It's easy to see why layaway died: quality gave way to quantity, people wanted instant gratification and, perhaps most significantly, the notion that you shouldn't buy something when you couldn't afford it camed to seem as antiquated as a 78, only less fun. Indeed, it would be hard to find a neater corollary for the Collective Responsibility and ensuing collective chastening than the reintroduction of the unglamorous, plodding system.

Says the Post's DeNeen L. Brown, the system "taught us delayed gratification" along with important and basic lessons about fiscal responsibility. It had nothing to do with impulse-purchases and the luxury of buyer's remorse. The want you felt for such things was stable, wholesome, responsible, well-considered. And naturally these duller virtues don't have the glamor of the momentary high that's proven to arise from "shopping" - layaway is really the anti-shopping. There's also no sense of trespass. It's not cute. Carrie Bradshaw, that embodiment of excess, didn't mete out money monthly. And, funnily, putting something on layaway - admitting you want something beyond your means, that this object is very important to you, can feel more consciously materialistic - bourgeois, even! - than a frivolous round of purchases that can be consigned to the back of the drawer and forgotten. Because then, it doesn't really matter to you. Layaway was our parents' parents. Shopping was the modern way.

And as in so many things, we're being pushed on fast forward, through the perpetual adolescence and genuine liberations and simultaneous heedlessness of our parents' generation back to the necessities of the Greatest. But as is also true in so many things, we're not suited to it, and if layaway is a handy metaphor, well, how will we handle it? It's funny: for a lot of people my age, this sort of patience is a quality we associate with childhood, when things are placed beyond your reach and budget. And you saved and you considered and if you really liked something, maybe you could wait the long months to Christmas or your birthday. And this felt right, but it was also understood that these were a child's restrictions. And so now, in that way and other ways, we're children and we're old folks and we're broke, and layaway means acknowledging all that. On the other hand - sometimes a couch is just a couch. Or so my grandparents would have said.

In Back Of The Store, A Return to Patience [Washington Post]

Carrie gets pineapple stuck in her teeth!

Carrie ponders what it means that she was a poster child for the serial daters and now she's attached!

Carrie meditates on whether it is possible to have it all!

Carrie farts!

Carrie wonders if her intestinal issues can be solved by some of that lady-yogurt Jamie Lee Curtis is always talking about! (Carrie also seems to be reenacting a Charlie! perfume commercial from the '70s!)

Carrie thinks Thoughts!

Carrie makes a joke about being boring old married people and her husband Mr. Big merely tolerates her!

Mr. Big is all, "I hate it when you call me old, grumble grumble," and Carrie is like, "Not old for real, just older than I am, I mean you were on Law & Order since George Bush The First was in office"!

Carrie says, "I have to go meet my ladyfriends now, because even though we constantly talk about men, and sometimes hate each other, we really only feel comfortable in each others' company. Also, I think I have to pee or poop" !

Carrie and Big hug! Big Big hug!

Carrie loves being a girl about town!

Wood you believe Carrie bumps into her ex, woodworker Aidan?!?!? He's all bark and no bite!

"Bye Aidan! Call me!"

Carrie tries to hail a cab!

"Maybe it isn't irregularity and a lack of fiber. Maybe I'm PREGNANT!"

Carrie dreams of tiny cherubic babies doing baby things, like starring in baby fashion shows!

But will a baby mean less room in the apartment for shoes?

OMG SHOES!

Carrie's off to see if there's a little Big on the way!

[Images via Bauer-Griffin, INFDaily and WENN.]

[New York, August 19. Image via INFDaily.]

Images of suffragettes are juxtaposed with images of "modern" women, yet the language is still sexist — the cigarette flavor is "mild," for women only; the cigarettes are "tailored for the feminine hand." As blogger Lisa of Sociological Images points out, the last commercial insists that the cigarette is "beautiful."

What's interesting is that this idea of the smoking woman as being both "beautiful" and "liberated" has stuck with us, to some extent. In the late '70s, women were being encouraged to smoke pretty. Some recent fashion layouts have featured smoking models, gorgeous in their utter lack of feeling "motherly." In 2007, a direct mail campaign marketed Camel cigarettes as a "designer" "must-have." And when thinking of contemporary iconic women who smoke, three images sprang to mind:

Carrie Bradshaw

Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction

Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct

All beautiful, all "liberated," not the kind of women who ask permission. Do we as viewers see them as sexy and confident? Or as damaging their lungs and hearts?

