Sex and the City 2 – the dream is over.

"Sex and the City 2" (Michael Patrick King, 2010)

It didn’t start well. Anthony and Stanford – who always hated each other – are getting married. Why? Because they’re both gay, and the producers of the movie wanted a lavish wedding scene. To be fair, despite the unfathomable storyline, the jokes in this part of the film are pretty snappy. And it has Liza Minnelli. But it’s downhill from here until the ending 141 excruciating minutes later. The overall impression is that one draft script was written, and was given the go ahead without any rewrites.

There were always designer labels in the TV series, but the point was that Carrie was a creative dresser who mixed it in with vintage and high street. Her iconic ‘Carrie’ necklace came from a market stall. This is what people (women) loved about Carrie. As recently as the first movie, a Vivienne Westwood dress symbolically ruined Carrie’s wedding and everything was OK in the end when she wore label-less vintage. But now, she only wears designer. And so do the other ‘girls’, even Miranda who ten years ago almost always wore mannish suits. Now Miranda loves floaty numbers and Spanx.

Speaking of Miranda, what would the Miranda we know do if she faced sexual discrimination at work? She’d file a fucking lawsuit, that’s what. But not Sex and the City 2’s Miranda. She just leaves her job.

Charlotte behaves similarly out of character. The woman who always wanted nothing more than children is now Gaby Solis. Who wears vintage Valentino when their daughter is painting right next to them? A character in a poorly written script, that’s who.

Carrie is an unbearable harridan straight out of a “Take my wife. No really” joke. Only Samantha bears more than a passing resemblance to herself in the TV series.

In one of the most talked about scenes, our girls realise that Middle Eastern women are ‘just like us!’ Why was it supposed to be surprising that some Muslim women wear designer outfits under their niqabs? It's no secret that there are a some very rich people in UAE, and that Muslim women only have to cover up around men they’re not related to, is it? ‘The girls’ then have to escape some outraged men by dressing in borrowed hijab robes, like something from the summer special of a 1970s sitcom.
The tension in this finale comes from the possibility of missing their flight. Because if they miss this particular flight, they might have to fly coach. Seriously, the writers thought viewers would be swept up in this and not just be offended. What happened to the Carrie and Samantha of the TV series who travelled cross-country on a train with bedrooms the size of a tin-can? When Carrie hails a cab in the manner of Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night, it just reminds you how awful this film is compared to that classic.

This film is like a satire of what the haters said Sex and City was. There was always love for shoes and clothes, but I always argued it wasn’t materialistic. As soon as ‘the girls’ touched down in Abu Dhabi I had to eat my words. Critics said that Sex and the City was watered-down feminism; I defended it. But then the girls sing “I am Woman” in a karaoke bar, in one the cheesiest scenes I have ever, ever witnessed and I had to concede – any feminism that’s left is watered down to homeopathic proportions. It was like the Loose Women christmas party.

As the credits rolled, I couldn’t help but wonder.... why did I sit through the whole thing?

Why I love Marina and the Diamonds

It could be a lazy comparison to call Marina Britain’s Lady Gaga – talented, feisty females making wonky pop in fashion-forward attire, so what? But both “The Fame” and “The Family Jewels” heavily reference celebrity culture and display ambivalence about it. Both artists are keenly aware of the dark side of celebrity. It is a culture that is dangerous, pointless, and perhaps meaningless - as well as intriguing, irresistible and perhaps profound. While Gaga embraces on some tracks (“Just Dance”, “Boys, Boys, Boys”) the seeming vacuity of pop, Marina muses on her own desire for success and the sacrifice required (“Are you Satisfied?”, “Mowgli’s Road”, “Oh No!”), a considered version of every X Factor contestant’s blinkered determination to ‘follow their dreams’. In an industry, pop music, where success equals fame Marina is facing questions of what she should want.


When in “Hollywood” Marina sings that she’s “obsessed with the mess that’s America” she’s not just being satirical, she really means it. The line between criticism and celebration is hazy. Anyone can condemn L.A., a place with paparazzi that snap Britney being wheeled into an ambulance on her way to be committed (sectioned). It takes a sharper mind to write a song with a Warholian wonder at the hold this culture has on us. Lady Gaga goes further. For her there’s no shame in entertainment and celebrity. The pursuit of fame can go hand in hand with the pursuit of art. Pop culture is still culture. On songs like “Fashion” (‘I live to be model thin, dress me I’m your mannequin’) and “Dance in the Dark” (‘Silicone, saline, poison’) Gaga targets the fashion and beauty industries, but she doesn’t let her reservations dampen her love of fashion and beauty. In fact, they add to the experience. In her Bad Romance video she compares the music industry to forced prostitution, like a true third wave feminist her reaction is to pursue a career where she ‘prostitutes’ herself.


