Essay: Hate-Watching And Just Like That
Image via HBO Max
When its second season began with each of the main characters having sex, I thought “And just like that, this fucking show that I’ve been hate watching is finally fucking going there.”
And just like that, it lost its nerve when in the very next episode, Carrie refused to record an ad about vaginal dryness, reminding me why I hate watch this fucking show. If you’re not addressing vaginal dryness in a show where people with vaginas are having sex, then you can fuck right off (figuratively, because literally it will be uncomfortable otherwise). Moisturize your vagina!
If there are taboos still when it comes to depicting sex on screen, few are as tenacious and pernicious as those around a cisgender woman who is no longer young, her vagina which is no longer wet, and her sex drive which is not supposed to exist.
How has Carrie, who in Sex and the City was a sex columnist, become so squeamish about her vagina in And Just Like That?
If there are taboos still when it comes to depicting sex on screen, few are as tenacious and pernicious as those around a cisgender woman who is no longer young, her vagina which is no longer wet, and her sex drive which is not supposed to exist.
How in a show that centres cisgender women in their 50s, is there no discussion about changes in sex drive, the importance of lubricant, the difference between lube and moisturizer for your vulva and vagina, and penetrative sex that hurts at times and burns at others and takes you to your OB/GYN to talk options because you enjoy penetrative sex and insist on still enjoying it, not for cisgender men’s pleasure but for your own?
All the above has happened to me and I insist on talking about it because when you are shameless, you cannot be shamed.
I know those things are supposed to shame me into silence, but in the pursuit of pleasure that patriarchal fuckery has tried to deny me throughout too many years of my life, shame and silence are distractions and I will not be deterred from desire. I enjoy sex, with myself and with a partner, and as my body changes, I am ready to meet it where it’s at.
And so here I am looking shame in the eye, daring it to test me. And Just Like That has blinked and surrendered to shame.
In the pursuit of pleasure that patriarchal fuckery has tried to deny me throughout too many years of my life, shame and silence are distractions and I will not be deterred from desire.
It is telling that a show which in its previous iteration prided itself in smashing taboos around the sexuality of cisgender women in their 30s, has been so cowardly in its refusal to pick up that baton from Sex and the City.
It will not talk about sex for cisgender women in their 50s because it will not talk about the menopause transition other than to mock it. The menopause transition, when it is mentioned, is shown as shit, with very little of the amazing about it portrayed.
How in a show that centres cisgender women in their 50s, is Charlotte the only one who displays any impact of the menopause transition—menstrual flooding in the first season and “memo-belly” in this second season? And in both cases, it is mined for laughs.
How in a show that centres cisgender women in their 50s, does menopause barely if ever come up in their dinner table conversations? There is not a female friend in her 50s with whom I have not compared menopause experiences with. And not just my contemporaries–I’ve talked to younger friends about menopause, I bring it up almost every time I FaceTime with my father and mother, I bring it up with my sister and her husband who are in their 30s, my Beloved can list the various impacts I’ve shared, etc etc etc.
It is telling that a show which in its previous iteration prided itself in smashing taboos around the sexuality of cisgender women in their 30s, has been so cowardly in its refusal to pick up that baton from Sex and the City.
The menopause transition has significantly impacted my life and the people in my life know it. One of my favourite anecdotes was witnessing a woman enter a restaurant in Evanston, Illinois, with a female friend as I was eating dinner, point to the fireplace and say loudly enough for all to hear “I don’t want to sit next to the fire, I’m having hot flashes.” Just like that–no mockery, no attempt at laughter, just honest and plain and matter of fact.
It is telling that a show which in its previous iteration prided itself in smashing taboos around the sexuality of cisgender women in their 30s, has been more willing to deal with taboo topics around cisgender men’s sexuality as they age, such as erectile dysfunction and “dry ejaculation,” than frankly depict its aging women’s sexuality.
It is telling that And Just Like That is more willing to look at burgeoning teenage sexuality than to portray the ways getting older impacts its cisgender women in their 50s.
It is telling that Grace and Frankie, a show that centers women in their 70s and 80s, seems to have picked up the baton from Sex and the City in a way that And Just Like That has not just fumbled, but resolutely refused to accept.
And Just Like That refuses to talk about sex for its mid-50s cisgender women because it refuses to talk about menopause because it refuses to talk about aging because it is ultimately a deeply ageist show.
Compare Grace and Frankie to the episode of And Just Like That which featured women in their 70s and 80s only to mock them and point to them as the horror that lay ahead for Carrie and her contemporaries.