"You've Got Your Own Cigarette Now, Baby!" [Sociological Images]
Virginia Slims Commercials (1969) [Internet Archive]
Earlier: How To Market Death To Women: Make It Sexy, Make It Pink
Oldies But Goodies

According to the blogger at Sociological Images, these items look like magazines, but they're not. They're framed images meant to be hung on the walls of a girl's room. They blend the tabloidy, ladymag celebrity culture with the Disney brand into the ultimate mindscramble of a fantastical dreamland with no basis in reality pretending to be real.

Ariel, with her impossibly narrow waist, is next to a "cover line" which reads "swimsuits that fit every shape." It's meant to be amusing, but "dress for your shape" stories are often an epic fail in women's magazines. Do little girls need Disney's help in looking forward to that? One of Snow White's cover lines, "Stepmothers: Evil Or Just Misunderstood?" is supposed to be a joke, but what if you're a kid who has a stepmom? Don't even get me started on Sleeping Beauty's line, "Find Your Prince."

The blogger writes:

The product suggests that while it is all well and good to be a princess, you should aim to be a famous princess. In addition to occupying castles and fantasy forests, you should grace the covers of magazines. You should aspire to inspire the lust and admiration of the masses, not just your prince.

Aren't little girls who think that tabloid popularity and a man will make everything better little girls with unrealistic expectations? Can't they wait until theyre older for this kind of brainwashing? When they watch Carrie Bradshaw get the man who buys her a shoe closet, everything will seem quite clear.

Modernizing The Fairytale [Sociological Images]
Earlier: Vogue Swimwear
In Which We Explore The Ridiculousness Of "Dressing For Your Shape"
Lucky's "Best" Swimsuits Also The Smallest, Least Supportive
Having Conquered Girls, Disney Moves On To Boys

• The good news: Runway is safe. The bad news: yup, it's on Lifetime. [AdAge]
• Britney Spears cuts a revealing figure in her new Candie's ad. Candie's: the last refuge of a scoundrel. [NYDN]

• In case your priorities are totally out of whack and you don't realize that holymotherofgod the biggest thing in The World is taking place as we speak, the TopShop flagship opens in NYC today. (Which will apparently make online easier for everyone!) Last night's opening gala featured Kate Moss as mistress of ceremonies, but according to the Daily Mail, J.Lo "upstaged" her. [Daily Mail]
• "Gossip Girl's Taylor Momsen and Michelle Trachtenberg worked the rock chic look at the first of the two VIP previews, while British actress Emily Mortimer opted for an Eighties-inspired Topshop outfit and Michelle Monaghan sported a pair of bold shoulders." [VogueUK]
• Was la Moss's triple-Topshop change an homage to Michelle Obama? We're gonna go with, "no." [ElleUK]
• This was obviously the party to have attended, since apparently another Topshop do featured the spectacle of Jimmy Fallon singing Sting's "Englishman in New York." [Style.com]
• Sir Philip Green has proclaimed it the best Topshop evah! "Mirroring the Oxford Circus flagship in London, the four-level, 40,000-square-foot space, with 28,000 square feet for selling, is an eyeful of energetic, packed merchandising with about 2,000 stockkeeping units, a broad price range from moderate to bridge, and dozens of mannequins and forms, either dangling from the high, 30-foot ceilings or sitting atop the alcoves. It's a wide store with columns and escalators, huge colorful illustrations of London icons, and theatrically lit Topshop marquees. Above all, it's the product, and not so much the architecture or decor, that does the talking." [WWD]
• For those in the Apple: apparently the line is lunch-break bearable! [New York]
• "Catwalk exposé Picture Me, which allegedly dishes le dirt on Irina Lazareanu, Nicole Miller, ANTM fave Gilles Bensimon and others, premieres Monday. [New York Post]
• Gucci launched a new scent, Flora, at the Chateau Marmont. Obviously, Zanessa was there. [Style.com]
• Those foot-high boots sported by Heidi Klum in the German Vogue shoot will give us nightmares. [Just Jared]
• Speaking of fashion photography! Zac Posen makes his print ad debut. Quoth the aging wunderkind, "Once Ellen (von Unwerth) saw me singing Cole Porter, laying on top of Lorraine's grand piano, she decided it had to be the spot for the picture." Indeed. [Fabsugar]
• Taylor Momsen is letting life imitate art. Which is unfortunate, because she's on Gossip Girl. Says the 15-year-old of her gig as frontwoman for "Pretty Reckless," "I'm actually designing all of my costumes. It's a rock band, so there's not costume changes but there's definitely a look." [People]
• Michelle Obama wears J.Crew in London. Make of this what you will. [E]
• In almost-as-breaking news: Madonna has been spotted sporting a fanny pack in Malawi. [NY Daily News]
• So why isn't Isaac Mizrahi making those budget basics everyone's droning on about? "People have their basics...I want what I can't resist." [NYT]
• GQ names Mark Ronson the "best-dressed man of 2009." We're gonna go ahead and color this "controversial." [GQ]
• Another rumor/confirmation of Marc Jacobs and Lorenzo Martone's marriage. The tipster in Brazil claims he saw them "taking after-ceremony pictures with a small group of what looked like just relatives and close friends!" I guess now that the bloom is off the Beyonce-Jay-Z mystery, we need another source of suspense. [Update: this was an April Fool's! I was totally, um, fooled. -SS] [Fashionista]
• German retail sales are down. [WSJ]
• But Marks and Spencer's...aren't as bad as everyone expected! [WSJ]
• The retail version of the Carrie Bradshaw wedding gown in which she gets jilted has sold out of Vivienne Westwood "almost instantly." [Sassybella]

