When I met with Clampitt to talk about VIP Life, I was half expecting someone like Sydney Biddle Barrows, or maybe Heidi Fleiss before prison. But Clampitt is neither. This enterprising, attractive, divorced 38-year-old brunette is a graduate of NYU and University of Michigan. She worked for 13 years as a pediatric social worker counseling parents of hospitalized children who were sick or traumatized. The emotional burden took its toll and now she’s peddling storybook romance.

Or is it anti-romance? No man wants to be desired just for his money. And no woman wants to be loved just for her looks. But what little girl doesn’t fantasize about growing up beautiful and snaring a loaded man? And what red-blooded man doesn’t lust for a sex kitten he can call his own?

I can’t help but think of the 1953 movie “How to Marry a Millionaire” with Marilyn Monroe, Betty Grable and Lauren Bacall. Monroe’s character announces, as the three models lounge on the terrace of their Upper East Side apartment: “I want to marry a Rockefeller.”

“Which one?” asks Betty Grable.

“I don’t care,” says Monroe.

The threesome has to go to the trouble of subletting fancy digs, financing it by selling every scrap of furniture, and pretending to be rich until they can snare a wealthy husband. And then they all end up marrying for love anyway.

But that scenario is pretty consistent with the stories we girls grow up with. Cinderella. “Beauty and the Beast.” “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.” “Sabrina.” “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” The Material Girl. It’s great to marry someone with money, the story goes, but only if you really love him.

But this is for real. And the women don’t have to pretend to have money or even pay a thing to be in Clampitt’s service. It’s the men who put up the money — $10,000 to $20,000 a year — lump sum, in advance, credit cards accepted. Benefits of the club include image consultation, invitations to special events, personal shopping services, concierge services and access to exclusive nightclubs, restaurants, parties, private jets, yachts and villas.

When I blanch at the fees, Clampitt reassures me that no one is going to scrape together the last $10,000 in his bank account to join. Of the 60 men who are currently members, she says, “It’s going to be something he can afford, and he can be a part of this comfortably.”

“If they live in London,” she continues, “they’re not going to use all the events.” So these men can opt for the $10,000 basic membership and then can pay for everything else as they choose.

To be a member, the bachelors first have to interview with Clampitt and be deemed appropriate for her service. “We don’t screen in terms of saying you have to have $5 million in the bank. But the men are expected to maintain a certain lifestyle.” They have to be, she says, “high-quality, dynamic people.”

VIP Life, only in existence since February, has just moved into a new loft on Fifth Avenue and 16th Street. A couple of times a month Clampitt, who prides herself on her parties, holds happy hours in the loft. The space is surprisingly unostentatious: Urban Outfitters chic, with leopard-skin fluffy pillows on a black leather sofa, silver and gold shimmery curtains, and black-and-white artsy/sexy photographs on the wall. “We light candles and it’s intimate and fun. People don’t want to leave.”

In addition to the parties, VIP Life nurtures a network of “in the know” contacts. So if a client decides he wants to go to “The Producers” that night and get into Nobu for dinner — places usually impossible to penetrate on short notice — “we make that happen.” She nurtures relationships with people connected to the hot parties and can get her clients on the guest list. “Not just to be in the background,” she says. “He’ll get the VIP room, the bottle service.” And, of course, the girl to keep him company.

The client, by the way, still pays for the restaurant check, the show, the private jet. And what they do “behind closed doors” is completely up to the two consenting adults.

Clampitt plans larger, more upscale happenings for her clients. “We’re going to have a large event at Sotheby’s which will be over 100 people, and a huge masquerade party in October.”

Which brings me to how VIP Life came to be. Lisa Clampitt’s own past has a fairy tale-like quality. It involves an “amazing, charismatic” father, an “old-fashioned, traditional ’50s” mother and a rags-to-riches, back to rags, and maybe back to riches again story.

Her father, Robert Clampitt, was a rebellious high school dropout who reformed himself all the way to Harvard. He went on to become a Wall Street lawyer, moved on to embrace liberal politics and campaigned heavily for the Kennedy administration.

