Hats off to Toby Young (UK Telegraph) for his brutally candid appraisal of Sex in the City as pure single-male empowerment (Sex and the City is about as ‘feminist’ as a copy of Playboy):

I remember going to the launch party for the television series in New York in the mid-90s and sitting in the audience, drinking in the behaviour of Carrie Bradshaw and her friends.  As a single man, I thought all my Christmases had come at once. 

It was as if a group of frat boys had got together and said, “Hey guys, wouldn’t it be funny if we made a TV show that persuades attractive women in their 20s and 30s that it’s fashionable to have sex with men like us without demanding any sort of emotional commitment in return? Not only that, but we’ll do our best to convince them that they actually have to go out of their way to induce us to have this no-strings attached sex by spending several hours a day on incredibly painful personal grooming procedures and then squeezing themselves into these fantastically uncomfortable shoes. The beauty part is we’ll persuade them that doing all this stuff for our benefit – spending their lives beautifying themselves and then submitting to our every sexual demand without asking for anything in return – is a ‘post-feminist’ choice.”

I was expecting at least some women to see through this. Not all single girls in their 20s and 30s could be so stupid as to think that giving it away for nothing is actually a form of post-feminist empowerment, could they?

But no. An entire generation of women fell for it hook, line and sinker. Far from being seen as sluts, women like Samantha Jones were regarded as ‘role models’. Suddenly, it become cool for women to allow themselves to be picked up in bars by selfish, predatory males who are only interested in one-night stands. Who cares if the men never bothered calling them afterwards? It was ‘liberated’ behaviour.

One recurring theme of Sex and the City I particularly enjoy is the idea that modern single women should have two completely different sets of standards when it comes to who they should sleep with and who they should marry. Apparently, it’s okay to share your bed with any Tom, Dick or Harry, but the only men you should marry are chief executives who look like male models and earn over ten million dollars a year. Great! That means they’re never, ever going to get married and will continue to sleep with less-than-perfect men without ever expecting us to put rings on their fingers.

This last point is the killer. The truly incredible thing about Carrie and her chums is that they don’t make the connection between their promiscuity and their inability to find husbands.

Duh! Since time immemorial, the way women have enticed men to make a commitment to them is by refusing to put out until the man gets down on one knee. But if you’re willing to trade access to your body for a Cosmopolitan and a copy of Vogue, why would a man bother to spend $10,000 on a diamond ring? The Sex and the City women are never going to ensnare the Masters of the Universe they fantasize about marrying because Alpha males can have sex with them whenever they want and then discard them like used towels.

Ouch!

Toby is “greatly looking forward” to the release of the movie on May 27.  No surprise there.