Marina has said that she wrote her next single (released 25th April), I Am Not a Robot, to chastise herself because her anxieties were hampering her ambitions. Knowing this, it seems like a ‘you’ve GOT to go out there and be a star’ ballad to inspire the courage to be true to oneself and try one’s best. But the lyrics are more complex than that. I personally interpret it as a love song from a woman to an emotionally-stunted macho boyfriend. He is not a robot; no need for a staid stiff upper lip, you don’t have to act like other men do, it’s ok to have emotions and opinions. Open up to me. A sentiment as beautiful and romantic as it is a critique of gender construction. One is reminded of Eva-Marie Saint’s feminine influence on Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront. Or even Blair Waldorf and Chuck Bass from Gossip Girl. The video, directed by Rankin, emphasises the theme of forgoing defences to face the world naked and alone. In a metaphorical version of Snog,Marry Avoid’s POD she appears in a variety of extreme body paint and make-up looks, as well as a natural Marina.





Marina’s “Girls” is a strange song for an artist influenced by feminism, with it’s almost misogynistic lyrics. The lyrics signify the first stirrings of realisation that something is wrong in the world of gender “I fall asleep when they speak of all the calories they eat”. First you decide that you don’t want to be like most girls “You stick to your yogurts I'll stick to my apple pie”. And then you turn your attention away from individuals and towards the expectations that they are conforming to, and you rebel against the feminine stereotype “Girls are not meant to fight dirty. Never look a day past thirty. Not gonna bend over and curtsy for you”. The Slits “Typical Girls” for the Closer Diets generation, in other words. What makes it more interesting is that one look at Marina suggests that she doesn’t routinely gorge on apple pie. She’s a beautiful, slim young woman who clearly cares about her appearance. The difference seems to be that she’s aware that other things are more important. Perhaps she also knows that nothing is less attractive than a woman who moans about her insecurities and counts calories out loud, and there’s nothing more glamorous than someone who looks sensational without apparently having to put in much effort. This is in contrast to the incredible shrinking Lady Gaga who revels in the pursuit of size zero, precisely because of how ridiculous it is. Thinking beyond the sentiment of “Girls” one hits a common problem encountered by feminists. Is the denigration of typical female interests just dismissing what is important to women? Are fashion, cosmetics and gossip actually meaningless? Is it better to be a typical man than a typical woman? This is the logic of the post-feminist embrace of the ‘girly’. Beyonce, for example, displays this resolution to the ambivalence women have about what being female means. But she does it without acknowledging the ambivalence, so that it perhaps appears to be unthinking, going with the flow of what is expected of women. Her sometimes gender-analytical and often fierce lyrics, along with her collaborations with Lady Gaga, suggest that she made a self-aware decision about her glamorous, sexy image. There are, of course, things more important than looking good, but appearances are important. For they are art.


Marina and the Diamonds’ Family Jewels is an album of post-adolescent angst and ambivalence. It’s for people who have stopped worrying about how to fit in, and who have started about worrying about where and if they want to fit in. It is for the overwhelmed, the overinspired, who analyse and consider too much. The Fame is both a more naive and more mature album. Multi-layered, it is neither shallow pop nor is it a deep cultural analysis. It is both, and seems comfortable being so.

Best Olympic Moments

Nodar decided he'd rather have a Darwin award than a gold medal. His sled got flipped turned upside down before the games had even started.



Plushenko was all "check my quad" and had a tantrum when he got silver in the figure skating behind no-quad Lysacek.





The French alpine skier Marion Rolland will be unable to compete for two years following this incident.



You've made the Olympics. This is the free skate. The medals are to be decided on this performance. I just hope your bootlace doesn't come undone! What the judges didn't realise is that Nobunari Oda's pratfall was deliberate, injecting some authenticity into his Chaplin inspired program.