Clampitt says her parents “always had parties ever since I could remember” in their Greenwich Village house; “even after they separated, my father always had dinner parties.” She grew up knowing the uptown socialite scene, “the Harvard Club, the museums,” and she was also comfortable downtown. “I’m more of an East Village bar person — I used to go to CBGBs.”

In 1975 her father founded a nonprofit organization called Children’s Express, which was dedicated to giving kids and teenagers a voice through journalism. It was a 13-year-old Children’s Express reporter who famously cornered Dan Quayle with the question of whether a girl raped by her father should be able to get an abortion. The nonprofit, which went on to win an Emmy and a Peabody, was Robert Clampitt’s passion. It also sapped his financial resources.

After his sudden death from a heart attack in 1996, Lisa Clampitt made it her business to rescue her father’s failing nonprofit, which at one point was $2.4 million in debt. She’d already left social work for matchmaking and was working for another high-end dating service. A client bugged her to start up her own dating service with him as a partner. “I said the only way I would go into business with him was if he gave me a substantial chunk of money for my nonprofit.” He agreed.

And so VIP Life was born. Children’s Express was revamped and revived as Children’s Pressline. Now, more than half the budget is funded by profits from VIP Life. The event at Sotheby’s and the masquerade party double as fundraisers for Children’s Pressline. To the clients of VIP Life, however, none of that is relevant. They’re just trying to find a beautiful girl.

And what about the women? Does this whole thing work for them? They do get to go to all these parties. And they get the chance to meet rich and successful guys who might just want to get married. But it’s not exactly the most liberating scenario. Madonna may have enjoyed pretending to be Marilyn when she sang “Material Girl” and hired men to dangle jewelry in her face. But in real life, she made her own fortune, got away from bad boy Sean Penn, and single-mothered her first child with her personal trainer. Now it seems she’s in a marriage of “equals” (even if she and Guy do make flop films together).

And, of course, Marilyn Monroe couldn’t actually survive being Marilyn Monroe.

Clampitt admits that some women can be skeptical about joining up, with the implications of “gold digger” that inevitably come to mind.

“At first it was really difficult to find women. It took a while to make a reputation.” Thanks to word of mouth she says they’re now “on a roll.”

I ask Clampitt if the women really do have to be good-looking.

“Yeah,” she says, “they are beautiful.”

I persist, trying to see how rigidly she sticks to this. After all, we all know beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

“If someone came in and was incredibly overweight,” she says, “this might not be the service for her. Partially because the men are very health-conscious. I don’t have any overweight men either. They’re very into lifestyle and health.”

“So,” I ask, “if an overweight man wanted to sign up, you would turn him away?”

“I don’t have the short fat balding man,” she says. Then she relents a bit. “If he was amazing, like a Danny DeVito came in, and he was great and dynamic and fun and I thought he was a cool guy, sure, I would take him.”

Then does she give the women the same flexibility?

“If a woman came in and she was a little overweight but she was the most amazing dynamic woman who was sexy, I would invite her to a party, sure.” Something about how she added that “sure,” made me think that she wasn’t quite so sure. “Men want an attractive woman,” she asserts. “Because men are much more visual than women are.”

“A lot of women,” she continues, “are so driven in the male world. Especially in New York. They forget the connection to femininity or who a woman is. Which is, you know, nurturing and communicative by nature.” Clampitt encourages the women — even the executives and lawyers — to wear “great little cocktail dresses to a party and feel sexy and attractive and be communicative.”

“And,” she adds, “you definitely can’t come in here and say, ‘I want a rich man.’”

I ask, as delicately as possible, what Clampitt thinks of Anna Nicole Smith, the zaftig gold digger du jour and widow of billionaire J. Howard Marshall, an oil tycoon. Their early dates were incredibly romantic: the 86-year-old in his wheelchair liked to visit her when she was working as a topless dancer at a strip club in Houston. She won almost $800 million in a recent court battle and starred in her own reality show.