[New York, March 16. Image via Splash.]

Is the puzzle overtly sexual? No. But come the fuck on, people. Do we really need to model Strawberry Shortcake after Sex and the City? Is there no other cultural touchstone to base a product for elementary school girls on than Scary Sadshaws? Whatever happened to living in a cake made of strawberry? Yes, there are problems with the original, what with Strawberry Shortcake seeming to take much pleasure in sweeping her floors and doing her chores, but still, aren't there some things that are better left alone?

• Vivienne Westwood wants to write the sequel to the Sex and the City movie. Westwood, who critiqued Patricia Field's costumes, is "obsessed" and has allegedly contacted producers and SJP about the scenario. [Telegraph]

• Oy. Goody's Family Clothing has gone under. [WSJ]
• Ooh, this is good! Tracy Feith is the next Go! for Target designer, premiering in May. [WWD]
• Purple is apparently big — again — for spring. [USA Today]
• Thank goodness: Donna Karan, Calvin Klein and Michael Kors are, at least, doing full runway shows in February. [WSJ]
• Meanwhile, Oscar de la Renta single-handedly saves the day by adding an additional show! [Fashion Week Daily]
• Estee Lauder ad is pulled after people complain that it doesn't actually "make wrinkles disappear instantly." [Telegraph]
• Carolina Herrera: "Long hair after 40 is out in my book as it looks too messy and too young. Women need to learn how to age gracefully." But what about a classic bun?! [Times of London]
• Struggling Liz Claiborne hires a new president of retail. [WWD]
• Kirsten Dunst's hipster-fab lookbook for Scott Sternberg sounds...um, boring. "A soundless montage of Kiki dressed in Boy’s louche, preppy Spring collection walking across a white seamless at an almost dreamy clip." [StyleFile]
• American Apparel is only opening 16 stores this year — one fifth the number it opened last year. On the other hand, how amny AA-free blocks are left in the world? [Racked]
• The new $8 grand Stephen Sprouse-inspired Louis Vuitton skateboard comes in an LV case that has less street cred than anything we've ever seen. [The Life Files]
• Drew Barrymore's bizarre, dry "puffy cloud hair" is, allegedly, a trend. [ElleUK]
• So, turns out Rachel Zoe styled both Kate and Anne for the Bride Wars premiere. “Kate had this idea in her head. She wanted to play off the whole bridal theme of the movie and do full-on and do something over the top. It had the drama of a bridal gown but it wasn’t totally bridal...It was Annie’s idea to do a tuxedo and my initial reaction was that they were going to look like a bride and groom…and she liked that.” [WWD]

Dean Winters
Role on Sex: Carrie's fuck buddy John McFadden. After her second massive break from big, Carrie attempts to make her fuck buddy John into a real boyfriend. This attempt fails miserably.
Where Is He Now: Since his hard time in Carrie, Dean Winters moved on to greener pastures: he has a recurring role as Liz Lemon's hilariously deadbeat boyfriend on 30 Rock, Dennis "the beeper king" Duffy. He also has a recurring role on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

John Slattery
Role on Sex: Bill Kelley, an up-and-coming politician and total silver fox. His relationship with Carrie fizzles because he's obsessed with golden showers.
Where Is He Now: As silvery and foxy as ever, John plays slimy-yet-handsome ad exec Roger Sterling. He also had a recurring role on Desperate Housewives, but our hearts belong to Roger.