How to not get raped

I’m not suggesting that it is a woman’s fault if she gets rapes. But there are some sensible precautions we can all take:


1) Do not associate with strange men. It is common sense to assume that any man you don’t know could be a rapist. Do not be left alone with them. Do not visit their homes. What other reason could someone have for visiting another person’s home than sex? Do not lead Strange Men on by talking to them, looking at them, dancing with them, or hooking up with them.


2) Do not associate with men you know. Acquaintance rape is actually more common than stranger rape. Do not be left alone with male friends, relatives, and especially, boyfriends.


3) Do not walk alone at night. Do not take taxis either. Most taxis are driven by Strange Men who could be rapists. If you cannot find a woman to escort you, do not leave home after dark. This may be difficult during the winter months when it starts to get dark in the early afternoon but, really, you don’t want to risk getting raped do you?


4) Do not wear short skirts. You might think you’re wearing a pretty dress, but anything cut above the knee is actually an international sign that you are up for sex. With anyone, anytime, anywhere.


5) Do not look attractive. It is well know that women only exercise, diet, wear make-up and nice clothes, and brush their hair to make themselves sexually attractive to men. Ugly women do not get raped. Rape is what happens when a man is so overwhelmed by a woman’s allure that he cannot stop himself from violently assaulting her. It is a compliment, really!


6) Do not drink alcohol. It might sound like fun to go out with your friends and get drunk, but you leave yourself vulnerable to rape. If you must drink, treat all men who try to buy you a drink with suspicion. They could be rapists! Make sure you only get a little tipsy so that you retain the strength to fight off rapists.


If we can all just take some responsibility for our actions by following these rules, and think about what we are doing, we can protect ourselves.

The Wisdom of Lindsay Lohan

Li Lo's trip to India to ivestigate child trafficking will be screened by the BBC soon. For now, we can see Lindsay give an insight into rape and forced prostitution in this preview.



35 seconds in. Ugly girls are so lucky, right Lindsay? They never get raped.

The Saturdays - Just Can't Get Enough

I can't decide if the video for the Saturdays' Comic Relief single is chic, stylish and ironic, or appalling sexist and entirely inappropriate for a charity single? Possibly both. I will keep checking feminist blogs for help with this problem.

New angles on “Confessions of a Shopaholic”

Isla fisher proves herself to be a wonderful comic actress in this fun movie. It’s full of eye candy (Hugh Dancy, the purple and orange checked cape etc.), but it’s also bubbling under with meaning if you dare to look for it.

The credit crunch personified
With perfect timing, here is a movie about Becky Bloomwood’s own personal credit crunch. Her life is changed when her debts catch up with her, just as the world has changed over the past months. Isla Fisher hacking away at a block of ice with a stiletto heel to get at the credit card trapped inside is an iconic image of our time.

Madness
The scenes where Bloomwood is tempted to buy certainly tap into something which lies deep in the soul of every woman with a passion for fashion – this is a perfectly crafted work of art. My life will be better if I own something this magnificent. When Becky admires a very expensive green scarf at the beginning of the movie her decisions to buy is reached through conversing with mannequins. This stylistic psychosis hints at a major theme of the movie – mental illness. There’s been much controversy in the media over the last few years about what constitutes an addiction. Drugs, alcohol – yes. But sex, computer games and.... shopping? Becky repeatedly talks about shopping as a drug-like experience. She craves new purchases, she’s unsuccessfully tried to give up her habit many times, she loses her friends and the man she loves because of shopping – it ruins her life. All hallmarks of an addiction. So should shopaholics be in the DSM?

The anti-feminist Working Girl
The film in reminiscient of the 1980s classic “Working Girl”, both being about young women who decieve their way into a great career. Both films also feature Joan Cusack. Working Girl was driven by the capitalist/feminist mantra “I make it happen”. Melanie Griffith’s Tess McGill is an ambitious, smart heroine who claws her way to the top through cunning, hard work, and gall. 20 years later, Isla Fisher’s Becky Bloomwood is an incompetent who secures a great job that she doesn’t even really want though pure luck. Most of the comedy arises from her incompetence. But are we laughing at a dumb woman, as always, or are we finally allowing attractive women to be funny? The ending of the film is unsatisfactory. Becky’s happy ending is getting, and working for, her man - with disregard for her job satisfaction. Worst of all it forces her to give up her passion. People will dismiss this film for being about the joy of something as superficial as fashion but, as I hope this review has shown you, things are only ever as superficial as you want them to be.