A Woman's Right To Shoes

Each week, as Carrie makes her way through the urban jungle, she gets splashed by a bus. Oh, the horror of the big bad city! And what a senseless ruin of a Patricia Field's thrift-store-purchased tutu. But wait. That bus has her image plastered on the side of it. What is Carrie's worst nightmare? The city? Or Carrie herself?! Why do we as a culture feel the need to give a sexually liberated woman a metaphorical cold shower of humiliation? Thank god we have chicks like Carrie and shows like Sex and the City to help us break free from our post-Victorian hang-ups!

"A Woman's Right to Shoes" is the title of tonight's episode. And I'm all, uh-oh! Abortion theme! The right to choose? Pro-choice? That's not going to be bawdy fun comedy! Why oh why did Alex take this week off and leave me with tonight's show? But no. It's a pun. You'll see.

Carrie is shopping. But not for herself, you see. She's a single New Yorker and, like most single New Yorkers, finds herself buying lots of gifts for her "formerly single" friends. Armed with a new Vogue and some fresh flowers, and wearing an off-the-shoulder white top with poppy-colored oriental designs all over it that's trimmed with some wiry/fuzzy black stuff and a nineties Barbra Streisand super-straight hairdo, Carrie enters a Williams-Sonoma-type store and buys a "Newport Soup Ladle" from the "Welker registry." Cut to Carrie, but in a different outfit -- fatigue jumpsuit and braids -- and a different store asking for a "Burpie Blanket" off of yet another registry list. Then she's in a glassware shop, dressed in a fitted white tube top with black cheetah spots all over it. The hair is up, and she's asked what gifts are "left." By the time she's bought espresso cups from yet another registry -- dressed down in a vintage "Yes" t-shirt, simple ponytail, and sunglasses -- you can tell she's getting a little burnt out. But she finally gives us the "upward hair blow of exasperation" once she buys a "L'il Me Activity Chair" from yet another baby store. Life is tough for best-selling sex advice columnist/authors who live in Manhattan and hang with the jet set.

Cut to one of those old-fashioned elevators that's a metal cage containing Carrie and Stanford. Yay! My boyfriend Stanford is back! Carrie explains via voice-over that she and Stanford are headed for a baby shower for the "latest son" of her friends Kyra and Chuck. Carrie has finally done something about her roots, and her hair is still looking good, as it has been for the past few episodes. Stanford, still bald, is wearing a green plaid suit that resembles the upholstery on a Knights of Columbus rec-room couch. They are both bearing huge gifts. Carrie asks "Stannie" what he's got in the box. Stanford proudly explains that he has a Peter Rabbit dish set with matching bib and a CD of Free to Be You and Me. You know, there were many things that sucked about being born in 1969: Going to junior high in the eighties and basically learning that your future sex life was going to be forever tainted by this new disease called AIDS; having friends named "Rainbow" and "Moonbeam" by their hippie parents; spending your teen years caught in the Reagan Administration; and of course graduating from college during that grisly recession in the early nineties. Despite all of that, growing up in the seventies was actually pretty cool because of stuff like Free to be You and Me, a forward-thinking children's album and companion book that taught children feminism and other socially progressive conceptsbut in a really cute way.

This inspires Carrie to reminisce about listening to FTBYAM during the fifth grade. First off? No one listened to FTBYAM during the fifth grade. First grade, sure. Second grade, if a teacher made you. But by fifth grade, if you didn't have an ABBA record on that turntable, you were nowheresville. You might as well be showing up to school in your pee-stained foot pajamas. Also? If Carrie was in fifth grade when FTBYAM was released, I was eleven when Justin Timberlake broke up with Britney Spears and released his first solo album. Carrie really liked the story of Atalanta, the girl who ran "as fast as the wind." And not to get all Allan Bloom on your asses, but I just wanted to interject here that while Atalanta was a nice feminist parable, it wasn't a particularly faithful retelling of the Atalanta myth according to, say, Edith Hamilton or anyone else of her ilk.

