YAP YAP YAP YAP YAP YAP YAP YAP AYP BOCK BOCK YAP YAP HEW HAW ZZZZZZZZZ. Credit: Craig Blankenhorn

We’ve been thinking it for two long years. All of us. Gnawing our cheeks at night, clutching at sweaty sheets, our faces hollow and gray, our once-bright eyes dimmed by the pain of too many questions. Sometimes we cry out, en masse, to a faceless god and a cold, indifferent universe that holds its secrets close. What… rasps the death rattle of our collective sanity. What is the lubrication level of Samantha Jones’s 52-year-old vagina? Has the change of life dulled its sparkle? Do its aged and withered depths finally chafe from the endless pounding, pounding, pounding—cruel phallic penance demanded by the emotionally barren sexual compulsive from which it hangs? If I do not receive an update on the deep, gray caverns of Jones, I shall surely die!

Please don’t die. The answer is… fine. Samantha’s vagina is doing fine. She rubs yams on it, okay? She takes 48 vagina vitamins a day. It accepts unlimited male penises with the greatest of ease. Now let us never speak of it again.

Sex and the City 2 makes Phyllis Schlafly look like Andrea Dworkin. Or that super-masculine version of Cynthia Nixon that Cynthia Nixon dates. Or, like, Ralph Nader (wait, bad example—Schlafly totally does look like Ralph Nader in a granny wig). SATC2 takes everything that I hold dear as a woman and as a human—working hard, contributing to society, not being an entitled cunt like it’s my job—and rapes it to death with a stiletto that costs more than my car. It is 146 minutes long, which means that I entered the theater in the bloom of youth and emerged with a family of field mice living in my long, white mustache. This is an entirely inappropriate length for what is essentially a home video of gay men playing with giant Barbie dolls. But I digress. Let us start with the “plot.”

Carrie Bradshaw: At the end of the first SATC movie (2008)—after eleventy decades of chasing his emotionally abusive jowls through the streets of Manhattan—Carrie finally marries Mr. Big, the man of her shallow, self-obsessed dreams. It has now been two years since their nuptials. Carrie already hates it. She hates that he sits on the couch. She hates that he eats noodles out of a take-out box. She hates that he wants to spend quality time with her in their incredibly expensive and gaudy apartment. She hates that he bought her an enormous television. When Big suggests that they spend a couple of days a week in separate apartments (they own TWO apartments, because life is hard!), Carrie screeches, “Is this because I’m a bitch wife who nags you?” Congratulations. You have answered your own question.

Miranda Redhairlawyerface: Miranda is a lawyer who has red hair. She also has a child. As a working woman, Miranda is forced to miss every single one of her child’s incessant science fairs (as though children know anything of science!). Also, her lawyer boss is a cartoon dick. Miranda quits her job, and everyone is much happier. This is because women should not work. It is terrible for the children.

Charlotte Goldsteinjewyjewsomethingsomethingblatt: Life for Charlotte is unbelievably difficult. As a wealthy stay-at-home mom with two children and a live-in, full-time nanny, she sometimes has to bake cupcakes! Also, one time her little child got finger paint on a piece of vintage cloth. Therefore, Charlotte cannot stop crying. “How do the women without help do it?” Charlotte (crying) asks Miranda. “I have no fucking idea,” Miranda replies. Then they toast their disgusting glasses of pink syrup. To “them.” To the “women without help.” “If I wasn’t rich, I’d definitely just kill myself right away with a knife!” says everyone in this movie without having to actually say it. Clink!

Samantha Jones: I told you we are never to speak of this.

In order to escape their various imaginary problems, our intrepid foursome traipses off to dark, exotic Abu Dhabi (“I’ve always been fascinated by the Middle East—desert moons, Scheherazade, magic carpets!”). When they arrive, Carrie, because she is a professional writer, announces, “Oh, Toto—I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore!” Each woman is immediately assigned an extra from Disney’s Aladdin to spoon-feed her warm cinnamon milk in their $22,000-per-night hotel suite. Things seem to be going great. But very quickly, the SATC brain trust notices that it’s not all swarthy man-slaves and flying carpets in Abu Dhabi! In fact, Abu Dhabi is crawling with Muslim women—and not one of them is dressed like a super-liberated diamond-encrusted fucking clown!!! Oppression! OPPRESSION!!!

