It’s my own fault: Carrie Bradshaw was minding her own high-heeled business in the episode with the McDonald’s. You know, the one where she throws the hamburger at Mr. Big? Carrie was the same, lovely and steaming so hard she made the melting cheesy quarter pounder pound harder when launched through the air past her surprised lover’s face. But me? Upon this viewing, 10 plus years after the original, I was feeling gross. And it wasn’t the fast food.
Sex and the City was a cultural touchstone. Even the haters have to admit that. Women everywhere loved the fabulous foursome and their adventures living and loving in the city that never sleeps, except after a really spectacular orgasm. I was 16 when I found episodes on TBS and showed them to all my friends, resulting in an infamous run in when my teammate’s mom came home early and I didn’t know the Blockbuster DVDs were uncensored. Yeah. So shall we agree this show caused formative moments for more than a few? Holy shoes, they’re doing another movie. Welp.
Being a curious young girl peeping into the lives of sexually active adult women was fun. Watching again as a grown woman was a runway of disillusion: A total lack of people of color. A nauseating display of consumerism. Don’t even talk to me about the Bechdel Test. This show that I loved as a girl made me feel naive as a woman. Maybe I was. I had totally and unknowingly subscribed to the religion of a fictional pop culture fantasy, and a white-washed, heteronormative one at that.
I suddenly remembered how an ex was impressed with my familiarity of Jay Z lyrics. I recall how dumbfounded I was that this, of all things, is what he was impressed by. Yes, I had an internet connection and a Pandora account, but what about those college degrees I earned? The kickass jobs I executed? My sense of morality or beliefs? My friends and relationships? Was it because I have light skin and knew rap lyrics? I’ll never know. But this dude was awestruck by an ability to rock a dress while singing along to songs that have been played into oblivion. “Come on boy, keep up…”
I felt angry. At myself. At the world. Art, commerce, everything. But what could I say? Poor little woke girl. I thought about what it was that moved me in the show. I loved that Carrie spoke to me. Gave me advice. How to live, how to love, how to be. What would I tell a young girl like me now? I shut my laptop and picked up my guitar.
At first I wrote what I knew. “Raised on Bradshaw, cut with Crenshaw,” meaning the road in Los Angeles I’d been up and down during college. Then I paused. College…
Kimberlé Crenshaw. I had studied Crenshaw’s writing before graduating from the University of Southern California. A brilliant law professor badass and feminist pioneer, she invented the term “Intersectionality” after trying to find a word that encapsulated and portrayed the urgency of how gender and race intersect. Referencing historically underreported police violence against African-American women and lawsuits with horrifyingly small-minded judges in her talk at TEDWomen 2016, she said Intersectionality is “When you are impacted by multiple sources and then abandoned to fend for yourself.”
Thus came my concept “IntersectionaliTEA”. I wanted to double down on the steeping. Tea, dark and made of tiny bits of this and that soaked in heat and time, seemed right to me to represent knowledge. Taking Crenshaw’s lead, I began to play with words and concepts not normally given to women. Paying the bill with glee, shopping consignment, looking for a “ride or die,” saying it takes time to become; I was sure as hell not going to rhyme “floor” with “more” if you know what I’m saying.
For the music video, I remixed elements of the TV show’s famous opening credits; The dirty water that flies in Carrie’s face when the bus goes by is now a drink brewed and meant to warm. The fluffy ingenue ballet skirt flouncing down the streets of New York becomes hustle-ready rehearsal wear on the luminous human and incredible dancer, 16-year-old Emma Branson. We are from the same hometown and I adore her. The depression era glass tea set was borrowed. No heels here. I wore boots I’ve had resoled three times.
Reaching through a pop song and glamorizing the knowledge that we can be and should be more than the images sold to us in the past is a big jump, I know. But I hope to God there are more women out there who are willing to take a risk. Create something, anything, better than we’ve had before; the airbrushed and the underpaid, the oversimplified and the oversexed. Crenshaw says we cannot fix what we cannot see. I say we have to make sure what we see is what’s important.
It didn’t need to be Bradshaw. It had been many before her. Barbie. Mary Tyler Moore. The women who rise to the level of public consciousness whose hearts and hemlines are known the world around. Most creators don’t take care to make sure the young minds that suckle at screens for life hacks get proper nutrition.
But I do. We must populate the media with more and better female icons. When I’m directing, the girl in the tutu doesn’t get drenched by a wayward puddle. She is drenched in sweat that will make her strong. In my lens, the representation of the feminine divine is of utmost importance. Screw the Madonna-Whore Complex and instead let us populate the world with women, full and absofuckinlutely fledged. If we do not consciously frame what we actually need as a culture on screens and media, how will our girls imagine better? How will men? The past is the past. We are indebted to the women real and fictional who brought us to this point. Now we have the future in our hands and our retweet buttons.
If there’s anything that Sex and the City got right, it’s that asking questions is a wonderful way to express your opinion. Do we want the next generation to absorb the content they’re taking in without questions? No. Let’s talk about how we steep ourselves, how what we put our minds in and our dollars behind creates our reality.
Now more than ever, we need positive female role models. And good thing, because homegirls know how to do it like that now.