Not surprisingly, we have Carrie Bradshaw to thank for this new trend. She started it herself last month when her big-screen debut broke box-office records in its opening weekend. And this phenomenon of being female has even started to trickle down to younger demographics. Abigail Breslin will attempt to repeat Carrie’s success with Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, based on the hugely popular series of books and dolls. This New York Times article points out the similarities between the marketing strategies of Sex and the City and Kit Kittredge. And this New York magazine blog post points out how ridiculous it is for the The New York Times to buy into this unfathomably popular notion that women didn’t go to the movies before this summer.

The Times article proudly informs the public about this brand new concept called “girls' night out," where groups of women band together for such heretofore unheard of activities as eating dinner, consuming alcoholic beverages, or even going to see a movie. Adult women used Sex and the City as an excuse to gather together for a girls' night out. It is heavily speculated by the Times that mothers all over the country will be treating their daughters to a girls' night out to see Kit Kittredge.

I guess my girlfriends and I are just extremely ahead of the curve, because we’ve been doing this for years! Why wasn’t Hollywood paying attention? Maybe it was because we weren’t going to the movies they wanted us to see.

Before SATC, the last great chick flick was Bridget Jones’s Diary way back in 2001. Although no movie specifically marketed towards women has struck such a nerve since (Juno doesn’t count. She wore too much flannel), it doesn’t mean the entire female population took seven years off from seeing movies with their friends. I know I didn’t. I spent many enjoyable nights at the movies with groups of girlfriends over the last several years, seeing everything from Atonement to the Harry Potter movies to Walk the Line, and even some real “guy” movies like Spider-Man and Superbad. However, we did skip a lot of really bad chick flicks like The Lake House and Fool’s Gold. And we really wish we’d skipped Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason.

I don’t think the problem was ever women not being interested in seeing movies. I think it was more about women not wanting to see movies that didn’t represent their lives, or that were weak rip-offs. Although SATC was a big hit, I don’t think it solves the problem. We already saw what happened when various networks tried to copy the TV version of SATC. Even Candace Bushnell and Darren Starr, the author and producer who first introduced us to Carrie and her friends, were unable to recreate their own formula. Now we’re about to see it cloned on the big screen.

The big chick flick of the fall is bound to be He’s Just Not That Into You, a film based on a dating book based on a single line of dialogue from an episode of SATC. To be fair, the trailer doesn’t look terrible, and it features a great cast including Drew Barrymore, Jennifer Aniston, Jennifer Connelly and Scarlett Johansson. But the very fact that this film exists makes me worry that Hollywood is going to keep on picking the bones of SATC to get women into theaters. Next year, we could be lining up to see such SATC inspired films as Sleeping in Pearls or I Love Me More or I Came to New York to Fall in Love With Overpriced Handbags.

I really hope to be proven wrong. It would be great if the forthcoming deluge of chick flicks could bring us something as original as last summer’s indie hit Waitress, for example. But I’m not going to count on it. I don’t have time to sit around and wait for better movies about women to come out. I’m too busy planning next month’s girls' night out. We’re going to drink cosmopolitans and go see The Dark Knight.

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