David Duchovny
Role on Sex: Carrie's erstwhile high school boyfriend Jeremy. He lives in Denver, but has taken a trip out East so he can go to a mental institution. His relationship with Carrie is a no-go because of his mental fragility, but that did not preclude them from knocking the boots a couple times.
Where Is He Now: We all know that David stars as a sex addict on the acclaimed Showtime dramedy Californication and also in his actual life. He was already a bona fide TV star before his time on Sex, but perhaps his time in Carrie-land inspired him to take the more emotionally complex role of Hank Moody on Californication.

Craig Bierko
Role on Sex: Creepy jazz-obsessed Ray King. Things do not work out with Carrie because he can barely hold a conversation that doesn't involve music.
Where Is He Now: earlier this year, Craig starred in a Fox sitcom called Unhitched with Rashida Jones. He played Jack 'Gator' Gately, a 35-year-old who recently divorced his college sweetheart. He is back in the dating scene and totally clueless. Even though it was produced by There's Something About Mary scribes Bobby and Peter Farrelly, the show was canceled after six episodes. However, we know that Carrie holds a leprauchan-ish pot of gold between those gams of hers, so we have high hopes that Craig's TV career will rebound in the near future!

The writers surveyed, who include the very talented Rachel Kramer Bussel and Nerve editor turned Salon employee Sarah Hepola*, had various opinions on why sex writers are getting the ax, from lack of innovation to a mainstreaming of sex writing to lack of talent to an excess of exhibitionism or all three at the same time. What they failed to mention, however, is the Carrie Bradshaw effect.

Before Sex and the City, very few papers had columns exclusively devoted to the sex lives of a single (almost always young, female) writer. After Carrie Bradshaw and her minions became a cultural touchstone, I think many, many media outlets scrambled to have a Carrie to call their very own. The problem is, they weren't looking for originals, they were looking for real life facsimiles of an already sort of annoying fictional female. So, when the time came to cut some unwanted fat, these Manolo-clad also-rans were kicked to the curb.

*None of the sex writers mentioned here or in the Salon article are Carrie Bradshaw-esque at all. They are clever and talented and do not talk about expensive footwear!

Sex Writing Goes Limp [Salon]
Sex Doesn't Sell [SF Gate]

Per our usual scientific practices here at Jez HQ (symbolically speaking), I took a poll. While a quick scan of the shoe rack revealed that the editorial staff on average owned, like, 40 pairs (and yes, we all work from home) we also acknowledge that for the most part this arose from the fact that most of said shoes are too uncomfortable to wear and just slightly too expensive to throw away rather than some fetish - and, further, that the bulk of said shoes were decidedly budget.There's no shame in liking shoes. As we all know, they make the outfit; the purchasing process is considerably less traumatic than for any other garment; some of them are just cool-looking objects. What's more, nowadays people just own a lot of stuff, period: we're kind of past the point of a few well-made basics that take you through life.

But the whole shoes = Narcissistic, Imelda Marcos-like decadence seems like a relatively recent evolution. Shoe-loving has become a short-hand for frivolity and misplaced priorities. Yes, a lot of this can be laid at the door of a certain fictional sex columnist who discovers — adorably, natch! — that her closet of Manolos is why she can't afford to buy her apartment. Because it's not just a love of shoes that's entered the cultural consciousness — it's the fetishization of incredibly impractical, expensive shoes that, as surely as the pallor of a 17th century lady of the manor, indicates the aspirational lifestyle of the truly idle. The new fetish shoe cannot be walked in or worked in; it is made for a lifestyle of cabs and expensively-padded bar stools. The more impractical and exorbitant one's shoe closet, the more glamorous and frivolous one's existence.

