May 30, 2008  |  By: KATHI WOLFE  | COMMENTS     

AS A JEANS-wearing lesbian, I’m not into shopping, let alone rhinestones. But here I am, browsing in online “Sex and the City” store, ready to spring for the Cosmopolitan with rhinestones pin and daydreaming about the Carrie thong.

Why the urge to splurge? The movie “Sex and the City” opens this week, and
I can’t wait to see the smart, sassy ladies with the mile-high stilettos strut onto the silver screen.       

Few shows combined comedy, drama and fashion as well as “Sex and the City,” which aired on HBO from 1998 to 2004. The program, set in New York, focused on four friends: Carrie, a columnist, Miranda, a lawyer, Samantha, a PR executive, and Charlotte, an art aficionado. It was Preston Sturges meets “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” Who could forget the moment before Miranda gives birth, when her water breaks over Carrie’s sexy shoes? Samantha sliding on a pole in a firehouse, or Charlotte’s ecstasy when her apartment is featured in “House and Garden” magazine?

I watched the “Sex and the City” finale during a winter residency at an artist colony in Johnson, Vt. About 50 painters and poets from all over the world — gay,
hetero, black, white, brown, male, female — joined me.  Drinking Cosmopolitans and wearing boas over flannel shirts, we cheered when Mr. Big rescued Carrie from the clutches of odious Aleksandr Petrovsky. The next morning, everyone — from the sculptor from Indonesia to the painter from London — joked that “the Sex had been good” and said that they’d miss the show.

“SEX AND THE CITY,” still popular on DVD and in syndication, is a cultural phenomenon, providing encouragement as well as entertainment to its straight fans. Think of the many blog postings by hetero women, who, thanks to SATC, think of themselves as “fabulous.”

Even though “Sex and the City” is a mainstream hit, it has a particular resonance for the LGBT community. Being gay doesn’t always mean that there is a queer component in a creative artist’s sensibility. But I can’t help but think that this is the case with “Sex and the City,” where key members of its production team are openly queer. Darren Star, who created the show, and Michael Patrick King, its head writer for five seasons on HBO and screenwriter and director of the movie, are both gay.  Patricia Field, the costume designer for the film and TV show is a lesbian.

Despite its title and athletic bedroom romps (especially Samantha’s fervent coaching of her lovers), “Sex and the City” isn’t primarily about sex. “The selling point of the show is that you’re maybe going to see something about sex,” King told an interviewer. But, he added, “the sex ... is either in pursuit of a comic or romantic result.”

THE HEART OF “Sex and the City” — its connection to the queer community — is the friendship among its characters. Lovers come and go for the fab four. They have babies, suffer panic attacks, endure pity from married couples and confront workplace problems. Through it all, the ladies are and will be there for each other. They go with Miranda from Manhattan to her mother’s funeral in Philadelphia, clap when Carrie walks down the runway after tripping during a fashion show, commiserate with Charlotte over her struggle with infertility and support Samantha when she has chemo for breast cancer.

These women are a family, providing care, love and social support for one another.

“That’s the thing about friends, they will always hold your hair back when you’re sick,” Carrie once said. “You three know her better than anyone,” Mr. Big said of Carrie to Charlotte, Miranda and Samantha, “You’re the loves of her life.”

Like the “Sex and the City” babes, many of us in the LGBT community form our families through our friendships. Historically, having to keep our sexual orientation hidden from our biological families, we turned to our friends for support or to share the joys and sorrows of our lives.

Today, more of us are able to come out to our families. Even so, there are things that relatives just don’t get. I’m out to my family, but my brother isn’t up on the nuances of the “coffee” date. It’s not by accident that we speak of being in our community as being among “family.”

There are few cultural models of family and friendship for LGBT people. That’s why I’m lifting my Cosmopolitan and drinking a toast to “Sex.”