SATC release could be a big hit thanks to women. No, really?

The long-awaited Sex and The City movie is going on general release in the UK today, as well as having its New York premiere. IMDb has reported that, together with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, it's attracting an unusual demographic of cinemagoers (Indy is for the geriatrics like me, apparently).

The audience in question is women in their 40s and early 50s. Like, erm, the women in the movie. Paul Dergarabedian of Media by Numbers told the AP that the primary audience would be women from 20 to 55 and that "a huge female audience can create a blockbuster of a movie if there's enough interest". Wow. I really needed statistics to work that blistering conclusion out - we're only 50 percent of the population, after all.

But hang on - why are we turning up in force to see it anyway?

The AP report cited by IMDb takes its data from online ticketing service Fandango which has used a survey to also determine that 94 percent of SATC ticket buyers are female, 67 percent are going as a group of women, 16 percent are taking one female friend and six percent are going with a man.

Much has also been made of the fact that SATC packs in the traditionally womanly interests: fashion, fashion... oh, and fashion. (Not forgetting the sex, which is a traditional cross-gender pursuit, one would hope). But could it be that the main reason for the surge in popularity amongst women is that it's one fo the few programmes or films to feature older women who look good?

Never mind whether they're independent / good role models / realistic types. There are all sorts of arguments from each camp about whether they're desperate marriage-hungry harpies or sassy career women with attitude. Who cares?

The fact is they're unashamedly 40 or 50-something women and they're not bedraggled, abused, invisible or stereotypical housewives. Some are married, some are not. Some are mothers, some are not. Each one looks very different physically. But none of them looks like she's ready for early retirement from the public eye. That's pretty rare in Hollywood, where even 30-something Gwyneth Paltrow was worried that there would be someone younger and prettier along and the fickle world of films would have forgotten about her when she came back from extended maternity leave.

LA is pretty unforgiving to the middle aged woman, consigning her to the dustheap of cinema history until she can relaunch her career as a character actress in her later years (Jane Fonda, I'm looking at you). As for the SATC women: Like them, love 'em or loathe everything they represent, but you still can't be surprised that women in their droves are responding to something unusual on the big screen.

Alexandra Roumbas is a writer and editor living in London. She will draw her own conclusions when she watches the film on Saturday - with two other women.

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