ABSTRACT
Sex and the City 2 works out the dilemma of women's freedom through clothing. Against the autonomy and control associated with the Americans' couture, functional clothing such as the hijab marks Muslim women as mere bearers of patriarchal design. The histories of Girls of Riyadh and Sex and the City 2 reveal that particular traces of female subcultures, even those already riven with metropolitan-commercial values, must be downplayed in the service of a standard or brand. Girls of Riyadh and Sex and the City 2 are the products of particular genealogies. Each bears a crucial relationship to chick-lit. The Sex and the City version of the problem with no name suggests a desire for domestic partnership without its dull routine even as the film enters the dangerous terrain of the non-reproductive married woman. The lavish wedding that introduces the Riyadh characters is a festival of scrutiny of marriageable women.
