It was a lazy Sunday night spent jumping back and forth between Netflix streaming and HBOgo.com (thanks to G's kind donation of his log-in info in exchange for meatballs; best deal ever). I'm not sure why I decided to watch a few episodes of Sex and the City. I guess I just wanted to double-down on the day's hyperactive non-producitvity by adding a layer of vacuous girl sounds to my evening of stirring spaghetti sauce and folding laundry.

When I was younger, SATC fascinated me. Who are these women? What is that they're wearing? Where did their seemingly bottomless pits of money come from? Could you eat brunch for a living? Because that seemed to be the reality they were living in. While a part of me coveted the sassy banter and the high fashion and the urbane New York lifestyle, there was always some part of me that was repelled by the culture of the show. The fixation on material objects, baseless body image obsessions, but mostly the fixation on men. 

Not men as people. But the life-defining end goal of getting one. The notion that you are some sort of partial subhuman until you have a muscular arm to loop yours through as you walked through life, ideally toward some idyllic marriage that carried itself out in a montage of cute domestic moments and tastefully rendered sex scenes in an impeccably decorated high rise apartment. Those women were downright rabid about finding that guy, and I found it sad sometimes, sometimes obnoxious, and often repellent, which is exactly how I felt about my own seemingly unquenchable lust for male companionship. 

My early to mid twenties (many women's early-mid twenties) were spent preoccupied with men. I developed intense crushes that rendered me idiotic in the presence of whomever I had a crush on. Chasing down boys, conveniently situating myself in their paths (this is also known as stalking, or "fancy meeting you here, right where I knew you'd be"). I'd drink copiously in their presence, and throw myself at them. It's like I actually believed getting drunk and hooking up was the gateway to a satisfying relationship, rather than just a gateway to lots of bad sex.  And every man who declined the opportunity to become my boyfriend, even after the raucous night of nudity and bourbon, drove my self-esteem farther down into the muck. And the men who didn't? They were a different kind of problem. 

I don't remember ever having a thought one way or the other about getting married, but I knew that I had to find someone who would validate me—how was I ever going to think well of myself unless some dude thought well of me first? 

Obviously, that line of thinking transcends bullshit. It takes the proverbial idea of bullshit to entirely new bullshitty levels. I wasn't raised to need such validation from anyone. My parents did not provide this kind of pathological model  in the least. I didn't even grow up with a TV from which to be so sorely misinformed. Yet, there I was, up to my neck in self-loathing because I couldn't get a boyfriend. ​ 

It was like this poisonous notion was built in—pre-installed and hardwired. What was worse was ​I knew it was totally incorrect, untrue, unhealthy and insane, yet I could not stop feeling it, measuring myself by its false reality. The more determined I became to not feel it, the more entrenched it seemed to become, digging in deeper, like a tick. When I was 25, Sex and the City echoed all of that right back at me, affirmed its truthfulness. Except those girls were richer and prettier and had way better style than I did. Thus cycle of self-loathing and lack of confidence was demonically, artificially perpetuated.

Judging by the actual groans I emitted while I did dishes and watched random SATC episodes on my laptop last Sunday night, my feelings on this topic seem to have corrected themselves. ​The ladies' constant agonizing about the cruel fate of being in their mid-thirties and single made my stomach turn with annoyance. (Or in the case of Charlotte, married, but hardly happily—but he's rich and handsome, so that's okay!) Meanwhile Carrie continued to obsess about Mr. Big, whom one writer described as "the phallus at the center of it all." But what about Samantha? you SATC fans will say. Surely her character is the anathema to this regrettable narrative. Samantha might be the closest thing to a feminist the show has, but she is treated so often as a caricature of "the slut," played more for laughs and shock than as an honest characterization of sex-positivity. 

Young women are finally shaking this off and demanding more for themselves and loving each other more. But not enough. Some pockets of our culture still wonder why a woman would choose to live single in a city, to foster an ambitious career that may or may not include motherhood—and that may or may not include a partner; to opt for lovers instead of partners, or to opt for many partners instead of one. Marriage is just one of several options now. And individuals of both sexes are finally starting to embrace that. Many men too feel the pressure of matrimony—though from a different angle. 

I'm 38 now and definitively unmarried if not single, with no plans or desire to get married. For me it took age and experience. But it shouldn't have taken so long. It should have been automatic. I'm encouraged by so many young women who are looking out for their own needs and goals for making productive and happy lives for themselves, rather than wrapping those needs and goals up in this fictional need for a man. 

Let's hope that Sex and the City swiftly dates itself in more than its fashion. Then it can just be a fun, spunkily written comic fiction. Which I am sure is all it ever intended to be. But it reflects a lot of cultural  truth—of all kinds. 

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