I'd venture to say that, however many pairs the average woman might own, her love of shoes is probably not so disproportionate to her love of other stuff as a hundred million commercials and glancing references would have us believe. Certainly it's a cliché shoe chains have embraced with a vengeance — those Payless BOGO ads, anyone? — but it really does seem like a chicken and egg situation. Do we have a ton of shoes because WOMEN LOVE SHOES, or because, um, now we're expected to? At this point it's probably as real as any Hallmark holiday, but it's annoying to be presented, as a sex, with a frivolous truism that seems to have evolved almost without our conscious knowledge. I say as I sport a pair of wedges from Shoegasm.

Hey, Shorty [New York Times]

There are things worse than being 17, single, and female in New York City. Like: being 17, single, and living in bumblefuck, upstate New York. It's a rite of passage most girls would not want to repeat. The sad little parties in dirty basements, the near water Coors beer, the dumpy jeans from J.C. Penney, the immature boys who would grow into only slightly more mature men, the chronic low-self-esteem which would grow into a consistent thrum of self-loathing.

It was Spring Break in bumblefuck, and Carrie Bradshaw was sprawled on her Laura Ashley comforter, wondering when she would finally emerge from the childhood of her discontent and flee to the bright lights and better cocktails of New York City. The low self-esteem she was working on; she had just recovered from the rhinoplasty she'd blown all her Bat Mitzvah money on. But after spending $3,000 to fix her "deviated septum," now she was too poor to take the bus to the City. Carrie had planned on meeting her best friend from Lake Gitchigumi Summer camp, Harmony Rothschild, at Palladium later that week.

Since she couldn't flee to the City, Carrie was contemplating whether or not to attend Seth's party that night. Seth Bateman was incredibly bland and yet vaguely offensive, just like the rest of the lacrosse team. But ever since Carrie had broken up with Jeremy, she was constantly searching for something different. Not that Jeremy wasn't wonderful — he was kind and had a Thunderbird and was Rob Lowe gorgeous — she just assumed there had to be something else out there. They hadn't even had sex! After all, she was only 17.

After a careful deliberation including four outfit changes, Carrie, clad in head to toe Benetton, figured that as long as she was stuck in Saratoga for the week, she might as well get away from her mother for the evening. Ever since her mother had been dumped by John Garrett Wiley III, Saratoga's leading real estate baron, she'd been badgering Carrie into a series of forced mother daughter bonding rituals. There were only so many nights Carrie could spend ritually painting her toenails and watching Murder She Wrote, so she flounced downstairs and as she ran out the door, called back to her mother, "I'm just going to a party…don't wait up!"

*Gawker Media does not have a team of hackers, nor is this a real page from Ms. Bushnell's manuscript...although it could be!

Candace Bushnell To Pen “Sex and the City” Prequels [Boston Herald]
Sex And The City: Year One [Overthinking It]
Single, Female And 25: Love Among the Ruins [The Observer]

Earlier: Revisiting 'Sex & The City': What Do These People Deserve More Than Each Other? Hint: It's Not "Your Attention

My problem is not that Bushnell calls herself a feminist — she is, without a doubt, as is anyone who believes that men and women are equal — but I still don't understand what that has to do with Botox, Jimmy Choos, not eating or bitchy, wealthy Park Avenue fauxialites.

Again, I feel the same way about Candace Bushnell as I did about Jenna Jameson. I get the idea that we're supposed to respect and look up to these women because they're self-made. Because they made a lot of money and have a head for business. But they both also did so while pushing agendas — in Bushnell's case, rampant materialism, and in Jameson's case, porn catering to the male gaze — that aren't things which are particularly admirable. For Bushnell, it seems that "capitalist" is the "ist" she most embodies, rather than "feminist."

However, both Bushnell and Jameson offer their brand of power as funneled through highly palatable packages. In Turner's profile of Bushnell, she writes, "Her looks were her entrée to New York highlife. Too short to model, with no acting talent, she began chronicling the Studio 54 set in a New York Observer column that became Sex and the City. Later her beauty was her supreme marketing tool: she posed discretely naked for New York magazine."

I don't fault Bushnell for her choices or begrudge her success, I'm just sick of her and her fucking expensive shoe fetish. If I never write the word "Manolo" again, I can die a happy woman. Can't we find better icons than this?