Predictably, Stanford reminisces about the song "William wants a doll" -- the song that teaches you that it's okay for boys to play with dolls. Oooh. That brings back painful memories. When I first heard this song, I didn't exactly know I was gay, but I did have that vague feeling that most nubile gay boys did that I was "not like other boys," and this song seemed to be speaking directly to me in a way that made me feel uncomfortable. I also take issue with the fact that William is portrayed as some boy who is simply "more nurturing" than his male counterparts. Bullshit! As a child, I played with dolls, but only so I could dress them up in fabulous clothes and do stuff to their hair. As a gay boy, I was hardly any more "nurturing" than my straight friends. I was justgay. Anyway, Stanford brags that he played that song so many times, he almost turned his sister into a gay man. See, I nearly turned my sister into a lesbian. There wasn't a lot of money in my family back then, and I wanted to go to an expensive college that we couldn't afford. I figured that if Gabrielle graduated from high school with this intense desire to, say, join the army or the police academy, the lion's share of our college fund would be mine, all mine. I gave her Holly Near albums and a subscription to Sports Illustrated. Didn't work.

Anyway, they finally arrive at the groovy loft where the party is getting started. They are greeted by Margo, Kyra's sister, who is a poor man's Alicia Witt. She explains that the gifts go on the table and the shoes go "over there," and points to a big pile of shoes by the door. Carrie gets the same look on her face that Meryl Streep got in Auschwitz when the Gestapo guy told her she could keep either her son or her daughter. Margo explains that Kyra and Chuck don't like outside dirt being tracked inside. "The twins are always picking things off the floor," she explains brightly. "Thisisanoutfit," says Carrie, holding her big present above her head so that Margo can take in the total composition of her mauve fitted halter top, black bra, and bottle-green skirt that curiously makes her look like she doesn't have a waist. And strangely, the camera doesn't pan down to include the shoes so that we, the viewers, can see what kind of miracle work the shoes do for this ensemble. "They'd really appreciate it," says PoorMan'sAliciaWitt in a perky yet aggressive manner before running off to attend to something. "Good thing I wore my party socks," says Stanford, following orders. "If I'd known I was going to have to go shoeless, I'd have compensated with a big hat," retorts Carrie. Oh, like Carrie needs an excuse like mandatory shoelessness to wear something insane. Tell me another one! A close-up reveals Carrie's feet leaving the glorious confines of a pair of pearly Manolo Blahniks. "Now I'm so teeny, I might bump my head on the coffee table," says Carrie, feeling less-than without her spike heels. Carrie explains in a voice-over that Kyra, the mother being "showered," used to be famous in the early nineties for "taking pictures of anorexic actresses on beds at the Chelsea Hotel." I take that as a shout-out to Nan Golding and/or Corrine Day. "But now," says Carrie, "she takes pictures of fat babies in buckets."

Kyra enters, and the guest star playing her is none other than Academy-Award-winning actress Tatum O'Neal. She greets Carrie and Stanford, gives them a couple of drinks in martini glasses, makes a snarky remark about her husband's ear piercing from the eighties, and runs off to get drinks for the other guests. "And by 'guests,'" she says conspiratorially. "I mean 'me.'" You see, Tatum may be a mother, but she still drinks. Meanwhile, according to a friend of mine who used to color her hair, the real Tatum is a mother who still does heroin. When she leaves, Stanford and Carrie notice that their drinks are "garnished" with tiny plastic babies. "Waiter," says Stanford. "There's a baby in my drink." Save it for the Catskills, Stan.

