Posted on 06/03/2008 7:22:19 AM PDT by A_perfect_lady
“Is 40 really the New 20?” asks Fox News, reviewing the Sex And The City hoopla that seemed to overwhelm everyone this weekend. “Pop culture expert and Party Girl author Anna David joins us to weigh in on the phenomenon…” And the burning question is, what do you make of this revolutionary idea that a woman can be single in her 30s, 40s, even 50s, and it’s not shameful, it’s fantastic?
Interesting. Let’s explore this revolutionary idea. How did Sex And The City make it okay to be single? After Anna David addresses how threatening this idea is to men—it must be, a reactionary Maxim magazine voted Sarah Jessica Parker the most unsexy woman alive (I’m sure the hook nose and the wart had nothing to do with it)—the Fox news anchor hit upon the kernel of truth in the matter almost unwittingly.
“These women seem very fashion forward, they have a lot of money, they seem to be very independent, they live in Manhatten… how realistic is this picture?”
Anna responds candidly, “Well… nobody I know who is a free-lance writer like Carrie Bradshaw has that kind of apartment, has those kinds of shoes, has that kind of a wardrobe… but you know, it’s fun…”
And then, unaware of what they’ve just stumbled over, the two women continue on to suggest that, realistic or not, the show will influence culture, women will be reassured that they can be single and it’s fabulous, and so on and so forth.
A word or two here, folks. Has no one actually registered in their brains what happens in this movie? Here’s the ending: Miranda goes back to her husband. Charlotte and her husband have a baby. Carrie and Big finally get married. Only Samantha is single at the end and frankly, it’s mostly because she’s a nymphomaniac and they get fat in relationships because they’re frustrated. Seriously. She dumps him because she’s getting fat. There’s a lot of talk about being true to herself and all, but the defining moment is when she realizes she’s put on 15 lbs. from eating too much because she’s sexually frustrated by monogamy.
So what is the message of this movie, when it ends with three of the four women firmly ensconced in matrimony, and two in motherhood? It’s rather like a Jane Austen book: they always end in a wedding. Was Jane Austen revolutionary? I don’t think so. But she was a true expert on popular culture, and I thought of her while listening to Anna David admit that these fabulous women had more money than anyone she knew.
There was indeed something about the obsessive reference to designer clothes and names and labels throughout the movie that struck me, also. And make no mistake, every frame of that movie celebrates money and lifestyle. The camera lingers lovingly on bags and boxes with names, names, names on them. None of those women ever wear the same dress or shoes twice, and the happy ending for Carrie and Big comes when she returns to his penthouse for her $550 Manolo-whatevers that have never been worn, and he kneels and slips them onto her feet just like Cinderella, and then proposes while he’s down there. This is not revolutionary stuff.
But the money, the money. These women live glamorous lifestyles and make being single alright. Is it then revolutionary to suggest that as long as you have money, being single is cool? Is this a new idea? Back to Jane Austen we go. I reference Emma, the scene where Emma councils her innocent friend Harriet on the importance of choosing a good husband. She herself, she adds, intends never to marry. Harriet is horrified.
“But still, you will be an old maid—and that is so dreadful!”
“Never mind, Harriet, I shall not be a poor old maid; and it is poverty only which makes celibacy contemptible to a generous public! A single woman with a very narrow income must be a ridiculous, disagreeable old maid, the proper sport of boys and girls; but a single woman of good fortune is always respectable…”
Now those who know Emma know that she was a young lady of random opinions, many of which were proven wrong later in her story. But she nevertheless is Jane Austen’s mouthpiece for voicing popular opinion. I suspect it was a fact then and is a fact now: women with a great deal of money have had sexual license for centuries. They can be single and take lovers, they can be married and unfaithful. As long as you do it with elegance and flair, the world will forgive you.
But even then, by a vote of three to one, the Sex and the City girls agree: single is okay if you are wealthy, but it is better to marry than to burn. Jane Austen meets the Bible. Very revolutionary indeed.
Jerry and George had some really hot girlfriends on Seinfeld too. Every episode it was someone new.
So it is Lifetime pron?
It is addressing trends. When young upwardly mobile women forgo marriage for recreational sex and career and then “settle down” after their biological clock has ceased to be fertile (needing medical treatments that give us a disproportionate number of twins and triplets) it changes the culture. They also will be about a generation older than the mothers of the other kids at their child’s school (not everyone is a sexually liberated yuppie).
The intellectuals got so smart that they ceased to reproduce.
If they are trying to have a child there is a world of difference between twenty and forty. They may get REALLY BAD NEWS if they wait until forty to try conceiving.
Bushnell said that she based her New York Observer column, “Sex and the City,” on her relationships with her girlfriends. The characters in the column and on the show are based on Bushnell and her friends in real life.
Bushnell speaks on sex, city and shoes
Michael Patrick King, Executive Producer:"People thought, oh it's just about sex or it's just about fashion. And then slowly over the years people start to see it's really about love ... and relationships ... and sex ... and basically the battlefield of trying to be in love—whether it be with another person or with yourself."
Does that make Jerry and George sluts?
I’m 31, female, single, and don’t need Sex and the City’s permission to make it “okay.”
Jerry or Elaine, usually, and sometimes George or Kramer would find the love of their lives early in an episode. Then they would find some little imperfection: “Man hands,” retrograde attitude to abortion, funny-sounding laugh, and so on, and dump them by the end of the show.
This was common as well on SATC. The other party had to be perfect from the get-go. Remember when Charlotte almost married a guy, but dumped him because she couldn’t stand his taste in wedding china?
I recall a 2000 TIME article about empowered thirtysomething women refusing to “settle.” If only we could stay 34 forever... Where are they now? Do you suppose?
In the mid-nineties, when Bushnell’s book first came out, reviewers pointed out that—like a late-model Woody Allen movie—she didn’t exactly run with an everyday New Yorker crowd.
It’s an almost soviet-style indoctrination. The SATC/Cosmo-girl/Rom-com life plan. You go all-out on the glamorous career and boffo sex life from 18 to 33, then McDreamy will stumble into your life and sweep you off your feet and you will live happily ever after.
If not? Well, stock up on the kitty litter, I guess...
I have seen a bit of the show. Every time I turn to it, they are in bed with some guy.
Don’t tell me the show is “deep” because it involves themes other than getting laid.
When you turn to the show and that is what you see 90 percent of the time, that is the show.
They didn’t name it Sex and the City because it is about girlfriends.
Well, the reason Mary is in the libraarian get up is because she was a pot with only one potential lid--George. And she's not afraid of the average man because she's a spinster, she's scared because Potterville is riddled with poverty and crime.
I'm sure Capra wouldn't have had a spinster character scared of her own shadow on the streets of Bedford Falls.
Trust fund kids.
No. Only Charlotte came from money. Miranda and Carrie were of middle-class origins. Samantha, the only native New Yorker—while well-polished—was proudly working-class, self-made.
You're talking about some Hollywood thing that I haven't seen and likely never will see.
I was talking about trust-fund people I have met in real life. For the most part, they are shallow, self-centered individuals who can not maintain relationships and who no one really likes.
“Is 40 Really the New 20?”
God I hope not. I’m 39 and NOT looking to have more kids, mine are almost grown....2 years & counting!
Well then, I guess we’d better up the Estate tax to make sure those nasty rich people can’t spoil their offspring.
I didn't say anything about that. All I said is that I have met real life trust fund kids who's life attitude is not appreciably different than welfare bums, albeit with fancier cloths and cars.
Besides, the estate tax does not impact trust funds. Ask any Kennedy.
Nah. Just makes them about as believable as the Tooth Fairy.
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