An Open Letter to My Mom (After Seeing Sex and the City 2)

Dear Mom:

Last night, against my better judgment, I went to see a midnight show of Sex and the City 2: The Squeaquel. Everything you’ve read about it is accurate and predictable, from the nauseating conspicuous consumption to the casual dismissal of Muslim self-determinism. Other people have written better on the subjects all over the internet, and I’m sure there will be excellent commentary on it here as the movie is released wider. I wanted to discuss the movie’s Miranda storyline, and its relation to my you, my mother (slight spoilers from the first half of the movie ahead).

If you don’t know, Miranda is a hard-working attorney who is married and has a son. I don’t recall off the top of my head what kind of law she practices, and not-shockingly wikipedia makes no mention of it. You are an attorney, and specifically one who works for Legal Aid in New York – my mom is a public defender, primarily of children in the appellate system. Recently she and other attorneys fought on behalf of a transgender woman within the foster system fighting to get her transition surgery and hormones covered by her state-run healthcare (I may be oversimplifying or misunderstanding the issues at play – I’m not a lawyer, and I’m working from secondhand information).

As anyone can imagine, your job entails very long hours and hard, aggravating, occasionally defeating work. When I was younger, and you were less advanced within your organization, it was even more work and longer hours. I didn’t often have a parent at home when I got off school, and you, like Miranda, would occasionally miss things I’d wanted you to attend.

In Sex and the City 2, Miranda’s boss is rude and dismissive, worse even than the boss you used to have whom you hated. But more significantly, Miranda hates that her job takes her away from her child occasionally. I have seen this trope in a thousand movies and TV series: the “working-woman-can’t-be-with-her-family-can-she-have-it-all” thing. If we want to put the politics of the story aside (I don’t, of course) at a bare minimum this story is PLAYED OUT. When Miranda is fired (maybe quits?), she rushes to her son’s science fair just in time to see him win first prize. Okay.

Mom, let me quickly note I’m sorry I was so terrible at science. That notwithstanding, I want to tell you something. Because even though you’re an extremely self-assured and intelligent woman, I know that we can all be pretty impressionable about TV and movies. If you are watching Sex and the City 2, or anything else that does this kind of storyline (this season of Parenthood, for example), know that you were a fantastic mother. Having a job does not make you a bad mother, not even compared to stay-at-home mothers. You and I are best friends, and have gotten closer as I’ve gotten older, and I never felt like we didn’t spend enough time together. And my sister got to watch you be an amazing woman who basically is a superhero, law-wise, and she’s a pretty impressive woman herself; I credit you for a lot of that. I don’t know what it’s like to be a working mother, and I’m sure it does take some compromise, but I don’t believe it’s a black-and-white “either you’re a good mother with her kids 24/7 or you’re a selfish careerist” situation. And, in fact, I have some pretty good evidence for that.

Love,

Your son