This will not stand. Samantha, being the prostitute sexual revolutionary that she is, rages against the machine by publicly grabbing the engorged penis of a man she dubs “Lawrence of My-Labia.” When the locals complain (having repeatedly asked Samantha to cover her nipples and mons pubis in the way of local custom), Samantha removes most of her clothes in the middle of the spice bazaar, throws condoms in the faces of the angry and bewildered crowd, and screams, “I AM A WOMAN! I HAVE SEX!” Thus, traditional Middle Eastern sexual mores are upended and sexism is stoned to death in the town square.

At sexism’s funeral (which takes place in a mysterious, incense-shrouded chamber of international sisterhood), the women of Abu Dhabi remove their black robes and veils to reveal—this is not a joke—the same hideous, disposable, criminally expensive shreds of cloth and feathers that hang from Carrie et al.’s emaciated goblin shoulders. Muslim women: Under those craaaaaaay-zy robes, they’re just as vapid and obsessed with physical beauty and meaningless material concerns as us! Feminism! Fuck yeah!

If this is what modern womanhood means, then just fucking veil me and sew up all my holes. Good night. recommended

Find Lindy West every day on Slog, The Stranger‘s hot-fudge-covered blog.

Lindy West was born an unremarkable female baby in Seattle, Washington. The former Stranger writer covered movies, movie stars, exclamation points, lady stuff, large frightening fish, and much, much more....

540 replies on “Burkas and Birkins”

  1. This is really effing hilarious, however, I don’t understand why reviewers are so hard on this movie. It’s clearly just meant for fluffy entertainment and scrutinizing it to ensure that it properly accounts for all of womens’roles in a third wave feminist culture is just plain stupid. It’s like asking dancing with the stars to fairly represent all of contemporary choreography, and movement theory since the 1970s. Can’t we just have a little fun.

  2. This review was even more fun to read out loud to the GF. One problem, we laughed so hard that we actually considered seeing the movie for ourselves.

  3. This reviewer is both hilarious, but also over-the-top so her comments can be written off. The movie is hilarious. I’m glad the reviewer could enjoy writing with such energy, but she is also part misogynist. I wonder if she dates men and has anything besides open relationships.

    So what? Women in this film talked about nannies, their jobs and families — and they are allowed to dominate the cast. So the reviewer disagrees with them all — I didn’t. I related. I think it’s great the female characters didn’t only talk to men or about men.

    SITC2 had some scenes waiting to be realized, e.g., a highly-sexualized American woman, Samantha, finds herself surrounded by an angry mob in a Souk. Brilliant. In fact, the juxtaposition of the sexy women in Arabia was perfect. Why hasn’t someone else joked around that barrier already?

    The reviewer should spend more time making fun of the police who arrest kissers on the beach than the farcical film where Americans enter a culture clash. Make Love Not War. She should also spend some time with women in the Middle East.

  4. Just for the record, Miranda doesn’t quit her job to stay at home. She quits her crappy job and gets a better job.

  5. Lindy, it seems like you are acting as if you don’t know what Sex and the City is about.

    The movie is no different to the TV show. It’s always been about the 4 girls, their obsession with finding the right man, sex, fashion and their lifestyles.

    I agree that at times the movie is culturally insenstitive but you really need to get a sense of humour and enjoy the film for what it is…just a bit of fun. Remeber it’s a comedy not a documentary!!

  6. Many points here taken and acknowledged, but all that aside, the movie was corny and just not very good. How about that for a review? LOL.

  9. Entry in a history book, 2100 AD. Feminism – a confused nihilistic political movement of the late 20th/early 21st century, which witnessed the developed world descend, for a period, into a hostile and malleable dolls house for the infantile, narcissistic, fantasies of large numbers of western women and their left wing supporters.

