This explanation in the webcomic Johnny Wander by Ananth Panagariya and Yuko Ota makes as much sense as anything else I've heard.
Link via Awesomesauce
You write a 400 to 2,000 word fanfic about the picture above. Come at it from any angle you like to explain, illuminate or otherwise bring to life what's going on in the picture above. Our only request is NO slash fanfic (please). But other than that, knock yourself out.[...]
If your fanfic of the picture is chosen by our Jury of Awesomeness, your story will appear in a special electronic chapbook about the picture, with other stories written by me, by Wil, by Norton Award winner and Best Novel Hugo Award nominee Catherynne Valente and by Patrick Rothfuss, best selling author of The Name of the Wind. You will be paid for your story at the rate of ten cents a word (twice the SFWA minimum professional rate), and you'll receive a special prize pack of books from Subterranean Press, which will publish the electronic chapbook later in the year.
The makeup folks put ears on my son Adam to surprise me. A precious moment while shooting the original series.
4.) The totemic power of shoes. The thing that made it absolutely clear that Sex and the City 2 was a science fiction movie was the scene in which Carrie bought shoes at the souk. In the Sex and the City mythos, plots involving Carrie's shoe are rife with danger and intrigue. Remember the episode in which Carrie's Manolos were stolen at that party? Or when she was mugged for her Manolos in Tribeca? Shoes are the medium with which The City keeps tabs on Carrie - they are The City's harbinger, The City's familiar, and Carrie's tormentor.
Case in point — in Sex and the City 2, Carrie goes to the souk to purchase what appears to be genie shoes (I'm serious). At this point, Carrie's old flame, Aiden Shaw, suddenly appears. Do you know how difficult it is to run into people you know in NYC, let alone in the UAE? Aiden's appearance wasn't just a lazy, ludicrously improbable sop to longtime SATC fans. No, it was The City's machinations keeping Carrie in check. The shoes conspired against her. Ooooh.
When viewed as a rom-com, Sex and the City 2 is terrible and crappy and a horrific inversion of everything the show once was. But when viewed as a science fiction film, SATC2 is subversive, stylish and chilling.