Postfeminist 'Islamophobia': the Middle East is so 1980s in Sex and the city: the movie 2

This article considers how 'Sex and the City: The Movie 2' sets up a binary between style which is coded as ”vintage” and, therefore, desirable and items / fashion which are represented as “dated” and identified as bad taste. Although this has been a dominant motif in both the SATC series and first film, where SATC2 ventures into very offensive territories is that it maps this distinction onto a West / Middle East binary. While everything Western (or, more precisely, everything NYC) is represented as stylish, everything in the Middle East (and here it is Abu Dhabi which stands in for the Middle East) is depicted as dated and, the film suggests, trapped in the decade of the 1980s. In doing so, SATC2 develops many of the prejudices found in contemporary Western representations of the Middle East but articulates these through a focus on fashion, consumerism and female sexuality. SATC2’s brand of postfeminism depends upon an alignment between female sexual desire, desirability and knowing (often ironic) consumption of fashion. This is contrasted with Abu Dhabi’s lack of sophistication in sexual identification, sexual self-expression and awareness of fashion and style.