Many women out there saw the trailer for the upcoming "Sex and the City" movie and smiled at the return of their fab four. Meanwhile, sitting right next to them was a very petrified boyfriend or husband

First, although I found the cast appealing, I didn't particularly like Sex in the City. There was something smug and facile about the whole setup -- the fabulous apartments, the fabulous shoes, the fabulous dinner and drinks with glittery upperclass intelligentsia -- I couldn't relate and didn't particularly want to. It was a show about the love lives of shallow, boring, self-obsessed people with no real problems.

The show was witty enough that I enjoyed it while I was actually in the act of watching it, but in the end I couldn't possibly care, and since Paul had pretty much the exact reaction that I did, we never went back and rented the second season.

So I bristle at the general pop-culture assumption that, as a chick, I naturally like that sort of thing, and as a dude, my husband naturally doesn't.

This is "Sex and the City"! It's like "Star Wars" for girls. You know how you'd rather watch "The Empire Strikes Back" without your lady complaining about how corny it is? Well, she'd rather see "Sex and the City" without you rolling your eyes

Was Mr. Heller there when The Empire Strikes Back came out? He looks pretty young in his photo, so maybe not. But I was there. I was an adolescent girl. And adolescent girls looooovvvveeed Empire. It's got everything a girl could ask for! Totally hunky guys everywhere (Han, Luke, and Lando who I was sure would redeem himself in the third movie and he did but the third movie kind of sucked anyway) -- a completely kickass chick who is also a princess -- cute robots -- adorable puppets -- a grand mysterious villain with a sexy voice -- plenty of swashbuckling sword fights -- and romance galore! The best kind of romance, where the characters fight in a humorous fashion right up until they kiss, and then they have to run away or go kill something so they never have a chance to just stand around talking about their relationship. Plus, it has the single greatest bit of romantic dialog ever in the history of the movies:

Leia: I love you.

Han: I know.

From my perspective, Empire is a chick film. I remember how much my fellow adolescent girls loved it, arguing about which guy was cuter, Luke or Han. Sure, I would have liked it more if there were any notable female characters other than Leia. But I'll take one really great female character over a whole bunch of boring and stupid female characters.

As far as I'm concerned, "Sex and the City" is one big "get out of date movie free" card. Your lady will go see it, you can do your own thing, and then you'll both be happy to see each other when it's over.

I am going to resist the idea here that "date movie" is some kind of genre. "Romantic comedy" is a genre. "Horror" is a genre. "Date movie" simply describes a movie that the couple sees because one partner pushes for it more strongly.

By that definition, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a date movie (me) and Y Tu Mama Tambien is also a date movie (Paul).

(With that pair, points go to Paul. The night we saw Y Tu Mama I originally wanted to see Eight-Legged Freaks even though I figured it would suck.)

Shouldn't we be over this kind of sexual stereotyping by now? Why do we cling to the idea that every kind of pop-culture activity, from food to movies, has an assumed gender? And why do we persist in thinking that this imagined gender is important? Why do we actively seek to structure our self-image around it?

Even in the liberal (and therefore presumably feminist) Huffington Post, articles of this kind have an implicit sexual hierarchy, in which guy stuff is seen as the default human position, and girl stuff is seen as a variation on that. You know, there's movies and then there's movies for girls. A "chick flick" like Sex in the City is seen, even by women, as fluffy and just a little embarrassing. But "guy films" -- presumably the male equivalent -- are presented with a sense of triumph and self-satisfaction. The names alone tell the story.

Maybe this just reflects the sexism still present in the culture, and maybe it's all stupid anyway. When I look over "best of" compendiums of the so-called gendered films, and compare them to my own tastes and what I know of Paul's tastes, there's no particular gender pattern at all.

For example: Goodfellas and Raging Bull are frequently on the best-of list for guys. I liked Goodfellas a lot and found Raging Bull kind of boring (though beautifully filmed, of course). Paul thinks Raging Bull is the greatest film of the 80s and thinks Goodfellas is a lesser Scorsese effort. Both of us liked Terminator and disliked Terminator 2, both of us liked Pulp Fiction and absolutely loved Fight Club. Then, on a list of girly films a similar pattern emerges -- you know, we really liked Thelma and Louise and Rebecca and really hated The English Patient.

But what makes Terminator a guy film anyway? The protagonist is female. Metaphorically you could say she's running away from a crazy stalker ex-boyfriend who won't stop until she literally crushes him to death. That's a woman's story, told from the woman's point of view, and along the way she finds lovely doomed romance and blows things up and stuff.

Except for being science fiction, it's not much different from Thelma and Louise.