Finding True Love, By Sex And The City's Candace Bushnell [Times of London]

Of Piper, Greenblatt says, "The great thing about Billie is she's open to that. And yet it's also tasteful. We're not that explicit with her." While one could easily make the argument that because Call Girl is about a hooker, the show is inherently objectifying, it would be fairly absurd to have a show revolve around sex and yet not show any naked bodies (though somehow, Carrie Bradshaw managed to wear a bra in the sack for six years; big up to Cynthia Nixon and Kim Cattrall for actually showing their naked bodies without shame as the plot entailed).

I don't think actresses should have to choose between going nude and advancing their careers, but there is something ultimately refreshing about a powerful, talented actress (see Mirren, Helen; Jason Leigh, Jennifer) who doesn't mind going bare for a role because it's the right choice for the character. And judgey Witherspoon can stick that in her Oscar and smoke it.

Billie Piper's 'Secret' Is Out [LA Times]
Reese Witherspoon Won't Go Nude To Sell Movies [Us]

Here's Lane on Kim Cattrall:

Samantha’s efforts to signal her appeal, which might have seemed languorous on the small screen, are blown up here into an embarrassing semaphore: thudding closeups of her slurping through a cocktail straw or swallowing a mouthful of guacamole. No self-respecting maker of soft erotica would countenance such shots, and, as for the matching dialogue (“Something just came up,” Samantha murmurs over the phone, as her boyfriend stands beside her in bulging briefs), it’s a straight lift from flaccid, mid-period James Bond.

And here's his take on Tina Fey in Baby Mama:

[Fey's character] Kate stalks around bare-legged in skirts that lurch to a halt two inches above the knee, which is a length that Christy Turlington would struggle to carry off. It’s possible that Fey, like other television stars, is unused to being framed in full length, and, though in complete command of her delivery—dry, spiky, but unthreatening—she hasn’t yet made up her mind how funny her body is meant to be. She isn’t big enough to make a joke of her ripeness, like Bette Midler, but she’s no Lily Tomlin, either. She could do worse than steal a trick from Lucille Ball—a lovely, elegant figure who taught herself to be graceless.

It seems that Lane has a problem with women of a certain age being sexual on the big screen; he can take mature sexuality in the bowdlerized form he sees on television, but once those over-30 legs are stalking around, larger than life on celluloid, he must object.

But Lane's female problem is nothing when you read Timothy Noah's comparison of Carrie Bradshaw and Hillary Clinton in Slate. Basically, Noah posits that the older white women who watched the SatC movie are the same ones who voted for Hillary, and went to see the movie because they were bummed about Hillary's primary loss. "By this past weekend, however, it was becoming clear to all but the most delusional Hillary supporters that the game was up. Sisterhood was powerful, but in this case it wouldn't prevail. That realization left a lot of white women all dolled up with nowhere to go. And so … they went to the movies," Noah writes. "The connection, I'll grant you, is somewhat glib," he adds…glibly. So glib, in fact, that it makes no sense whatsoever.

Even with all the punditry, the Sex and the City movie's popularity at this point, is similar to the appeal of the much-loved SatC-approved Magnolia Bakery cupcake. You have to wait on long lines to consume it; it is full of saccharine and empty calories; you might feel a little sick to your stomach when it's over, but you were happy to let yourself indulge, just for a little while, in a buttercream fantasy. And once it's out of your small intestine, you forgot it ever existed.

Sexism And The City [Newsweek]
The New Yorker Turns “Sex And The City” Gals Into Monsters, All Of Them [Best Week Ever]
Carrie [New Yorker]
Switching Places [New Yorker]
Hillary And The City [Slate]

Earlier: Sarah Jessica Parker Squeals In Dismay Over Time Out New York Cover

10:17am: I am stuck in traffic behind a broken down bus! This cabbie is an asshole. I might have to get out and run. [Ed note: The movie is supposed to start at 10:15]

10:37: Two cabs and one subway trip later. I'm finally here! It took me an hour to travel maybe three miles. I already hate this movie.

10:40: These are the shoes I chose to wear. Thank friggin god I didn't wear heels as a joke.

10:41: Big just proposed to Carrie. Kinda.
10:45: This theater is packed and everyone is laughing at the stupid jokes. Although Samantha told Carrie she should get Botox.

10:48: Carrie still has that stupid pink crystal-y phone. Except it's taped together which is a nice touch. She just asked Samantha to be her maid of honor.

10:49: All Charlotte does is scream.

