Out of the closet.

I have a confession to make.

For the past few months, I have been an abject, utterly devoted, borderline-obsessive fan of Sex and the City. In fact, the past few minutes between me writing that sentence and creating the link to the show was spent aimlessly browsing through the fashion shots on the official site. Every evening at 10 o'clock finds me devotedly tuned in to the WB to see the criminally censored, yet still appealing re-re-runs of episodes that I've already essentially committed to memory. Of course, when faced with such an inexplicable possession, there's really only one course of action to take:

It must be analyzed to death.

Which brings me to the topic(s) of today's post. I mined the library resources I had available to me, and spent the last week and a half reading. I started with Candace Bushnell's original book of the same title. I'd heard mixed reactions from fans of the show, so I knew not to expect the same stories, or even the same characters. Still, Bushnell's sharp, cynical prose takes some adjusting to, as does her rapid changes of setting and mood. Some of the storylines from the earliest part of the first season are here (modelizers, the Bone and Carrie's first encounter with Mr. Big are among them), but those looking for the strong friendships between the leads in the series are likely to be disappointed. But one thing that I liked about Bushnell's original columns over the series is the use of multiple perspectives: it's not all single people, and we hear as much from the toxic bachelors as we do the women who are scheming to have their revenge on them.

Amy Sohn's Sex and the City: Kiss and Tell, as one might guess by the title, is meant to be the official fan book for the show. Packed with pictures, brief synopses of each episode, the obligatory quiz, it has the flashy, magazine type of layout meant for periodic skimming rather than long, readable text. Probably the most interesting is the interviews of the individual cast members as to how they came to the show and the perspectives they bring to their characters. I was a little surprised that fashion didn't play a larger role in the book--each character gets a double page spread, and designers' names are dropped everywhere, but on the whole, the focus is on the writing, which is where it should be.

But, if we want to forego the frou frou and lend an air of academic respectability to all this, there's Kim Akass' and Janet McCabe's collection Reading Sex and the City. Consisting of essays primarily focusing on the feminist ramifications of the show, the works also discuss the fetishization of Manolo Blahniks and the elusive nature of the show's New York fantasy. Reading Sex and the City was originally published in Britian, and most of the writers are English, so there's some references that don't register for Americans. For the casual fan or even diehards, it's a skippable title. But the points raised by some of the less dense essays bring a different kind of perspective for those who have to have everything footnoted in life (not that I know anyone like that).

Whatever the opinions on the show (and I was entirely skeptical about it before I chanced on a few reruns), Sex and the City is likely going to remain a subject of study, at least in terms of feminist studies. Consumerism, the changing role of the single woman, the discussion of social taboos--there's a lot to get through, and a lot yet for me to analyze.