The sex, the city, the style, the sniping

I've been watching the syndicated, sanitized-for-your-protection "Sex and the City" episodes on TBS, and I'm really liking it; I might even buy the DVDs of the original show so I can get all the racy dialogue and, um, interesting images. (It's still bolder than most stuff on cable: when Samantha has a nude portrait session, there's just one very brief very-low-light image of her standing there nekkid, but just the shape of the entire body of an entirely naked woman is damn sexy. [I dig chicks. I'm married and monogamous, but I dig chicks.] [Or, to be more politically correct, I like attractive women.])



Anyway, I've gotten my first glimpse of the fashions that the show made popular, as they appeared on the show; and people, we've got to talk about nameplate necklaces. What exactly is the point supposed to be? The only reasons I can think of to have a piece of jewelry with your name on it are if you expect not to be able to remember your own name—in which case a necklace wouldn't make sense, because you couldn't see it except in a mirror, and in a mirror you'd have to read it backwards—or if you expect to be having sex with someone who won't remember your name. (Which, I guess, is why they're useful for serial-dating and one-night-standing and generally-around-sleeping single women, which is why they wore them on the show to begin with.) But if you're not an amnesiac or a major skank, what's the point of a prominent piece of jewelry with your name on it? Do you really want everyone who sees you to immediately know your name? Do you just want to broadcast your Miss-Thang-ness to every non-blind person you encounter? It reminds me of a verse from that eminent-non–self-promoter Emily Dickinson:

How dreary—to be—Somebody!

How public—like a Frog—

To tell one's name—the livelong June—

To an admiring Bog!

(Or, in the case of the aspiring Miss Thangs I see in this city, to a SEPTA bus or a subway car or the guys who lean against service entrances on South Street. Your bog may vary.)