  10. Entry in a history book, 2100 AD. Feminism – a confused,, nihilistic political movement of the late 20th/early 21st century, which witnessed the developed world descend, for a period, into a hostile and malleable dolls house for the infantile, narcissistic, fantasies of large numbers of western women and their left wing supporters.

  11. Oh my god girl, why do you have to analyse the whole movie like that? I’m sure if you’d go over every movie like that, none of them would be worth watching. I think it was a very nice movie. It made me laugh, and it moved me as well. And that’s really all I asked for when coming to the theatre. It’s sex and the city, remember? Not some oeuvre by Steven Spielberg… Place your comments in the right context next time, got it?

  12. this article is spot on vis a vis SITC2’s portrayal of disgustingly hyperbolised, ultra-rich, inconceivably shallow female archetypes.

    all this franchise does is highlight how easy it can be for the avaricious american movie industry to bastardise and invert any positive role models and ideals, turning them into superficial homunculi for the ignorant, the apathetic and the shallow to ‘consume’ and, where possible, emulate.

    it pains me that there haven’t been many movies recently with positive female role models(or male for that matter), so much so that it makes me wonder what’s happened to feminism’s representation within media?

    perhaps it’s become over-saturated by media hyperbolisation; it’s now become a self-referential parody of itself, a simulation.

    if we want to fight against these degrading representations of men, women and ideals, we ought to pay higher regard to those things which think outside the box and promote positive role models, rather than just continually buying into all the hype and celebrity worship.

    let’s start boycotting all the mindless, formulaic, stereotype-enforcing romcoms, action blockbusters and cgi films, and start promoting movies which can give us better role models – i’m not saying we should become the ‘league of decency’ et al, but i am saying we should certainly pay more heed to those films that adhere to a quality we can admire, emulate and discuss.

    ”the surest way to corrupt a youth is to teach him to hold in high regard those who think alike, as opposed to those who think differently” –Nietzsche

  13. in the early years of SATC, when it was just a show, I do not remember it being so focused on how wealthy the characters were, definitely not nearly as much as the two films. I mean yea, Carrie had her shoe fetish and Samantha name-dropped but both films make the women seem extremely self-indulgent and materialistic. I loved the show, I thought it was very witty and well written even, dare I say, insightful on the trials and tribulations of interpersonal relationships in the modern age.I feel both films have really just put focus more on product placing and dropping the names of various designers (this isn’t even done in a tasteful way). I think its really disappointing.

  15. I had never heard of you before today Lindy West until my sister showed me this review, but upon reading it I think I want to marry you. This is probably the best review of anything I have ever seen; blunt, hilarious and oh so true.

    Yours with a violent bout of cynicism,

    Isaac Hays.

  16. Nice article, Lindy!
    witty, bitchy and hyperbolically scathing – i like it. there’s nothing quite like an outpouring of bile and vitriol aimed at something vacuous, gawdy and superficial.

    i agree that whilst this movie no doubt served to ‘entertain’ a certain demographic, all it has really done is demonstrate its cultural irrelevance and insensitivity to the more tangible cultures that it attempts to deride.

    perhaps the writers were trying to present Carrie et al as having become so lost in their own superficiality that they’ve become simulations of the characters they once were, homunculi even. perhaps the writers were hoping to create a self-referential parody?
    seems unlikely though, doesn’t it?

    when we really think about it, this kind of movie serves only one purpose: to entertain. when it can’t even achieve this, then what other purpose can it serve?

    be honest, o fans of SitC, was this movie not awful? did you not lament the repetition of the same old sex gags ad nauseum, the predictability and the sheer vacuousness and arrogance of the protagonists and their vain attempts to amuse you in their quest to prolong their ailing libidos?

    or maybe it was entertaining? i mean, sitc2’s characters are, after all, more vacant, more shallow and more self-serving than ever!

    they have no moralculturalsocial compass beyond that which they deem to be ‘relevant’, meaning that ‘hilarity ensues’ when they reach the fabled ‘orient’ with their overt sense of entitlement, their overwhelming narcisism and their obsession with cultural hegemony over the ‘other’ – perhaps their roles as feminists is understated as they are playing more important roles: as imperialists in gucci disguise!
    *gasp!* – ‘nobody expects the spanish inquisition!’