“I think,” Clampitt says, “that’s a whole different thing.” She acknowledges that when people hear about her service, that’s what they think it is, which is “so wrong.” She allows that she does not want to judge Smith or her choices, but does not think the ex-dancer, Playboy model and actress would be someone she would be “gung-ho” about having in her service. But you never know, she adds. She might be “an amazing person.”

Clampitt says she isn’t looking for the typical “bimbo-y type” woman unless she has a “really cool side to her, an artistic side. You’ve got to have something other than looks.”

Clampitt says her oldest man right now is in his mid-50s and she would not have a problem fixing him up with a woman in her 20s if she thought they would make a great match. “That’s fine. I don’t have an age issue at all.”

So if the woman was older than the man? “Rule of thumb, men will want to date women an average of five years younger.” So she looks for women in their 20s and early 30s so the men can experience “five years of fun and then have kids.”

Since the service is so new, perhaps it’s a little premature to look for successful pairings in the permanent department. But Clampitt says she has brought one couple together. “She was going to move to L.A. for her acting career, and now she’s moving to Boston to get married.”

This couple doesn’t want people to know how they met. But I can see how it could be hard for anyone in this world to make a love connection. Just because you’re successful in the boardroom doesn’t mean you can make it in the bedroom. Picking stocks is not like picking a woman. What’s a lonely (rich) guy to do? Sit at home alone every night watching “The Bachelor” or “Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?” wishing some game show host would fix him up with a bottle blonde?

At the end of the interview, I ask if I can take a look at the women in her book. Clampitt produces two huge metal-bound binders of professionally done head shots and full-body portraits. The women are indeed beautiful. Even the executives and lawyers and the English-as-a-second-language teacher look hot. And there are a lot of, dare I say, slutty pictures in there too, with little blond chicks scantily dressed and posed to show off lots of tits and ass (she pages more quickly past those). And I even catch a glimpse of a Playboy insignia on the margin of a head shot. High-quality dynamic individuals, indeed!

I’m not saying that many of the women aren’t smart, intelligent, complex people who might make excellent mothers, soul mates, equals and partners in life. Even the Playboy bunny. But they certainly aren’t presented that way. Which brings me to my million-dollar question: If this really is a relationship-oriented operation, why do the women have to be presented like merchandise in a catalog?

It’s a mystery. As psychoanalyst Michael Bader says in his book “Arousal,” “women often derive power through being the object of desire, while men derive it from being the one doing the desiring.” There’s no sense trying to predict what will make a man and a woman interested in each other.

But one thing is clear. By creating this company, the daughter has succeeded where the father had failed. Clampitt has ingeniously put herself in touch with a huge source of men whose money can end up financing Children’s Pressline. “It’s great and altruistic to be a social worker,” she says, “but the power is in who you know and the connections to money.” And she has found a way to carry on her father’s legacy without “begging on the street.”

Sometimes, she jokes, “I almost feel like I have 60 boyfriends.” But she would never become personally involved with her clients. “Because of my social-work background, I’m very careful to create a safe environment for people. If I were like ‘hey, big boy’ it would crack the safety barrier.” She laments, however, that she needs “one of me for me.”

I’m afraid, though, that the dynamic Lisa Clampitt would not be an appropriate candidate for her service. Working 12-hour days, seven days a week as president of two companies isn’t most men’s notion of femininity. It’s hard to imagine her photo in that book. Hard to picture her with a submissive, flirtatious smile that tells the men that she is for sale. And, of course, that she will really love him.

I was skeptical that this scheme would end on a high note. But I was intrigued by the idea of taking part in some vicarious dating. I’ve been married for 16 years and my life can seem dull compared to Isabelle’s. I often feel envious of her more daring sexual exploits.

So one evening Isabelle came over and we composed her profile. She didn’t want to be identified as an actress. “You know what men think,” she said. “Actress? Slut. No thank you.” Since she does have a very seductive voice, we decided to emphasize her vocal attributes. “Smart, attractive soprano looking for handsome baritone for harmonic relationship. If you think we’d resonate, let’s give this duet a try. Foreign accents welcome here.”

