Which Is Less Manlier: Sex And The City or Gilmore Girls?

Today was an interesting morning. I had the pleasure of getting into a rather absurd argument with one of my editors, Lukas, about the "manliest" of things: two TV shows that are now both defunct. I am referring to Sex and the City and Gilmore Girls. Why in the world would we be arguing about this? Simple. We really have nothing better to do.

Here's how this is going to work, I will present my flawless argument below which will be followed by Lukas' erroneous dribble. Then you guys, the readers and our other editors, can determine who's right and who isn't. I am not being biased on this at all (as you can tell), I just know I'm right. Lukas will try to blind you with smoke and mirrors about how the original version of Sex and the City was about gay dudes, etc, etc, etc. I, on the other hand, will keep it simple. So, without further ado...

Sex and the City

Kristen Davis flashed some form of nudity at least five times, and had five other lingerie moments while on the show. Thanks to MrSkin for the stats! I rest my case.

The Gilmore Girls

Okay so first off...why am I defending Gilmore Girls? I do genuinely think the show has funny moments...but I watch it because my girlfriend likes it. So that's first off...I've mentioned to Fraq ONCE that I couldn't talk because Gilmore was on, and that was during the series finale. I didn't know him while Sex and the City was in its first run on HBO, but I imagine his girl had him by the ballz whenever it came on.

I'm also lucky as hell that my girlfriend didn't like Sex and the City. Thankfully my girlfriend's guilty pleasure isn't some shit that is about spending my money on shopping trips and fruity ass drinks. So other than having to sit through the show, Gilmore Girls had no effect on my life.

I will also look at the pedigree of the two shows. One is produced by the creative people behind The Family Guy and Curb Your Enthusiasm. One is produced by the people who brought you Melrose Place.

But regardless of all logical, by the book arguments I could make about how Gilmore Girls is a better show and therefore more watchable than Sex and the City (and therefore less reprehensible that I, a man and not part of its female demographic, watched the show), the fact still remains that Sex and the City IS A GAYER show.

•It's been said in MANY places that the characters of Sex and the City talk like gay men. That they are written like gay men and then have their lines given to straight women.

I defer to this quote from an article in the Sydney Morning Herald:

For Sex and the City, it seemed the formula was to write gay male and cast straight female. Its (gay) creator, Darren Star (pictured), devised one of the gayest hit series featuring straight characters in television history. The lives of the glamorous central characters - and apologies here to gay readers who dislike the stereotyping as much as anyone - revolve around sex, shopping, gossip and bawdy humour. As City Journal has noted, the show is a Yellow Pages of Manhattan's status fashion objects, including Prada skirts, DKNY jeans and shoes by Manolo Blahnik and Jimmy Choo. "The heroines lust after these pricey and au courant accoutrements of success ... They size up men with a similarly calculating eye for surfaces."

•The show's creatives are a cross of...gay men...more gay men...and a few super strange women.

•Just as Fraq conducted an informal poll (which he flaunted to me and then didn't use in his part of the article), so did I. I asked all the gay people I know which show they prefer more, Sex and the City or Gilmore Girls. They all said Sex and the City. My poll, by the way, is far more scientific than Franco's "which show is manlier, bro" poll.

But in the end, I'll submit myself to Google. Look at the following google searches, one for Sex and the City, the other for Gimore Girls .

That's GOOGLE. Not Mr. Skin. I rest my case.

Oh, and that argument that Sex and the City had titties...dude, why don't you just put a porn on then? Or...better yet...look at your girlfriend's boobs? Also, these are 50 year old tits we're talking about, dude.

*Side Note: While I have only seen a few episodes of each show, Lukas is what one might consider to be a "fanboy" of Gilmore Girls. But don't let that sway your judgment.

*Side Note 2: Read my argument. As I said, I watched the show with my girlfriend...you liar.

The notorious Frankfurter Illusion

What to do & see

If you have two roughly equivalent eyes you will see a ‘sausage’ floating in front of you in mid air, by following these steps:

1. Hold your hands in front of you, at 20–30 cm distance from you, at eye level.
2. Point your index fingers against each other, leaving about 2 cm distance between them.
3. Now look “through” your fingers, into the distance behind them.
4. The sausage should appear now, and you can change its length by varying the distance between the finger tips.
5. For most observers, the sausage will look blurred, at least initially.
6. If you try to look at the sausage, it will disappear, it is only present if you look at something more distant than your fingers.
7. It helps if the background is rather homogenous and has a color very different from your fingers.

Comment

Basically, this ‘sausage’ is caused by two mechanisms, (1) physiological double images and (2) interocular rivalry and suppression.

When you look at your fingers, the gaze direction of your two eyes is angled towards each other, so that their lines of sight meet at the target. When you then look into the distance, your eyes shift slightly outward, making their lines of sight nearly parallel. For close objects the image in the two eyes is consequently no longer at the right position, the images are no longer merged and can appear double for your “inner eye”. This is quite normal and occurs all the time, usually these double images are suppressed. So, if the two images overlap, why then doesn't the compound image look like the neighbouring figure on the right?

At the end of the image of each finger, there is a rivalry between the image from the two eyes when the brain tries to combine them. In one eye the finger ends, in the other it continues. So what does your brain do in such rivalry situations? If the two images are rather similar, the percept can oscillate between the alternatives. Here, however, we have a high contrast step in one eye, namely the end of the finger, where it is replaced by the background. In rivalry the eye with the higher contrast wins, at least locally; this is here meant by the term ‘suppression’. In the figure on the left this high contrast step is symbolised by the yellow halo.