Shot Through the Heart - A Sling of Cupid's Arrow to Sex and the City

Valentine's Day is fast approaching, and this seems as good a time - or better - to send out my own personal little sling of Cupid's bow through the heart of the wildly popular HBO series "Sex and the City". To be quite honest, I am just as suprised as anyone with how this show has affected me, years after its debut, years into re-runs. Maybe it's the fact that I'm the mother of teenaged daughters who really, really liked the show.

Maybe it's the fact that I gave in to the guilty pleasure of watching it myself. Or maybe it's the fact that I could never watch a 'new' episode being aired; I always came back the next day when it was re-run to see what I had missed, so guilty did I feel about watching it. I never, ever wanted my viewing schedule to be wrapped so tightly about this cotton candy colored piece of fluff. As a grown woman, I would never admit to myself or to others that it held any significance in my life. And yet it did, bright lights, big city, bigger than life characters and all...

Valentine's Day is a day for lovers to celebrate their commitment to each other. The characters of "Sex and The City" would have a viewer believe that for them, every day is Valentine's Day. Their lives were so intertwined and defined by a man's love - or lack thereof - that they became the antiheroes of the spirit of Valentine's Day. Without the undying love of a man in their life, they were nothing.

Even looking at my words in print, I realize how silly they must seem. But the truth is, I had a morbid fascination with "Sex". It was my own dirty little secret that I had an interest in the lives of four vacuous young women living in my beloved New York City. As I grow older, however, I find myself not only a wee bit wiser, but also increasingly angered at my own stupidity at being sucked into what I now realize was one enormous, fictitious fairy tale. No New York City woman actually lived like these women; if they did, chances are they wouldn't make your "Favorite Four" plus one.