Isabelle, who has very high standards, was disappointed when, after two days, only about 20 men responded to her (our) listing out of 160 hits. I, however, took great pleasure reading all the little missives from men who found me interesting and amusing. After a few e-mail exchanges that went nowhere, she was ready to give up. But I urged her to e-mail Bill, who had written, “Let my sweet nothings send chills down your spine.”

“No,” she sniffed.

“Why not? I would have thought you’d be all over him.”

“His profile says he’ll consider women from age 21 to 40.”

Isabelle is in her late 30s. I knew what she was driving at.

“The man is 43!” she raged. ” And he wants to date a 21-year-old? Forget it!”

“He’s 6 foot 3,” I argued. “And he looks cute in his picture. And he makes over $150,000 a year!”

It was frustrating to know I could attract this good prospect and she wouldn’t give him a chance.

A couple of weeks later, after no one better had turned up, Isabelle answered his ad. That’s when she discovered he lived in Philadelphia.

“I’m not dating someone who lives in another city. He had no business answering my ad.”

“He said he’s in Manhattan all the time … ”

“What if he doesn’t like me? After all, you’re the one who wrote the profile. Maybe he’ll think I’m boring.”

“You want me to go in your place?” I challenged.

“That’s OK.”

So Bill took the train in one Friday evening and the two of them went out for dinner. I was a little disappointed to hear they had a great time. “He was so cute!” she said. “At dinner, we couldn’t stop talking. You wouldn’t believe how much we have in common. And,” she added, “he has a very sexy voice.”

Evidently, my skills in repartee weren’t needed.

Isabelle kept me updated on the relationship. He traveled on business a lot, and it was hard for them to get together. When they did, they often had wonderful, intimate dinner conversations that led to fantastic sex. I couldn’t help but wonder how much the fact that this was a long-distance relationship kept it alive.

After a while, Bill stopped coming into the city so often. And Isabelle was even less flexible about going to Philly. They kept in touch a lot by cellphone. Eventually, she told me, they kept in touch a lot by cellphone sex.

“Cellphone sex?”

“He talks dirty to me while I’m walking through midtown.”

“Really?” I’d never heard of anyone doing this. It didn’t seem conducive to a sensual encounter. “But don’t you miss actually touching him?”

“It really gets me where I’m going … and coming … if you know what I mean …”

“I guess this brings new meaning to gutter language,” I teased.

A few weeks later, they were still hitting it off. “I brought him to orgasm while I was walking through Bloomingdales,” she told me with a sly grin. “No one was the wiser!”

I found myself, once again, feeling jealous of her audacious sex life and lack of inhibition. I’ve never been able to handle regular phone sex, much less cellphone sex. To me, it distills the act to the hardest part: saying stuff out loud and vocalizing sounds of pleasure. So cellphone sex seemed like the worst of both worlds: you’re exposed, and it’s in public! Of course, Isabelle makes her living by her voice, and she lives to emote. Like most writers, I’ve learned to show, not tell.

With the Internet making a “village” out of the whole world, though, it seems that many resourceful people now use cellphones to reach out and touch someone. Consider a young man I’ll refer to as Cal Waiting. He uses sites like alternativeconnections.com, which, unlike Match.com, are pitched for scoring what he calls “cyberbooty.” When he’s in the mood, Cal finds a picture of someone who piques his imagination and sends an e-mail to convey his interest. Ideally, the recipient is logged on, and they can make a connection immediately. While Instant Messaging is one way to ease into the encounter, Cal says it’s better if they can both connect via cellphone. (Cal does not have high-speed Internet access.) “The longer the online flirtation, the less likely it will be consummated in person,” he tells me. “So one or both parties are probably ready to pop their cork as soon as they hear the other’s voice.”