Cut to Miranda's building, where there is a co-op board meeting taking place in someone's apartment. Miranda is asking the assembled board members not to needlessly prolong their decision on a man named Dr. Robert Leeds. "I have a baby downstairs getting over the chicken pox," she explains, sipping a cup of coffee. "I have cataracts," says a grouchy old lady board member. Ah, there's one of those in every Manhattan co-op board, isn't there? Dr. Leeds arrives for his interview, and lo and beholdhe's black! He's also played by Blair Underwood, so he's hot too. Miranda's face lights up as she introduces herself. Now have you ever noticed that when a white woman finds a black man attractive, she is just soooo proud of herself for having a socially progressive lust object that she is really really obvious about it? Like for instance, my mother and some friends of hers went to see Crimes of the Heart, and afterwards they were commenting on the movie and talking about how cute Sam Shepard was. Everyone nodded in agreement, but when someone brought up the black teenager that Sissy Spacek was schtupping, everyone was all, "Oh yeah, sister! Break me off a piece a that! Woo hoo!" You'd think these fifty-something women were all at a bachelor party. My black friend Pam would always talk about this phenomenon and how whenever she was talking to a white woman, she would always have to work a former black male lover into the conversation. But she'd always really be subtle about it. "You know, I had this really really hotlover," she'd say, twisting a strand of hair playfully with her finger. "His name was Rufus and he was fi-i-i-i-i-i-ne. The most beautiful brown eyes I'd ever seen!" "So he was black?" Pam would ask after about twenty minutes of hints. "Oh yeah, I guess he was, but it's not like I noticed. And you know who else I think is hot? The bartender on Love Boat! Oh, and Billy Dee Williams."

Anyway, Miranda is doing just this sort of thing. I mean, when she's lusting after a white man, she's cautiously flirtatious, but now that she's breaking the color barrier, she's practically flashing beaver at him. Dr. Leeds introduces himself to the group and makes a crack about them already knowing who he is, as well as his "social security and my jacket size." Miranda laughs uproariously as this joke. Everyone else is silent. Miranda ascertains that Dr. Leeds is a doctor for the Knicks. As the other board people try to ask concrete questions about finances and his personal habits, Miranda makes small talk about professional sports and confesses to being a Yankees fan, despite Dr. Leeds being a Mets fan.

Meanwhile, over at Charlotte's, Harry is on a business call and absentmindedly plucking a tea bag from his teacup and placing it on his newspaper. With a tight smile on her face, Charlotte walks over, grabs the wet tea bag, and takes it to the kitchen in order to throw it away. "Charlotte knew when Harry moved in he would unpack his bags," says Carrie's voice-over. "But she wasn't expecting tea bags." On her way to the trashcan, Charlotte encounters yet another tea bag. She chucks them both in the under-the-sink trashcan.

Meanwhile, back at Miranda's, the interrogation is just about over for Dr. Leeds. Miranda leads him to the door and shakes his hand goodbye. "I won't hold that Mets thing against you," says Miranda in a breathy flirty voice as she opens the door for him. "I appreciate that," says Dr. Leeds, giving her a quick up-down with his eyes. Miranda giggles girlishly and closes the door behind him. "He's perfect," says Miranda with her back against the door. It's like she's describing a puppy she really really wants to adopt. A board member expresses discomfort with his financials and steep alimony payments. Another board member points out that he's never owned before. "You people are crazy!" says Miranda. Cataracts Lady doesn't like the fact that he's single and that he'll inevitably throw "parties with all the girls." "I think we all know what's not being said here," says Miranda, putting her hand on her hip, obviously referring to Dr. Leeds's blackness. The board looks back at her, slightly confused. "The unspoken thing was that Robert was cuteand Miranda was horny," interjects Carrie's VO.

Back at the baby shower cum sock hop, it's getting late. Most of the guests have left, and everyone remaining has retired to the living room. Tatum's husband is smoking a fat joint, and Tatum is telling the most uproarious story about how they outbid someone on a Hamptons summer home and ended up not getting a reservation at "Nick and Toni's" for the entire summer. "I swear I had no idea who I was bidding against," says Husband of Tatum, coyly. Those of us who read Page Six know that Husband of Tatum outbid Jeff Salaway, the owner of Nick and Toni's, which is, for those of you uninitiated into the customs of the Hamptons, the center of Hamptons society. Carrie and Stanford are clearly getting bored with all this extreme Manhattan name-dropping and decide to leave, citing Stanford's gay need to start his evening at midnight. They make their way to the door, but Carrie can't find her shoes. She goes back into the living room, where Husband of Tatum is joking about "stealing Billy Joel's firewood," and announces that her shoes are missing. "That's cra-a-a-zy," says Husband of Tatum mid-inhale. After a thorough search, the shoes still haven't turned up. Tatum concludes that she can't imagine where Carrie's shoes went. "Jennifer was wearing sandals," says Tatum. "Maybe she took yours by mistake?" Carrie informs Tatum passive-aggressively that she wasn't wearing sandals, she was wearing Blahniks. Tatum magnanimously lends Carrie some shoes to wear home until the Manolos turn up. They cut to the streets of Manhattan for the visual punch line of this scene: Carrie walking home in a pair of ratty Keds. Of course, we the viewers are supposed to be scandalized over Carrie's footwear, but I can't help but express my complete horror over the leggings beneath Carrie's skirt that we haven't had the pleasure of seeing until this very moment. Unless I am mistaken, I believe they have silk-screened images of Liza Minnelli on them, and they abruptly stop mid-calf like a pair of bicycle shorts that went too far. Those pearly old lady shoes went with that? I now understand why the camera didn't pull back and reveal Carrie's entire outfit in that first scene. Carrie makes an obvious joke about "walking a mile in someone else's shoes."

