But things have changed since nearly a century ago, when women had to scream in order to be heard, or chain themselves to passing carriages in order to be noticed.

I mean, women have the vote (In the majority of the world, at least) we own companies,we earn as much as our male counterparts, we single-handedly raise children without being judged for it, and we can live independently, with or without a man.

But does being an independent, powerful woman make us all a bunch of feminists? The term, which has long been brandished as a 'dirty' man-hating word, a word normally used, by men, to describe women that a) they feel threatened by, or b) have just turned them down?

It seems to me that, just as in the late 19th Century, when men repressed women who tried to beat them at their own game, steal their 'power' or make them feel, god forbid, vulnerable, this fear of the independent woman still lingers, and shows such as Sex and the City are just confirming the fears of those men who still believe women belong in the kitchen.(Even if Ne-Yo did write that song)


I was browsing the Daily Mail site today (slow news day...i'll admit) and found this article about the end of Sex and The City. (sob!)

Anyway, scrolling through the comment box at the end of the article, I found a certain comment by a gentleman (I use the term loosely) called Allan, from the UK.

And I quote:

Good riddance to these four menopausal, scrag-end pieces of rough. None of these females are any good to look at, other women only like them because they are NOT attractive! SJP has to be ugliest woman I have ever seen outside of Leeds...
Men look for the escape route when they see over-dressed, over-confident and over-cooked joints of mutton like these who haunt the clubs every Saturday night trying desperately to be Mrs Robinson-types with the younger guys...they are pathetic, only good for one thing and even then a man has to be well tanked to take advantage of the freebie.-

allan, UK, 30/6/2010 14:24

which basically erases a century of women fighting for their right to be treated as equals. Standing ovation to the man.

Needless to say, I was feeling quite opinionated after reading that comment (I could feel my cheeks getting rather hot, to say the least) and simply HAD to comment back. Cue the the following:

Allan - Wow, you really have something against powerful, independent women don't you? It's amazing we even have the vote while people still harbour old-fashioned, backward attitudes like yours!

"None of these females are any good to look at, other women only like them because they are NOT attractive!"

I think you're missing the point of Sex and the City here.

Unlike, say, The Hills, Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha weren't soley designed to fulfill some twisted image of female beauty so many men seem to have in their heads, nor were they created as sex-objects for single men alone in their bedrooms on a friday night.
If you were looking for those kinds of women, I suggest you search under the 'Adult Entertainment' section of your Sky box.

The great thing about Sex and the City was that it silenced the taboo that women who have a sucessful career, no children and a healthy sex life are somehow scary, man-hating feminists.

Here's to that!

Ahem, possibly not my most cherished piece of writing, but, nonetheless, it had to be said, and boy did I feel better after that!

More to the point, It amazes me that one man can take a harmless, light-hearted sitcom like Sex and The City and be so intimidated by it that they feel the need to write that!

This individual clearly took one look at the cover of the DVD, thought "no fake boobs, not enough flesh on show, oh no, they have brains...nah, i'll give it a miss" and this is what he came up with. Fascinating.

These four women were never marketed as sex-objects, nor did the producers cater for the straight man! If it was aimed at this demographic, there would certainly be less talk about shoes, and i'm pretty certain SJP wouldn't have survived the whole series without a full-frontal!

SATC is for women who want more from their lives, and know how to get what they want, whether it involves a man or a credit card (!)

If being called "ugly, only good for one thing, and pathetic" means I have brains, a job (outside of the adult entertainment industry) and don't belong on the cover of "horny housewives XXX" then i'm all for it!

And if Sex and The City is the modern-day equivilent of what Emmeline Pankhurst and co. got up to when they were together (only with less talk of blow-jobs, I would imagine) then I suggest we bring out the red sashes and take to the streets!