I caught a lot of flak from feminists for this section of my Sex and the City 2 review, because it was ageist, misogynistic, slut-shaming, etc. etc. etc.

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.

In case any of you are still mad at me, this blogger, Keka, says exactly what I was getting at—only she articulates it in eloquent English instead of impenetrable sarcasm:

I wasn’t amused when she bragged about having fooled her 52-year-old body into thinking it was 25 by swallowing 45 pills and eating—and smearing on topically—mounds of yams when the pills were confiscated at the Abu Dhabi airport.

I don’t want to be in the company of any woman who is that afraid of and disgusted by her own aging body. Admittedly, my menopause was one hot flash and a gradual realization that I hadn’t had to buy any tampons for a while. But I also realized soon after that the process of becoming a woman of that “certain age” included changes worth experiencing.

Instead of letting Sam grow up and show women a little of this joy and true wisdom, they have her screaming, “I am woooooooman” in an Abu Dhabi karaoke bar not because she believes it but rather to attract yet another hunky one-night stand into her bed.

The whole review is beautifully articulated and totally worth reading. (h/t @ebertchicago)

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....

16 replies on “What She Said: Kim Cattrall’s Aging Vagina Edition!”

  2. “…eloquent English instead of impenetrable sarcasm…”
    no offense to eloquent language, of any nationality, but I’ll take the impenetrable (HA!) sarcasm regarding her easily-penetrated chasm. thanks for sharing.

  3. I don’t know – I’ve never watched the show, or the movies, I’ve hated even the bits that I’ve seen in ads, and I don’t get the point of it. But in a culture that denies older women have any kind of sexuality at all, it makes sense that there would be some ridiculous flailing around when a mainstream movie tries to portray a sexual older woman. It does sound like a train wreck. The whole franchise does.

  4. @3, if only there was some way for an older woman to be sexual without throwing handfuls of condoms in the air and screaming “YES I HAVE SEX!”. Or dropping her panties and rubbing yam butter on her cooch in full view of her cow-orkers.

  6. I don’t really want to defend this franchise, but I do have to wonder about the double standards this brings up.
    A man over the age of 50 who admits to popping Viagra isn’t ever accused of being disgusted by his aging body. He’s considered a normal guy who wants to get as much sex as he can for as long as he can.
    Samantha has never been a mature woman. She’s always been portrayed as a teenage boy in a woman’s body so the fact that she still wants as much sex as she can get is just like a guy popping Viagra into his 70s.
    What some people seem to miss in criticizing her over-sexedness is that the other three women are pretty “normal” in their sex drive. They enjoy is, but when menopause time comes I doubt they’d be keeping up the same regiment in order to have sex.
    One thing the show did pretty well in my opinion was the depiction of different types of women’s sexual energy. Sam is the over-sexed extreme, Charlotte is on the prudish side. No one seems to make a big deal about Charlotte’s using sex to nab a man because that’s supposed to be the norm for women.

  10. Say what you will (duh) but the character Samantha was an icon to older women who felt they could not embrace their sexuality.

    They are women that have been shit on pretty much their whole existence. They struggled for equal pay, descent jobs, not being harassed at the workplace. They were then dumped for upgrades, when their husbands traded them in for a newer model (1st wives club, anyone?) And they were told to “age gracefully” whatever the fuck that really means. Samantha’s vagina, and the open and honest sexual dialog of that character is amazing. Talking about breast cancer, menopause, and lustiness all in the same character has never been done, and maybe it was done sloppily, but who the fuck cares? My mom really identified with Samantha, as I am sure many, many other women do.

    And fuck all of you, Sex and the City was a great show and I loved the movies. Both of them.

  11. I’m not longing to return to pre-PC days, but I would love to see the dawn of an era where popular discussions of societal mores could occur without being exclusively couched in terms of which fictional TV characters we do or do not like and what these preferences say about us.

  12. And further, if their are medications to help me through menopause, then I am going to fucking use them. I am probably going to color my hair for a long time, and I while I don’t think I’ll get plastic surgery maybe I will want to when I am of the age to consider it.

    We have technology, and people who use it should not be shamed because of it. It’s fucking bullshit that women have to put up with this shit. “Oh I am aging gracefully, I am so much better than some other woman”. shut up.

  13. @5, cow-orkers is always intentional.

    @10, I don’t know what the DNRC is. Google says Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, which doesn’t seem like what you’re referring to.

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