Downtown Girls
I watched Sex and the City sporadically when it was televised (on HBO, not the squeaky-clean syndicated version), and an ex even bought me the full season box set so I could get caught up. While I loved the show, I often felt forced to give it the side-eye. Most people complained of its obviously exclusionary casting (hmmm, no brown or black people in NYC?), its stereotyping of gay males, its over-the-top consumerism, and most of all its underhanded girl power meets sexism combo (All women talk about is men? Really?).
I echoed those thoughts, but often watched the show with the utmost suspension of my political and intellectual side in order to enjoy it, a practice I employ for many a pop culture pursuit. Yet one thing I could never get over on the show was its obvious disregard for reality. Yes, it was a television show, but its one that proved culturally powerful and I wanted it to be a little more responsible, particularly in its portrayal of life in New York . . .
Let’s take Carrie’s apartment for example: rent-controlled, fairly large, located in a posh neighborhood. The likelihood of this is about 1 in a million here in NYC and most rent-controlled pads are held within families for generations and not just a case of good luck. Carrie’s closet alone would make even the wealthiest person bankrupt, with clothing and accessories that technically cost more than her monthly rent – per item! Additionally, her job as a columnist for a local newspaper would surely be a side hustle and not a well-paying permanent gig. Unless homegirl is writing front page-earning op-ed pieces for the Times, there is absolutely NO WAY she’d be able to make ends meet.
The troubling part is that shows/films like SATC perpetuate several myths about not only NYC, but America as a whole, and they center around racial privilege, undeserved wealth, and manifest destiny (at least in terms of gentrification).
I watched the first episode of the new MTV “reality” show Downtown Girls, which follows the professional and personal lives of a Glamour.com blogger Shallon and her friends. I should say right from the start that I was happy to at least see a person of color in the cast (Gurj is from London and of South Asian descent). Kudos to MTV for recognizing that not all of NYC is white (something it has yet to do on their other NYC-based “reality” show The City). Nevertheless, in most shows like this, the token women of color is usually of Asian descent (see: Lipstick Jungle, Cashmere Mafia) OR the show uses Judaism as a means of representing “otherness” (see: Real Housewives of New York, Sex and the City), and just leave it at that. When I think about my group of friends (in Tennessee, NYC, and Brazil), they are fairly diverse in terms of class, race, and religion, so it’s shocking to me that these shows, under the guise of “reality” or real-life simulation, almost always ignore the diverse makeup of friend groups.
In Downtown Girls, everyone lives and parties in Manhattan, yet another NYC myth that seems to keep on ticking. The majority of people I know actually DON’T live in Manhattan (due to high costs), and if they do, they live far uptown in Washington Heights or Harlem (which, oddly, despite having high white populations, are still portrayed by the media as being predominately black and Latino, and ultimately dangerous). Portrayals of Brooklyn in such films and shows, despite it being a huge cultural mecca here in NYC, continues to bestow pariah status upon it. Such portrayals are not only unfair, but completely unrealistic considering that people are moving to Brooklyn in droves and that many of the people who live there now embody what NYC became well-known for to begin: creativity and diversity.
Though I suppose I shouldn’t be completely surprised that this premiere of Downtown Girls, being that it’s an MTV show, didn’t impress, I was still disappointed in the SATC-ripoff like quality of the show. With every conversation surrounding around finding a man, the women come across as vapid and one-track-minded, despite all having interesting careers and lives beyond their boyfriends and potential hookups. It may take another few times for me to decide, but for right now, I’m a little biased. After all, it does exactly what every other portrayal of NYC does: it gets almost everything totally wrong.
- Retail DJ
Tags: downtown girls, mtv, sex and the city