    anyone who attempts to argue that the ‘sexual freedom’ and ‘body confidence’ of Carrie et al is in some way an argument for them to be presented as role models, has clearly been in either a coma for the last 20-40 years (or is too young to know any better yet).

    feminism has many forms, but has never been in the form of megalomaniacal arrogance and the need to project self-confidence to peers by treating men as nothing more than a tool for sexual gratification and the occasional emotionalcomic relief.
    that’s not feminism, people, that’s misandry.

    ultimately, SitC2 was rubbish because it did nothing to present the growth and consolidation of their independent personalities into a maturity that was appropriate for the kind of people that they are ‘supposed’ to be representative of.

    hopefully the franchise has (finally) been relegated to cultural irrelevance due to the xenophobic, misandric and heinously superficial undertones of the latest instalment.

  20. i dont know what all you reviewers were expecting when you went to see this movie but it clearly was not SATC. if you ever watched the TV show or the first movie then this movie was entirely as expected and anyone who enjoyed the TV show or the first movie would have found this movie jsut as hilarious. Yes it was set in Abu Dhabi and yes it showed the differences in a somewhat over the top way (although not entirely) and as i said if you ever watched the show this was to be entirely expected. i dont think the show was ever particulalrly plot focused or in depth – it is supposed to be light hearted fun based on fasion and s.e.x. as the title suggests. anyone looking for more clearly walked into the wrong cinema. if you dont like it go watch something else.

  23. Wow, Lindy West. You’re great. I have stumbled across you as I stumbled across Cindy Guidry, thank god you’re out there. I was beginning to feel very, very lonely.

  26. Lindy, I hope you can hear me laughing over here in England. I think I may just have done myself an injury.

    An absolutely superb review of an absolute piece of junk.

  27. you SUCK ASS at righting film reviews, take page out of PAULINE KAEL, ANTHONY LANE, DAVID DENBY or DAVID EDELSTEIN and learn that CLEAR, SIMPLE WRITING CAN BE JUST AS EFFECTIVE AND WITTY AND WINNING AS PILING ON THE ADJECTIVES. THIS REVIEW IS, INEXPLICABLY, WORSE THAN THE FILM ITSELF. YOU NEED TO GET A FUCKING DAY JOB, HACK

  28. “for what is essentially a home video of gay men playing with giant Barbie dolls…”

    fucking brilliant review Lindy

  31. Well, actually, if you’ve ever walked around the fancy stores in Knightsbridge, London in the summer, you will see dozens of traditional Muslim women in burkas shopping for exactly the same hideously expensive, shocking clothes that the SATC women wear.

    Apparently the wives of the wealthiest men in some of the strictest Muslim parties tend to hold private, women-only (so they don’t need to wear the burka) parties. In these parties it is considered quite a status symbol to be wearing the absolute finest in Western high-end expensive fashions.

    It really is quite a remarkable phenomena.

    With the rest of the review I have no qualms.

  32. Don’t blame fags because SJP and Bushnell’s target audience buy into this consumerist bullshit. It’s women who waste their money on ugly handbags and over-priced shoes and shoot their faces full of botox until they look hideous. Trying to pin it on fags is just reinforcing the sexist idea that women are victims and can’t make their own choices. If some queen of a stylist makes a buck off of these stupid rich bitches and laughs his way to the bank then it’s just funny. The faggots joke is on straight society: watching and laughing as straight men and women play their idiotic power games over and over, primping and plucking and self-tanning their privileged asses until their a whole new kind of ugly.

  34. SATC is a global money-making franchise- you did not understand Mc D’s in the Middle East or Russia- so ye in the US of A……. will not get the genius of making a non-film and still getting paid for it. GOOD LUCK to them!!!!

  35. Apart from a few vaguely amusing comments in your third paragraph, this is a truly terrible, not to mention offensive review.
    I’d be the first one to say that SATC2 isn’t a great movie, but it’s certainly not offensive.
    I’ll tell you what is offensive, your horrendous comments.
    For example;
    “Charlotte Goldsteinjewyjewsomethingsomethingblatt” – I think you ought to think before you speak, as that for me, personally is more offensive than anything in the entire movie.

