"Samantha looked at hooking up with random people as not a big deal, so that's what I did too." So says "Lisa" in an ABC News story today. A fan of Sex and the City, Lisa took after the hyperbolized New York City ladies when she was just an impressionable 14-year-old living on Long Island. She puffed cigarettes and swilled icky sticky Cosmopolitans (having sneaked into bars) like Carrie and she bed hopped and said things like "you have funky spunk," just like Samantha. (She did not, unfortunately, become a lawyer like Miranda; or, thankfully, become a shrill nuisance like Charlotte). "It wasn't 'Sex and the City's' fault. I love the show, but I think it made it a little easier to justify my behavior," she elaborates. Eventually, Lisa wised up and went and married a Mormon and moved to the blasted wastelands of Utah.

Her husband initially made her get rid of her precious DVDs, but she's slowly gained them back and watches them once in a while. And everything's OK. Phew. "Now that I'm older, looking back, I'm like, 'Oh my gosh, these women are in their 30s. What was I thinking?," she says. "I'm not sure I'd want my little sister seeing the movie — she's 14 — but I think it's a fun show for people my age now, as long as you don't take it too seriously." Exactly. Though, the show is still dangerous! According to a professor of psychiatry at UConn, anyway:


With teenagers and young adults, there's a certain degree of role modeling that goes on. There's a certain 'if it's done on the screen then it's OK, it's normal,'" he said. "You watch 'Sex and the City,' you see these women go out for dinner, come back, and wake up in satin sheets with a gorgeous guy. Who wouldn't like that? But it doesn't show what goes on under the surface in real sexual relations. Sex is an extraordinarily complex, emotional process. No one wants to talk about that. They're not going to see the reality.

Hm. Well said, I think. I guess the lesson here is to always remember that these women are adults and that they don't actually fucking exist.