Sex and the City: a Dating Primer for Men Willing to Sacrifice 30 Minutes for Sex.

Those parental watchdog anal retentives have been hollering atop soap boxes about the dearth of educational value in television programming pretty much since the days of the Johnny Carson Show, but here’s the catch: girly television is like a primer for men who want to understand women. I’ve heard the complaints from guys forced to sit through Gilmore Girls re-runs and the typical snide commentary (“Oh, you mean, Sex and the Shitty?”) However, these men fail to see the gleaming social education opportunities in such programming.

Obviously, not all shows are created equal; you’re not going to get much of anything out of The Young and the Restless, except for a strong desire to hurl and/or swear off TV for life. However, if you can muster the discipline to sit through half an hour of Sex and the City, you can learn a lot about women, and not just about female stereotypes either.

One of the reasons that Sex and the City succeeded so very much and was able to draw itself out for an uncanny six seasons with such a sizeable fan base was the conflation of oddly accurate situational slapstick and a level of emotional honesty. Yes, this is a post-women’s lib world. Yes, women can now be high-powered corporate lawyers with high salaries and even higher shoes. But most women still seek a soul mate, a life partner, or at least a boyfriend. The women’s liberation movement did not, as some have suspected, annihilated the romantic impulse. Rather, it has simply expanded the breadth of ambition to the desire to have it all–career, real estate, and personal life– as well as an anxiety that the work-life balance may not be achievable. And Sex and the City got that. As its protagonist Carrie Bradshaw says to her editor at Vogue in one episode, “You have a successful career and a relationship. I was worried women only get one or the other, but you have it all.”