    “cloth and feathers that hang from Carrie et al.’s emaciated goblin shoulders” – the most sad thing about that comment, is even if you use the name ‘carrie’ in that sentence, you’re still talking about SJP, and unnecessarily offending the way she looks. So much for women standing up for each other, i feel sorry for those with you as their friend.

    Lastly, if you are seriously suggesting that you, and the majority of women in the western world, and even many in the east, do not care about looks, style or fashion, then you are seriously deluded. It’s not shallow to dress well. Being a vapid cow and writing offensive and ignorant reviews, does.
    It also doesn’t make you a shallow person to occasionally obsess about someone you love/have loved. Or, perhaps, you’ve never got to that stage. It wouldn’t surprise me.

  36. I, for one, appreciate good, acerbic, biting wit. This may be the most favorite review of anything I’ve ever read anywhere. This is my first time seeing your work, and it surely won’t be the last. I actually laugh-snorted some diet coke out of my nose at my desk while reading this. Bravo!

  37. @465: Spoken like a true pre-historic male chauvinist pig. Could this be to make up for some form of insecurity on your part—like a small dick?

  38. @465: Uh, PeterC, in just what history book did you find this ultra-WRONG-wing male chauvinist definition of feminism?

    Stop reading Wikipedia. It causes penis shrinkage and cancer in laboratory rats.

    Or CAN you read?

  39. There is nothing funnier than a well written rant and this is hilarious! I have no intention of seeing the film -don’t think I’m exactly the target audience- but I had to read it following Mark Kermode’s comments. Brilliant!

  40. HAHAH!!! Brilliant review; I can’t think of anything I’d like to do less than watch Sex & The City. Never seen it & never will.

  41. hi,
    first time reading your blog. you should say what you mean…..LOL
    you’re terrific. it’s a great style, the content is irresistable, and you take no prisoners. i, too, have started a blog, and i hope someday, to spin yarn as well as thee, oh rapunzel.
    thanks for the chuckle of my day. i’ll wait for the video.

  42. you are so funny. my favorite quote in your review was: “

    It is 146 minutes long, which means that I entered the theater in the bloom of youth and emerged with a family of field mice living in my long, white mustache.”

    lady, you certainly can turn a phrase. i laughed until i had to change my depends…..
    keep it up, girl.

  43. My first response is to Edensnow, (Comment #491) I love you!!

    Dear Stranger:

    Several years ago you launched an attack on two city councilwomen. The way you went after these women in such a misogynistic-lets-hide-it-by-pretending-we’re-groundbreaking journalists made my skin crawl. From that time I have refused to even touch your paper. I won’t even pick you up to wrap my breakables when I’m getting ready to move to an apartment. If I had a choice of wrapping my Limoges tea set with a copy of the National Review or the Stranger, I would choose the NR. Sure, they are fascist craphounds, but they don’t hide their disdain for women. Your periodical however, poses as a liberal, stick-it-to-the-man, when in reality you’re all nothing more that pro-crypto-stick-it-to-the-vaginas-fascist craphounds.

    My friend sent me a link of this review and before I knew it, found myself on your website reading this offensive, trainwreck of a movie review. To be opinionated myself, I didn’t like this movie as much. There were parts where it felt like the script was still being crafted the night before shooting the film started. Some of the one-liners weren’t even campy bad. It was, however, good enough, that I didn’t mind sitting in a movie theater for over two hours. And do you know what makes Sex and the City a success each time it airs an episode or movie? Those women and their unbreakable bond.

    It’s not about the sex, Mahnalo Blahniks, Jimmy Choos or vintage Valentino (yes, Charlotte is my favorite dresser, ha), it’s about the bond between four women who work every god-damned day to preserve their sanity in a male-dominated workforce; try to find a lasting relationship; or a worth-your-time, passionate encounter. And when all of that seemingly goes to shit, they know they have three of the best friends on the planet…who will be there. No relationship, job or other distraction takes them away…for long…from their “soulmates.” That is what Sex in the City is about and SITC II scored again in terms of projecting positive relationships among women.