The day, or sometime thereafter, the Vagina Squad lunches at some brasserie-style place -- probably Pastis or Balthazar. Carrie still isn't over the loss of her shoes. "These were new Manolos. I hadn't even done a full lap around the party!" she explains over dessert. Charlotte can't believe someone would steal shoes from a party. Samantha is intrigued as to why Carrie removed her shoes at the party in the first place. Carrie explains that Tatum and Husband of Tatum didn't want her tracking germs into the house that would make their children sick. "Please," says Miranda. "It's children who drag the germs around!" Miranda goes onto explain that Brady caught the chicken pox from someone on the playground. "Tatum must have been mortified," says the ever so socially conscious Charlotte. Carrie explains that Tatum wasn't all that concerned. Samantha concludes that Carrie will never get her shoes back, as they are in a "pawn shop in Brooklyn." "Stop," says Carrie. "You'll make me cry into my flan." Okay, Carrie. You're eating a Spanish dessert. Spanish cuisine is hot right now. We. Get. It. Miranda notes that, "legally," Tatum owes her for them. Carrie doesn't want to go there with Tatum. Samantha argues that if Tatum's baby were missing instead of Carrie's shoes, Tatum would make a fuss. Charlotte is all, "Children aren't shoes!" Samantha goes off on a rant about children and how they're everywhere like vermin -- even classy places like Jean Georges. Jeez, she's sounding like the mayor of that town in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. To illustrate her point, an exuberant child runs by their table with chocolate all over his face. "This place is for double cappuccinos, not double strollers," says Samantha. Ew. Bad line.

Miranda is surprisingly sympathetic to Sam's rant. "I wouldn't bring Brady here," she says. "Mommy needs two hands to eat her eight-dollar cake." What's with Miranda and cake? Charlotte is surprised that Miranda, a mother, is not going to defend children. Miranda confesses that she doesn't like children except for Brady. Carrie asks Charlotte how the "matrimonial move-in" is going. Charlotte says she's ecstatic, but admits that they're having a "tea-bag situation." Samantha advises that Charlotte breathe through her nose. Everyone looks at Samantha in utter confusion. "When you're sucking his balls?" explains Samantha. Oh, remember when this show used to introduce gay sex acts into the American lexicon on a regular basis? To be honest, I never got the whole "tea-bagging" thing. I always thought it was a cute name, but I never really understood what anyone saw in the actual act -- giving or receiving. I mean, sure, balls are sensitive -- especially when someone kicks you down there. But as sexual pleasure spots, I can think of twenty-five other parts of the body that I'd much rather have stimulated, thank you. Plus, because they spend so much time between trapped between your thighs in the dark, they can smell pretty skanky. Charlotte clutches her pearls and explains that she was literally talking about the tea bags that Harry leaves around the house that threaten to stain her furniture. Miranda wants to know why putting a man's balls in your mouth is called tea-bagging. She stops in the middle of her question because the answer dawns on her. "Oh, I get it," says Miranda. "Because they hang! And the dipping!" I love it when Miranda and Samantha get along. Charlotte shushes them. Carrie announces that, in addition to her shoes, she has also lost her appetite.