Girls in heat

The third season of HBO's "Sex and the City" is going for the groin as well as the brain.

By Anna Holmes

Jun 24, 2000 | On May 25, David Letterman welcomed actress Sarah Jessica Parker onto the set of his zany late-night talk show with a warm, lingering embrace and sweet nothings whispered in her ear. A few minutes into their interview, a Ferris Bueller-like smirk crossed his face. Apparently Letterman had in his possession the promo for the new season of "Sex and the City," Parker's hit HBO series and, judging by the way he squirmed in his seat, he was also extremely taken with it. (Luckily, he has a desk to sit behind.)

"Sex and the City" first aired on HBO in 1998, a creation of "Melrose Place's" Darren Star based on Candace Bushnell's New York Observer column of the same name. The show quickly attracted a cult following of "Arli$$" haters and "Larry Sanders Show" leftovers. During its second season, however, the show became a full-fledged phenomenon among young, professional females: Women began explicating dialogue and plot lines over cocktails; they planned "Sex and the City" viewing parties; often, they so identified with the show's depiction of single-girl life they went as far as to cast one another in the show's lead roles ("I'm Miranda and you're Charlotte!"). Last year, the show was nominated for two Emmys and won two Golden Globes, one for best comedy series, further heightening its profile. And last week, TV Guide not only did a cover story on the show, but offered readers a choice of four "Sex and the City" collector's covers from which to choose, calling the show "a bona fide smash" and "pop culture touchstone."

But back to Letterman. The promo he so snickered over depicts Parker as an oiled-up, sexed-up, glamour goddess sashaying down a traffic island in Times Square wearing nothing but a gold bikini. Certainly, with her lithe, curvaceous figure and perfected pout, Parker is quite the looker. But more intriguing than her good-girl-gone-raunchy romp was Letterman's schoolboy-with-stag-film reaction, which underscored the fact that the show's producers, not content with merely capturing America's eyes and ears, have been going like gangbusters for its groins. In Manhattan, billboards advertising the series show Parker clad in a tight black dress emblazoned with the image of a very white, very large, very ... vertical Empire State Building.

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