    How many of us have left our job for the day thinking: Shit, I gotta win the lottery, or ended a date thinking: no personality, 12 hands, and funny nosehairs; or expanding your passion and energy when engaging in sex and thinking…I was good, but he/she just laid there. Why am I doing this again? And just when you think you will eat too many ice cream cones or buy 28 boxes of Girl Scout Cookies, you remember your friends…and fortunately, their telephone numbers.

    As a man, I am proud, pleased, honored to write my dearest friends are women. Never, ever has it occurred to me to label them as my fruit flies, fag hags, or other ridiculously offensive, misogynistic terms. they are my equals…my support system. I sincerely hope I have provided them with as much love and support as they have shown me. I have heard much discussion about their vaginas and some times I still blush, but I don’t revile them. How many fucking times does a man, gay or straight, talk about his dick…way more than women discuss their vaginas, trust me. Samantha Jones takes 48 “vagina” vitamins a day. Who the fuck cares? How many commercials, millions in research are devoted to keeping a 78-year-old fart as hard as when he was 15?

    And never in 1 million years would I write such an offensive, hideous review such as this. It should be a review, not a rant. First we have a movie where a beautiful, mature actress belts out she is fifty-fucking-two-and-I-am-going-to-rock-that dress!!! She is also admitting that as one marches ever closer to the door marked “Exit”, she is beginning the menopausal phase and has turned to Suzanne Somers for advice. And that advice is a shitload of yams and hummus wrapped in the form of vitamins. She’s not moaning her fate of getting older. No, she is like: give me the facts, please. What can I do to make this transition nicer, more pleasant?

    …And the scene where she tells the girls they’re soulmates…that is fucking awesome and that simple little line summarized the entire season and movies…it was sublime.

    But you, Mr Blankenhorn, didn’t even get any of that out of the movie. All you saw was too much talk about menopause and the lubrication factor of vaginas. No wait…you saw this as yet another opportunity to slam it to the women…The entire point of the movie went right over your head. Well, you are working for the perfect periodical because everything feminine or positive flies over your headquarters at Shitbag Towers.

    To summarize, The Stranger is still nothing more than shitbaggery disguised as a news periodial. I’ll continue wrapping my teacups with the National Review.

    My name is James Bryant and I will continue NOT reading his hideous periodical.

  44. Fozziebare13, I liked your comments about Lindy’s review and agree with you 100% about the sexism of this review. (comment #31)

    Lindy, I think this review reveals soooo much more about you than it does about the movie. I suspect you have some issues with sex and resent lives of wealthy people. I also think you need to get over yourself just a little bit….

  45. Fozziebare13, I liked your comments about Lindy’s review and agree with you 100% about the sexism of this review. (comment #31)

    Lindy, I think this review reveals soooo much more about you than it does about the movie. I suspect you have some issues with sex and resent lives of wealthy people. I also think you need to get over yourself just a little bit….

  46. I watched it. Always like SATC and still enjoyed it… but the barbie dolls comment is spot on. maybe thats why I like it so much. Abit of ‘unrealistic escapism’ is always fun, if not exactly intellectually challenging… everything doesn’t have to be you know.

  47. This surely ranks up there with Rodger Ebert’s review of “North” as a truly great movie review. Thank you Lindy West, thank you.

  48. I had no knowledge of you, Madam Writer, prior to reading this piece. I must confess I am smitten by the eloquence of your bile. I have long thought the same of this franchise even while trying to endure some episodes on television. You, however, have done me the great service of having to bypass this abortive attempt at (I’m tempted to say alliteration) post-modern feminism.

    Thank you. You have done the world a favour.

  49. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!
    I LOVE being post #506!!!!!

    I HAD to read this yet AGAIN!!! Lindy, you ROCK!! LOL Hilarious!!!

    And YEAH: if THIS is what a modern woman is supposed to be like, then veil me and sew up all my fucking reproductive holes, too!

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