10:50: LOL! Carrie's boss talked her into doing the bride at 40 piece by saying "Vogue airbrushing".

10:52: The wedding photo shoot scene. The Dior dress looks like frothy diarrhea. Vivienne Westwood personally sent Carrie a dress for free.

10:55: Haha. Carrie is becoming far-sighted but won't get glasses. Also Chris Noth: Fake tan much?
10:56: Carrie does research for her new book (about love) at the library.

10:59: Carrie won't tell her friends how often she and Big fuck!

11:02: Also, she calls him "John" now.

11:03: OMG, Big built Carrie a closet just like Mariah Carey's. It looks like a store.

11:04: Charlotte just screamed again. And again.

11:05: I'm cringing. They are trying on outfits to "Walk This Way".

11:07: The Miranda/Steve storyline is actually really good. He just admitted to cheating on her and the old lady in the wheelchair behind me just yelled "Hit him! Hit him!" I'm gonna try to get a picture of her.

11:14: Miranda is like a total bitch.

11:24: Big just jilted her! Because she wouldn't answer the phone in the morning. Seriously, all these people are such babies! who wants to put up with this bullshit? Now Charlotte is screaming at Big. Kristin Davis' throat must've been so sore.

11:28: "Okay so he didn't really jilt her. He freaked for a second, then turned around and went back but Carrie was already embarrassed and then she hit him. The whole thing could've been avoided. Kind of like this movie!

11:31: The reason why the honeymoon was in Mexico is because Carrie paid for it as a surprise.

11:32: Carrie is now in a deep depression in Mexico She's been sleeping and not eating. Speaking of, I'm gonna step out to the concession stand for some breakfast.

11:34: Hahahaha! They actually showed Miranda's thick bush.

11:43: Breakfast!

11:44: Somehow Carrie got her apartment back. I missed that when I was buying my breakfast.

11:47: I guess I also missed the part about how Carrie can afford Jennifer Hudson.

11:50: It really pisses me off that Carrie isn't computer literate. Her assistant does her email for her while she flips through magazines on her couch.

11:55: Carrie died her hair dark brown and changed her phone number and is complaining about having a different area code. [The Lifestyles Of The Rich And First World! -Ed.]

11:57: Samantha adopted a dog because its a girl who loves to hump and she felt a connection.

11:58: Jennifer Hudson deserves a Razzie for this. She sucks.

12:00 Oh! I forgot to mention that Charlotte shit her pants in Mexico. Literally.

12:02: Carrie bought her assistant a Louis Vuitton bag for Christmas. Carrie is a retard.

12:08: Okay, finally a Carrie outfit I like. Pajamas, boots, fur coat, stupid hat. That's what I call "walking the dog" attire.

12:10: This sad people on New Year's Eve montage is way too long.

12:16: Carrie finally realized that she is a self-obsessed narcissist! And that she uses "I" too much.

12:29: One therapy session and Miranda and Steve are back together. Also, Miranda is the only one to show her tits.

12:32: Samantha has gained like 5 lbs and everyone noticed. What bitches.

12:33: Samantha and Smith just had the most civilized breakup after 5 years.

12:35: I just checked carriebradshaw.com and she wrote a book called MENhattan? Barf.
12:37: Also, Charlotte's little girls are named Lily and Rose. Barf x2.
12:41: Interesting. Carrie always wears a bra to bed, but in this frantic city scene she is running through the streets without one.
12:46: People are actually crying in this theater because Big proposed a second time with a Manolo!

12:51: Last line: "And there they were, four friends who had met as girls and were now women ready to enter the next phase of their lives, dressed head to toe in love. And that's one label that never goes out of style." LOL.

This is the violent wheelchair lady.

This is the next showing lining up. So many mothers and daughters.

Yeah, I'm sure they share their sexual liberation together.

12:59: As I was walking out of the theater a middle aged woman working there asked me if the movie was any good and I made the "so-so" sign with my hand and then she goes, "Yeah, I figured. I never liked that show. I'm a Will & Grace fan myself."

Just as Gould is infuriated by all those "Scary Sadshaws," wandering around in search of baubles and boys... [I find it] maddening to have to wonder — Carrie Bradshaw-style — if Gould's story would have run had she not been beautiful, and maddening to then hate oneself for having had to wonder that at all.

