Review of Sex and the City 2 (2010) by Chads. — 29 May 2010

"Reading 'Breakthrough: Eight Steps to Wellness' in Abu Dhabi" doesn't quite possess the same revolutionary quality as the Azar Nafisi memoir which recounted the transformative effect that western literature had on a group of female Muslim students, since Suzanne Somers, star of the "Thighmaster" infomercial, is no Vladimir Nabokov, so the deliverance of these women(equally anesthetized by popular cultural just like their western counterparts) is mostly limited to the body, and not the mind.

It's a book club comprised of materialistic Islamic fashionistas who end up validating the ill-mannered behavior displayed by these privileged New York socialites, when the middle east-end girls step out of their traditional "hijab" attire to reveal the "haute couture" fashions beneath like naughty Catholic schoolgirls.

Now Carrie(Sarah Jessica Parker) and her gal pals become the role models that they proclaim themselves to be. At a karaoke club, the ugly Americans have the effontery to sing Helen Reddy's feminist anthem "I Am Woman", both for themselves as a pointed animadversion of this hyper-patriarchal society, and the local women whom the westerners presume are in need of some consciousness-raising and enlightenment, without understanding that the mobilization of feminist-minded Muslim women may have deadly reprecussions from their oppressors.

Samantha(Kim Cattrall), the ugliest American of them all, not only offends the Abu Dhabi men, but the women, as well. In a very public arena, Samantha's demonstrative canoodling with her latest conquest, proves to be an affront to the female bystanders' inherent modesty, which is derived from a sheltered upbringing that deemed such forwardness as justification for an "honor killing".

To some Muslim females, the headscarf and veil are personal choices. In Diane Crespo and Stefan Schaefer's "Arranged", the principal of a Brooklyn middle school denigrates a young Muslim schoolteacher's traditional apparel choices, and offers her shopping money for designer clothes.

It never occurs to the culturally biased educator, or "Sex and the City 2", that some Muslim women, like American girls who exploit themselves sexually on their own terms, adopt the "hijab" without the stigmatizing effect of Koran-sanctioned female subjugation, in which both forms of self-debasement are post-feminist, but nevertheless, subversive acts of emancipation.