Is 40 Really the New 20? What Sex and The City Doesn't Say (Spoilers)

Exile Street blog ^ | June 3, 2008 | B. Morrissey

[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.

[NYC GOP Chick]

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 vaguely recall watching that episode and from what I remember, Charlotte and that guy (who was overly eager to get married) had only been dating a few weeks when that happened.

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?

Why should people settle? Does settling make for a happy future when (at least) one person in the marriage realizes that he or she settled and hates his/her life?

[NYC GOP Chick]

Anyone who read her columns realized that. :-)

[lainie]

Kind of like when Monica the chef-in-training and Rachel the clerical worker had that great, huge Manhattan apartment filled with high priced items in “Friends,” complete with gourmet meals all the time and fabulous vacations.

Soaps do the same stuff (it’s why there are so many doctors and whatnot), but it’s to take the viewer away from the mundane. A daily soap with a single mom struggling to pay the bills isn’t really fun to watch. That’s all fine, but it’s these movies and TV shows that ‘transcend’ the genre that get us. They actually purport to teach the rest of us about how we should behave, based on all this fakery. The nerve of these people is pretty interesting.

[wordsofearnest]

Your tagline is one of my favorite quotes.

[sinanju]

Ahh, but the apartment is disposed of in episode one, when Monica tells her buds she just “inherited” (NYC rent-control) it and all its cool art-deco furnishings from her late grandmother.

That’s how our two heroines could afford the swanky digs, Monica, of course was a chef. I don’t recall much about fabulous vacations but I thought Rachel was from a rich family and was well-supplemented.

That said, year-after-year it got harder to watch our characters keep acting like goofball youngsters as they got into their thirties. That’s never a pretty sight in the real world, especially with real people not so toned and telegenic.

[cherry]

television portrays young people living in large cities as beautiful, rich, seemingly never doing work let alone cleaning,dusting, paying bills, cooking , doing laudry...etc...

"Friends"..."Desparate Housewives"...Seinfield"..."Sex"...etc....

they are as realistic as it is for us to believe that men can keep it up until they're old or dead...they can't without some artifical "help"....

so women are portrayed unrealistically.....so are the men....

[cherry]

"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."

I agree with you....I think VIAGRA has changed our culture....it postpones the inevitable for middle aged and old men....so rather than growing up and older as nature intended, they instead can still act like 17 yros and we wonder why the world is in such a mess....

the world needs the middle aged and older men and their wisdom ...their world views...their fatherly instincts......it doesn't need to have that maturity postponed....

[ravingnutter]

They didn’t name it Sex and the City because it is about girlfriends.

Total BS. The name Sex and the City was the title of Candace Bushnell's New York Times column about her and her girlfriends.

Also, according to Author Camille Paglia:

Sex and the City is extremely important in entertainment history because of the way it foregrounded the pro-sex feminism movement of the 1990s that I was part of. The show is the most visible result of that generational shift away from the antipornography crusade that had dominated feminism in the 1970s and '80s. It was a tremendous explosion, proclaiming that the young modern woman was no longer afraid of sex and was an independent agent who actively embraced it.

On the one hand, SATC is a love poem to New York and to the glitter of Manhattan. But on the other hand, there's a chilliness to it because it starkly shows how young, unmarried women are at the mercy of men who have more wealth and power. It's obvious that the audience identified with Carrie Bradshaw's own inner turbulence, her searching for love, and her many hurts. The show charted the relationship troubles of women who were actively pursuing a career in ways that earlier generations were not able to. But how does the young career woman then integrate love into her life? How does she deal with men? Over time, the show really turned into an accurate anthropological chronicle of the bittersweet dilemma faced by the modern career woman. For every big career gain she makes, there's a trade-off in her personal life.

THE FEMINIST: In Defense of the Working Girl

More:

With victory comes the power of choice. L. S. Kim, an assistant professor of film and digital media at the University of California at Santa Cruz who uses ''Sex and the City'' in some of her classes, says that women today have more options than ever and take pleasure in watching the characters of ''Sex and the City'' in the process of debating questions of love and sex, marriage and career. ''There is an historical shift in having all these questions,'' she said. ''Now women realize they can have both career and family. But it's difficult weighing how much you are going to have of a career or a family at a certain time.''

''What attracts women viewers is that the characters are conflicted and complicated,'' she says. ''We want to see women in the process of working through these questions.''

Source

It is about how women handle feminism, not about sex and your 90% figure is totally ridiculous.

[Dr. Scarpetta]

“Sarah Jessica Parker in frock flap over “Sex and the City” premiere gown”

http://www.nj.com/entertainment/celebrities/index.ssf/2008/06/sarah_jessica_parker_in_frock.html

[sarasota]

I couldn’t get the link to download but believe I read about the trifecta of appearances by this gown where the designer told her no one had worn it before. I’d be mighty upset.

[Dr. Scarpetta]

especially upset because of the price of those designer gowns and being reassured yours is unique...

[krb]

And then some.

[sarasota]

Well said. I’ve even speculated that the men in SATC are akin to the other accessories in the show—the shoes, dresses and handbags. Attractive objects that compliment the NYC environment in which these women are allowed to exorcise their relationships.

[sarasota]

Did they article have any quotes from SJP herself?

[Dr. Scarpetta]

"Look, my affection for the dress hasn't changed, but what they did was so short-sighted," Parker told the New York Times. "It's just unethical and disappointing that they would allow the dress to be worn again."

Parker said she had remarked to Theyskens during the fitting that it was a surprise to find the dress had never been worn before. He assured her it had not.

"He didn't say, 'Well, actually, I just escorted Lauren down the red carpet at the Met.' I just wish it had been handled differently and they had been straight about it," she continued. "In the big picture, this is not important, but there is a relationship between the entertainment industry and fashion."

from telegraph.co.uk

[sarasota]

Theyskens is unethical indeed and it’s difficult to understand why he would deceive. Though the dress is magnificent, the glow is gone.

[sarasota]

Theyskens is unethical indeed and it’s difficult to understand why he would deceive. Though the dress is magnificent, the glow is gone.

[Dr. Scarpetta]

Those shoes don’t look too comfortable...

[Maigrey]

Sorry all, but those shoes are hideous! I wonder which designer paid her to wear them?

[sarasota]

I wonder what her feet look like without shoes? While we’re on the subject, ever notice how small her hands and fingers are? And never polished?