Another advantage to using the cellphone, he points out, is you can shop around the site for other people even while getting to know your current “pic.” Cal, who happens to be a really good-looking guy, accepts the fact that his partner may not be as gorgeous as the picture. This is virtual sex, after all. Why let reality interfere?

As author Bonnie Gabriel writes in her book “The Fine Art of Erotic Talk,” “When it comes to sex, the role of the mind (and the imagination) is often overlooked.” In her experience, “the brain is by far the most potent sex organ of all.” She says that a “telephone tryst can serve as a vehicle to keep your romantic feelings alive, to enhance intimacy, to build erotic anticipation and to fuel your sexual fantasies.” And to think: All that can now be done while shopping for underwear or walking to the dentist.

One thing comes in loud and clear: The art of using language is a neglected element of lovemaking. Humans worry so much about trying new positions, keeping up appearances, and learning techniques on how best to touch where and when — they forget that words can be the best aphrodisiac. If Mae West, who had one of the most seductive voices of the 20th century, were alive today she’d most certainly be asking, “Is that a cellphone in your pocket? Or are you glad to hear me?”

According to a study by Motorola, one in 10 cellphone users carries a secret second mobile phone to conduct clandestine activities such as illicit affairs. Even Playboy has announced plans that it will be penetrating the wireless market. This, so far, is limited to Playmate voice-mail greetings. But they hope to use photo and video content too, as technology improves.

There are reverberations from cellphone sex, of course, and not all of them are upbeat. Neck strain, for example, and lousy sound quality. Headsets are preferred, especially for men, who need to keep their hands, well, handy. (Women, however, seem to have the facility to enjoy sex and even climax without needing to touch themselves.) But everyone is subject to one hazard of cellphone sex: If you get out of range or your battery runs out, there’s always the danger of signal interruptus.

Admittedly, cellphone sex can be taken too far. Reportedly, a young woman in Taiwan had to submit to emergency surgery so doctors could remove a Nokia lodged in her rectum. Hospital staff reflected that she must have wanted to take advantage of the vibrate function.

Listening to all these tales of aural sex made me wonder how much my own sexuality is riddled with hang-ups. Perhaps my own sexual repertoire had become too static. Maybe I’d been putting a damper on my sex life all these years. I decided it was time to turn up the volume.

So one night, when my husband and I were making love, I tried to force myself to emote. My mind filled with dirty words and phrases. Moans and groans of lust echoed in my head. But I still felt too self-conscious to make the sounds audible. After we were done my husband, unaware of my failure to communicate, fell asleep. I stayed up, chastising myself like a sad refrain. But then I thought of Cal and mellowed out. If he doesn’t need to see the actual people he’s speaking to, maybe I don’t need to utter my actual sounds out loud. All I really need to make is virtual sound. That’s one of the miracles of the human mind. What you imagine can be as good as the real thing.

Isabelle called recently to tell me that she and Bill were no longer on the same wavelength. They were “breaking up” — and it wasn’t due to a faulty signal. Yes, Isabelle finally was feeling claustrophobic, even though Bill was a good 90-minute train ride away.

“The man wouldn’t stop calling. It was getting creepy. He constantly needed to talk. I relegated him to voice mail for a few days, and he got angry with me. But a girl needs her cyberspace, you know?”

Yes, I’ve come late to the show. When it first started airing in 1998, my household didn’t have HBO. Even when we did become subscribers after my 9-year-old son insisted on watching some baseball movie directed by Billy Crystal, I still didn’t tune in. I didn’t want to watch some glib portrayal of promiscuous, attractive women enjoying sex in some totally unrealistic, glamorized way that would only end up making me feel depressed and inadequate.

My conversion happened after I sold my first novel, “Thoughts While Having Sex,” earlier this year. My editor told me they were marketing it as a “Sex and the City”-type book. They were even putting a teaser on the cover saying, “Sometimes finding great sex in the city is a no-brainer.”

At first I was horrified. They were demeaning my literary efforts! I begged my editor to have the teaser removed from the cover, but he claimed it was too late.

