OK, so then what, you may ask, about Samantha? She's the one who is basically having sex with a different man every episode, usually doesn't know (or want to know) much more about him than cock size, and doesn't suffer for her sins either. She's not a very good example for a teenage girl, right?

I agree that maybe Samantha is a little overdone, and I don't think anyone like her actually exists (do they?) and I take care to mention that to my daughter at one point when they show her (almost) having sex with two gay men. And I also mention that the actress who portrays Samantha wrote a sort of instructional book about sex and her main point was how important it is to communicate during sex. ("Mom, would you please leave me alone?") And I go on to mention how the actress, Kim Cattrall, actually revealed that she wasn't able to enjoy sex all that much until quite recently (and she's in her 40s!) and isn't that ironic. So you can see, I pointed out to my daughter, how the media tries to portray sex as if it's something simple, but it's really very complex.

My daughter rolled her eyes and said with exaggerated irritation, "Doi." Of course, she knows it all already.

But, OK, I know that she doesn't really know everything and that this time together while watching the show was an excellent opportunity to talk.

After all, Samantha does champion the cause of "enjoying sex" and that's good, right? I also mention that they use Samantha mainly as a comic foil to the other characters. Samantha is the promiscuous one, Miranda is the practical one, Charlotte is the repressed one, and Carrie is the "everywoman" we identify with most. Carrie is always asking questions about what we do, and tries to absorb and synthesize all the different points of view of the other characters.

"Dar," my daughter says. I don't know how "dar" has come to replace "duh" or "doi" (or perhaps it has a subtle difference in meaning that I'm not aware of), but somehow they did find a sound that is more annoying. In any case, she knew all that. She didn't need me to tell her. Maybe she didn't have it as a clear, thought-out sentence in her head, but it is there subliminally.

I realize that many other moms might tell me that the problem these days is that kids know too much. They've got the Web, MTV, and dating shows like "Blind Date" and "Shipmates." Plus, of course, there's the usual plethora of sexually explicit teenage movies hemorrhaging out of Hollywood. "American Pie" 1 and 2 had many scenes that made me blush and turn away, but my daughter's crowd saw them repeatedly. Worst of all, those movies were written and directed by men, and most certainly are geared toward the teenage-boy mentality. They inevitably portray women and girls in the same old demeaning, stereotypical sex-object ways, featuring the usual skinny blondes in bikinis giving blow jobs and relegated to "girlfriend of the leading guy" parts.

"Sex and the City," on the other hand, is unabashedly from the female point of view. Though its creator, Darren Star, is a man and gay, many of the directors are women. And though Star wrote many of the episodes, especially in the first year, many of the writers are now women. And I'm guessing that Sarah Jessica Parker, who is executive producer, has a lot of input too. The characters are smart, clever, funny, and totally not bimbos. My daughter asked me, as we watched Carrie typing away on her laptop, "Do you think she's pretty?" I could hear the doubt in her voice. "She's interesting looking," I said. "Attractive, sometimes. But I don't think she's pretty."

"Yeah," she agreed. "She's not pretty."

It didn't have to be said out loud -- how reassuring and affirming it is to us that a "not pretty" actress could be the lead.

The men come and go, for the most part, other than mainstays like Mr. Big, but they are still most definitely subordinate to the four main characters and the emphasis is always on that bond of friendship that functions like family for these single working women. I know of no other media offering that portrays women with as much dimensionality. So what if there's so much sex. Even my daughter knows there's too much sex. I felt great relief when she said, as we watched Miranda making out, "I wish they wouldn't show them kissing for so long." I agree. We don't need the prolonged sex scenes even if HBO is flaunting the fact that it's not network TV. And we don't need to see Samantha's breasts so often even if they do show, for good measure, the butts of some of the men. We also don't need to see them actually humping away, or those legs spread so wide while he comes down on her, and yes it is a little embarrassing during those moments when you're watching that with your daughter.

But then again. At least, in this unspoken way, we are both acknowledging that this does exist, it is part of human behavior, and we don't have to pretend otherwise. We don't have to talk about it, but we do silently acknowledge it together, and I appreciate that.

So the other day (my daughter is at sleep-away camp) my son and I were in the Blockbuster on 94th and Broadway. He was taking a break from day camp, and was picking out a tape. The air conditioning was broken and the cute young man shelving tapes had actual beads of sweat running down his cheeks. I thought of my daughter lounging at the pool in her bikini. That's when I noticed the tapes for "Sex and the City" on the shelf. Blockbuster doesn't rent the boxed sets, they break them up and it's a lot more expensive that way. I smirked, having found the better deal. Then I noticed the blue and orange sticker on the cases. "Youth Restricted Viewing. Must be 17 or older."

How annoying. They'd prefer she watch the Austin Powers tape my son was selecting? Where the most highly evolved females are "fem-bots" with mile-high blonde wigs in pink lingerie who shoot bullets out of their nipples? I don't think so. Though I do find the Austin Powers movies hilarious, I'm not quite ready to advocate Mike Myers as my favorite sex educator -- even for boys.

When my son and I reached the cash register, I resisted the current deal they have on jumbo size candy bars and bought three blank tapes for $4.99. Perfect. I can tape the new season of "Sex and the City" and watch it with my daughter in August. Maybe I'll even find out, while our eyes are fixed on the screen, something about what she did with all those jerks (I mean boys) while she was away at camp.

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