It is telling that a show which in its previous iteration prided itself in smashing taboos around the sexuality of cisgender women in their 30s, has been more willing to deal with taboo topics around cisgender men’s sexuality as they age than frankly depict its aging women’s sexuality.
Heteronormative patriarchy’s designated shelf life for cisgender women is the age at which we cease to be its walking incubators. Wanting sex and expressing sexuality outside the tenets of heteronormativity: these are a chaos and liberation that threaten patriarchy, deeply. There is power in expressing and insisting on desire, pleasure, and sex on our own terms–especially when we’re not supposed to and especially when our bodies are changing and we are tasked with honestly meeting that change, despite the attempts of shame and stigma to scuttle our efforts.
And it is a glaring failure that And Just Like That so resolutely refuses to own that power.
I am 56 years old and can barely watch films or TV shows these days because they are about either high school students or people who are 31 years old. Their dilemmas are so far in my past and the parents in the films or shows are too peripheral to the narrative to be worth my time. That is where women in their 50s are usually funneled– roles as mothers to the high school students and 31 year olds.
And Just Like That refuses to talk about sex for its mid-50s cisgender women because it refuses to talk about menopause because it refuses to talk about aging because it is ultimately a deeply ageist show.
And so I gave And Just Like That a chance because it promised to take the women in their 50s out of that funnel. At least that’s what Cynthia Nixon said.
“It was so groundbreaking when we first did it because we were women in our 30s being very frank about our sexual appetites and we weren't pretending to be shyer than we were about it,” Nixon told Entertainment Weekly ahead of the first season of And Just Like That. “To show these characters now in their mid-50s, still deeply interested in sex, as well as work and friendship and children and all the other things, seemed like a great opportunity and to catch these characters up with what the world looks like in 2021.”
I kept watching and waiting until the waiting and the watching morphed into hate watching.
“These characters are in menopause, and menopause gets a bad rap, and it has many unpleasant parts of it, but it's a real opportunity. It's an age of opportunity,” Nixon said.
And what an opportunity And Just Like That has missed in portraying the menopause transition frankly, with nuance, and with the complexity it deserves and which very few other popular entertainment platforms have pulled off.
Heteronormative patriarchy’s designated shelf life for cisgender women is the age at which we cease to be its walking incubators. Wanting sex and expressing sexuality outside the tenets of heteronormativity: these are a chaos and liberation that threaten patriarchy, deeply.
Talking of Cynthia Nixon, how has Miranda who in Sex and the City was a powerful woman who brooked no shit become such a fumbling shell of a midlife woman, who wears herself out dashing from her lover’s apartment in Manhattan to her son in Brooklyn to make him breakfast?
I’m sure the creators of And Just Like That thought they were smashing taboos by having Miranda leave her husband for a non-binary lover, Che. But I can’t for the life of me understand what Che sees in this iteration of Miranda.
Che, along with one of Charlotte’s children, is one of two non-binary characters in the show. Unlike Sex and the City, which shamefully excluded Black and people of colour (in a show set in New York City, that is racist fuckery), And Just Like That features Black and people of colour.
But it takes more than simply ticking off boxes of various identities to make a show relevant. Watching Black and women of colour display obscene wealth and ageism along with the white women characters does not make that obscene wealth and ageism any more palatable.
It’s as if the creators of And Just Like That are ashamed that the women of Sex and the City have aged and they’re masking it with affluence.
Cynthia Nixon said And Just Like That was an opportunity “to catch these characters up with what the world looks like in 2021.” Here’s part of what my world looks like in 2023: I follow Dr. Neelima Deshpande, an OB/GYN in India whose content is especially catered for cisgender women going through the menopause transition.
Via @neelima.deshpande
I call her my Exercise Your Vagina Coach. She regularly posts content on the ways the menopause transition can impact a cisgender woman’s genitals and her sex life. On one of her Instagram reels, she asks “How often does a vagina need a workout?” and is matter of fact and frank: have sex at least once or twice a week, with a partner or invest in a sex toy. In another, she talks about changes in desire and arousal. Vaginal dryness? Dr. Neelima Deshpande devoted an episode to it on her podcast V for Vagina.
Do you hear that, Carrie?
Mona Eltahawy is a feminist author, commentator and disruptor of patriarchy. She is editing an anthology on menopause called Bloody Hell! And Other Stories: Adventures in Menopause from Across the Personal and Political Spectrum. Her first book Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution (2015) targeted patriarchy in the Middle East and North Africa and her second The Seven Necessary Sins For Women and Girls (2019) took her disruption worldwide. It is now available in Ireland and the UK. Her commentary has appeared in media around the world and she makes video essays and writes a newsletter as FEMINIST GIANT.
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