My girlfriends and I watched every episode of Sex and the City, and the first movie, together. We knew its limits, but still loved its interesting and outrageous women and their amazing (and sometimes disastrous) wardrobes. The show celebrated how one group of American women lives, loves, works, and plays, and refused to judge the four friends. It was therefore shocking to see Sex and the City 2 work overtime to stereotype women in Muslim countries as subjugated and ignorant.
Sex and the City 2 turns truly ugly when it fixates on the wardrobe of veiled Muslim women in Abu Dhabi, UAE -- the holiday destination of the film's four main characters. The film is unsubtle in its disapproval of women who wear the veil: the characters crack jokes about burqinis and Carrie -- in the film's lowest point -- openly mocks a local woman for eating French fries under her veil. When the gals stumble across a women's book club and discover bright clothes (designer of course) lurk beneath the burqa, it is unclear whether they're more shocked that veiled women eat, read, swim, and gossip or that they too like fashion. What is clear is the message that we can, and should, judge women and their entire religion or culture based solely on what they wear.
These caricatures would be laughable if they weren't so dangerous. History has shown the repeated failures of strategies to "save" women from what outsiders perceive as the constraints of their religion, race, or culture, without consulting or understanding them. We need just think of the Bush administration's talk about saving Afghani women from the Taliban. Instead of supporting Afghani women, the rhetoric silenced the voices of Afghani women human rights defenders. It also allowed fundamentalists to portray human rights and gender equality as Western imports, undermining those within the society who argue that the concepts are endemic and natural.
Sex and the City 2 also perpetuates another dangerous myth -- that gender inequality only exists abroad and American women have all the human rights they need. There is, of course, much to applaud in the U.S. record on women's human rights. But much still remains to be done. The United States is among only six countries that have refused to ratify CEDAW, the international women's rights treaty. Basic reproductive rights remain contested here, maternal mortality has doubled in the last 20 years, and there still is not equal pay for equal work. Under these circumstances, watching the four Sex and the City friends leading the world's women in a rousing rendition of "I Am Woman" at an Abu Dhabi nightclub at best rings hollow and at worst neo-colonial.
The film's obsession with women's wardrobes as the only indicator of gender equality is, unfortunately, not unique. From Islamist armed groups' attacks on women and girls in Iraq for not wearing the veil, to proposed burqa bans in Europe, the world has become obsessed with controlling what women wear. Of course, imposed veiling and gender discrimination violates women's human rights, but a blanket ban on what women can wear also strips them of their agency and jeopardizes other rights, including the rights to freedom of religion and movement.
All the talk of the veil sidelines a broader and more important conversation about ways to fortify all of women's civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights against attacks by both governments and fundamentalists. As it increasingly puts women and women's rights at the center of its policies to combat extremism or terrorism, the Obama administration has a real opportunity to move this discussion forward and take the debate from women's clothes to women's rights.
Jayne Huckerby is Adjunct Assistant Professor of Clinical Law and Research Director of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University School of Law where she directs the Center's project on Gender, National Security and Counter-Terrorism.
In fact, SATC2 actually takes the discussion from relationships and personal troubles to tackle women's rights and issues, not only in the US but in the world. The film in no way dismisses Muslim women as "ignorant." I have no idea where you or anyone else got that notion.
The film also stands up against the politically correct narrative that the burqa is anything to respect or celebrate.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/taylor-marsh/sophisticated-sex-and-the_b_604379.html
And if we all laughed about the ridiculous notion that a woman can only eat fries if she hides under a burka, then maybe these women would feel foolish and push for their rights. Resistance from within is much better than people coddling the "culture" while imposing our western ideas of "human rights", no?
When a woman can walk down the streets of SAudi Arabia, without her face covered and not be arrested, .....THEN you can try to explain to me how Sharia Law and the doverings there are a choice.
How about something non-cliched and creative for both of the sexes.
I'm looking forward to Sex and the City 3.
If don't think Sharia law is misogyny on steroids than got get educated.
The movie could never do justice to the subjugation and animal like treatment received by millions of woman and YOUNG GIRLS at the hands of their husbands or fathers from gang rapes aimed at teaching lessons about talking to strange men to honor killings and stonings for adultery.
To mock just a small part of this incredibly inhuman treatment of woman is a start. Your article doesn't help. It seems to be willfully naive drival about womans 'rights' to participate in Sharia law. I liken it to an 1860s freedom fighter worried about job prospects for the slaves BEFOR THEY WERE SET FREE!!
Great.
One less problem to solve.
People rationalize their peculiar view that everything Western is intrinsically bad and everything Eastern is virtuous by turning the beastly treatment of women into a woman's right to choose to be treated like a beast. I think this is a deeply corrupt view.
I just saw the movie last night and I was disgusted with it on so many levels. It was crass, superficial, BORING, silly, unfeeling, unseeing and unknowing. But worst of all, boring.
I saw the movie, and I think that the comments over the burkinis and such were simply in keeping with their characters: these women don't live in the real world. They freak out over possibly having to fly coach, and perish the thought they should have to buy a shirt at Target. If Dior made a blinged out burqa, believe me, Carrie et al would have been rocking them out. Their problem with the veils were that they were fashionless--not that they were subjugating (I think that's the word I'm looking for) women. A completely misguided sentiment. Then the Abu Dhabi women they encountered towards the end of the film pull off their veils to reveal the complete Spring/Summer 2010 Louis Vuitton collection underneath. It's not shallow to love clothes, it's shallow to think that they make the world go round and unite us as women, which was the message I got from that scene.
*stepping off soap box*
It would be disingenuous if the movie's "characters" did not have some reaction to the Burka being as they are NY fashionistas.
Would it be going to far to suggest that "Carrie's" prejudice (perceived) against the Burka was being used by the film makers to round-out her character's personality to include human flaws?
Then again, I could just be pissed-off because a veiled woman stole my wallet the other day, and I couldn't IDENTIFY her once I realized that I had been taken! (True story).
But with you being a self-confessed Sex and the City fan, I highly doubt that will happen anytime soon.