Please remember how American TV works...

...or the ultimate in "chick TV" will destroy the country! If it hasn't already...

Specifically, Sex and the City. I love watching it as much as the next woman - many quality discussions have happened during commercial breaks, many important life issues resolved afterwards by a council of girlfriends, many an excuse to binge on pizza and icecream. Good times.

When I was an exchange student, I noticed about a bajillion cultural differences between my home country and my host one. A large one of which was this: In the US, we know that TV is byperbolle - real life is never that way. In that country, TV imitates life to a tee. My neighbors and classmates assumed a lot of bad things about me, unfairly I might add, because they thought being an American, I was just like the 90210 girls they saw on "yanqui" TV. Some people missed out on getting to know a great person because they way they acted based on those assumptions pissed me off so much.

I've been back in the US for 6 years now, and I think that Americans aren't getting it either anymore. Specifically, men are watching Sex and the City, assuming women are all that way, and it's destroying gender relationships in this country.

Among the unrealistic garbage on that show that men now assume is true/expect of women:

• Style: So a corporate lawyer, and a trust fund baby-turned divorcee worth a few mil maybe can afford to be decked out in the latest from Prada and Manolo. A journalist and a PR professional - most likely cannot. Not to mention, they certiainly can't afford to rent their own, multi-room apartments in Manhattan. Much less to buy them.
• Aging: (Natural) blondes and redheads in their 30s and 40s DON'T HAVE PERFECT SKIN. Unless they have had several facelifts, botox, collagen, and decades of expert dermatology care.
• Drinking: Nor is it normal to down several cosmos a day at that age and remain reed-thin. It's not possible in your 20s when your metabolism is faster. Not to mention, anyone in real life who drinks that much has a red nose. (See Ted Kennedy)
• STDs: Never in that show did anyone get an STD, and those four screwed two thirds of one of the most populated city in the USA. 25% of adults have herpes. 70-some odd percent contract HPV at some point. Curables like chlamydia and gonhorrhea probably abound. And those numbers skyrocket in urban areas. It's just impossible in this day and age to have that much sex and not get at least one disease. Times four.
• Sex drive: We are not all Samantha Jones. Many women - I mean, of the ones without psychological problems - aren't all about getting laid, "loving" and leaving, humping and dumping. That would be the stereotypical male. And yet of all the people I know, male and female, none of them are into that - they're either looking for committed relationships or single-by-choice and respect themselves and their bodies. Nor is sex discussed among women in such a mercenary, "I'm just using these guys, it's power for me" fashion.
• More about sex: I don't know anyone in real life that routinely fucks after two or three dates.
• Bars: Are for people where people who aren't old enough to rent cars and who aren't old/wise enough to know any better, troll for soulmates. But not so much in your late 20s and beyond. I know one person who met her SO in a bar (hi, Carissa!) and I maintain she and he just had dumb luck.
• Relationships: NO selfrespecting woman, esp in her 30s, would put up with the crap Carrie takes from Big for six years. Nor would she move five time zones away with "just a boyfriend". Nor is a woman who has suffered through the hell of law school and high-stress, low-respect life at a corporate law firm going to shack up with a bartender and let him mooch off her for life. I know very few women who truly love their careers. And since when do moms get promoted in the real life corporate sphere?
• Biological clocks: If yours starts ticking in your mid-30s like Charlotte's did... good freakin luck. And look how well that turned out for her. Sure, real life women may sometimes accidentally get pregnant in their mid-30s like Miranda did, but they're in the vast minority. Most of my friends - in their 20s and 30s - who are parents took a few years of trying. With medical intervention.

In short, the only part of that show that was realistic was Samantha getting cancer and saying on the show that breast and other female cancers are largely caused by not giving childbirth. That 30-second soundbyte was the only admission in six seasons that yes, there are dire consequences for a lifestyle like hers.

But men seriously watch this stuff (why is a straight man watching chick TV, anyway?) and expect women to be just like these ladies. They're in for a big dissapointment. And so are the women, who also lose out as a result of these psychotic expectations.