The idea that they were marketing my book to the “Sex and the City” audience seemed absurd at first. Though my novel is about a young single woman living in Manhattan, she’s repressed and avoids sex. If anything it’s about having no sex in the city. But my publishers were happy to make the stretch so they could capitalize on the show’s appeal. So I decided to check out the boxed set for the first season and see what “my audience” was so excited about.

To my surprise, I’m now delighted to have my book associated with that show. It’s funny, well written and as thorough a sex primer as you could ever find. If only the main character in my novel had watched, maybe she would’ve had a better sex life.

And that’s why I think “Sex and the City” is great for girls. What better way is there to learn the mysteries of human sexual behavior? When I grew up, my parents didn’t tell me much of anything about sex. I had the typical sex education class at school taught by the only married gym teacher. (Since the others were single or gay, they weren’t supposed to know about sex, right?) I can remember the tanned, white tennis-shoed Mrs. Hanson explaining the usual few sterile facts to us girls in our blue bloomer uniforms. How unsexy can sex get?

But “Sex and the City” touches on every topic relating to the carnal proclivities of the human race. As I said to my daughter while we watched shows that touched on such topics as oral sex, threesomes, fetishes and faking orgasm — they leave no stone unturned. If I’d been exposed to all that when I was a teenage girl, I could’ve set forth into the world with so much more confidence!

For example, we were watching the show where the four women are in a cab talking about anal sex. I’m not about to tell my daughter about anal sex. Way too embarrassing. But why shouldn’t she know, for future reference, that this option exists? Thanks to “Sex and the City,” not only does she know, she hears a fairly balanced discussion on the subject in which all possible viewpoints are expressed. As usual Samantha is the most liberal, proclaiming it a “physical expression the body was designed to experience,” while Charlotte is the most conservative, declaring she would never do it because she “went to Smith.” Not only has my daughter been informed on another way to have sex, she’s also gotten some info to help her select a college, which is her other favorite subject these days.

One side benefit I get from watching with my daughter is that I have the chance to learn a little more about her. When the women are in a store looking at vibrators, she asks me, “What’s that?” My daughter is at an age where I am no longer privy to details about her private life. Only through covert ways such as this can I get a sense of how extensive her sexual knowledge really is.

And then there’s the monumental subject of blow jobs. Scary stories have been appearing in newspapers and magazines about girls as young as 13 liberally giving boys blow jobs. Before “Sex and the City” I’d managed one conversation on the subject that included the warning that if she ever did engage in such an activity, don’t give if you aren’t receiving. That’s when I was feeling cocky that she wasn’t in fact about to put a boy’s penis in her mouth. I myself was of the “You want me to suck what?!” (said while screwing up eyes in disbelief) school of thought (punch line for “Why do Jewish American Princesses have crow’s-feet?). But after seeing my daughter’s crowd engaging in some sexy dancing they call “grinding” (picture lap dancing standing up) I realized that maybe they were further along (and less inhibited) than I imagined.

My daughter, of course, did not want to discuss blow jobs with me.

“Mom, have you been reading those magazines again?”

“I just want to keep the lines of communication open.”

“OK, but you’re bothering me, OK?”

“I just worry that one of those jerky boys you know might pressure you into doing something you aren’t ready for.”

Imagine my horror when she responded in this I am more mature than you are voice: “Mom. Some of them aren’t jerks.”

Well. Thank God for the show where they talked about blow jobs. As usual, all four women had their own opinions, and their discussion provided a great overview on the pros and cons. Plus, it gave us the perfect opportunity for a second talk. I started out by emphasizing that she really shouldn’t be engaging in that sort of behavior.

“Mom, I’m not stupid,” she said.

I said it wasn’t a matter of intelligence, but peer pressure. That’s when she put her hands over her ears and started chanting, “I’m not listening! I’m not listening! I’m not listening!”

I continued on, saying she was not ready (“I’m not listening!”) and the boys most certainly aren’t ready for the emotional intimacy that needs to exist between a couple for that behavior to take place.

Maybe her hands were over her ears, but she heard.

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.