Sexless and the city: Ageism and other real problems

As three out of the four actors who played the central roles come back, there is as much curiosity about their chemistry as about their crow’s feet. (Image: Screen grab from 'And Just Like That')

The main thing about Sex and the City when it originally burst upon us was that it had lots of sex. Four female friends bonded over getting it, not getting any, how to get it, how many times, etc. The new avatar of the same show back after almost two decades, And Just Like That, has gone celibate on us. Not only does actor Kim Cattrall, who had been playing maneater Samantha and gamely mouthing impossible lines like ‘Lawrence of my labia’, vanish, but Mr Big dies - no, not in the throes of pleasure - while exercising! Libido is a no-no, it would seem.

Of course, the serial was never soft porn. It was a mildly feminist version of little girl in big city at a time when hetero sex itself needed to be rescued from its corset of prudery. But it made the whole man-woman thing… fun. About banter, about the suspense of will he call or not, about dressing up for yourself, and an urban sisterhood. Carrie Bradshaw, played by Sarah Jessica Parker, of the thin waist and thick hair wrote about dating men for a living. Viewers were turned on not only by the central premise of finding love and lust, but by the dresses, the shoes, the hair styles, the carefree dialogues, the narrow escapes from boredom and bad bedrooms.

As three out of the four actors who played the central roles come back, there is as much curiosity about their chemistry as about their crow’s feet. In their mid-fifties, none of them can affect a false girlishness. But this is a series that ran on feminine adrenalin, high on youth and wine. Parties, foreign holidays, weddings… Even when glum on screen, they were glam.

Audiences have nothing to do but sit back and stare pickily. Why, they ask, did Carrie not call 911 as soon as her husband collapsed? Where is Samantha, the deadly diva who was the oomph to Carrie’s bland fashionista turn? The racial diversity too was such a travesty, it is felt. Plus, with the recent rape allegations against Chris Noth, the actor who plays Mr Big, it is just as well his character is bumped off…

Carrie’s gal pals, played by Cynthia Nixon and Kristin Davis, came up against too much wokeness and allegations of facial work suspected to be done, respectively. Sarah, who allowed her hair to stay more natural, said self-consciously in a recent interview: ‘I know what I look like. I have no choice. What am I going to do about it? Stop ageing? Disappear?’ Ageism, as the star trio know, is real.

Author Candace Bushnell, whose book led to the serial in the first place, is now doing a one-person show more realistically called Is There Still Sex in the City? And she squarely blames porn. She said in an interview, ‘Nobody talks about women having orgasms any more. In the early 1980s, the Big O was like a new discovery.’

Whatever it is, as the Sex and the City protagonists found out, no one is going out and getting any anymore.