But perhaps most maddening is the way the buildup of critical attention to a piece like Gould's — or to a cultural phenomenon like "SATC" — only affirms that certain kinds of women, and only those kinds of women, are worth elevating to begin with, in part because of the delight people take in tearing them down.

And this:

No matter how angry you felt about Gould's piece, it was almost impossible to read the comments and not feel terrible: for her, about her, and about yourself for having even peeked. The process is exhausting, and not good for anyone, especially women who get stuck with some lame avatar they feel does not represent them, but whom they do not particularly feel like burning at the stake just for having been clever, lucky or talented enough to wind up drawing a spotlight.

Another Pretty Face Of A Generation [Salon]
Related: The Times Magazine Dapples Sunlight On Its Memoirist [NY Observer]
Exposed [NY Times Magazine]


Earlier: 5 Things About That Times Magazine Piece On Masturbatory Blogging
The Problem With Chick Lit

Watching TV all day — watching any TV show all day — will do that to you. But you know, there is something especially mindfucky about SATC. There's something about Carrie! (Ugh, something that encourages terrible, terrible puns! I promise to try to not to make any more of them.) And, actually, let me also dispense with a couple of other things right up front.

I am not interested in making qualitative judgments about this TV show. Maybe it's groundbreaking, and documentary-realistic about New York City, and it gave women permission to speak frankly about men and sex and dating mores in a way that they hadn't before! Or maybe it's hilariously dreadful — full of schlocky metaphors and over-the-top untruths about New York City, and stunningly, feminism-hobblingly retrogressive portrayals of womens' priorities and desires!

In this clip, Miranda sums up my feelings. Basically she's like, "Why do you only ever talk about penises? There is other stuff to talk about!" Unfortunately they don't listen to her and the show continues for another four seasons.

I don't know anymore. I change my mind every five minutes. This minute, on my TV screen, Carrie and friends are watching Big come down the stairs of Denial in slow motion and a huge grin is lighting up her face — he does care about her friends, after all! — and Miranda is running out into the street after Steve — she will give him a chance, after all! — to kiss him in the rain. And I'm thinking the answer might be that everything everyone's ever said about Sex and the City, both good and bad, is somewhat true. All that matters is that it's already been said, so I won't waste time saying it again here, and neither should you. Instead I want to talk about the kind of insight that can only be gleaned by watching many, many episodes of a TV show in a row.

Such as: there is a LOT of rollerblading going on in Seasons 1 and 2. A whole lot.

There are other stand-out un-modern touches, of course. Just to get it out of the way: oh my god their CLOTHES, their HAIR! The fact that their cellphones are the same (enormous) size as the Rabbit Pearl vibrator Charlotte gets "addicted" to in episode 9 ("It's pink! For girls!") And of course there's the unfortunate fact that, thanks to increasing budgets and the increasing social acceptability of facial muscle microparalysis via injected botulinim toxin, the gals seem to have grown younger, not older, as the series wore on.

Also, remember the HBO Real Sex-style Man on the Street interviews and Carrie's turn-to-the-camera confessionals? Those were weird.

But yes, seriously, really I wanted to mention something about the early seasons of SATC that — I think, at least! I haven't read everyone's grad school theses — hasn't already been discussed to death. It has to do with Carrie's job.

As the first episode opens, we hear Carrie narrating, in voiceover, the story of another woman's love and loss. We don't even see Carrie onscreen for a few minutes — instead, we learn about Elizabeth, a young British woman who came to New York and met a charmer who talked marriage and babies, then completely disappeared. Remember? It's the monologue that ends, "Welcome to the age of un-Innocence. No one has breakfast at Tiffany's and no one has affairs to remember." We're then given to understand that this voiceover, like alllllll the voiceovers that will follow it, is an excerpt from one of Carrie's columns. She is a sex columnist for a New York newspaper. "This is my work," she later tells a man she's just met when he asks what she does besides going out every night. "I'm sort of a sexual anthropologist." "You mean like a hooker?" he (it's Big!) asks—his joke-or-is-it? quasimysogny, established here, continues throughout the series and is meant to be, I guess, realistic and endearing.

"No. I write a column called 'Sex and the City.' Right now I'm researching an article about women who have sex like men. You know, they have sex and then afterwards they feel nothing," Carrie says. So this is the premise for the show: her life is research for her column. All the things that happen on the show — everything that makes Carrie have "to wonder," to announce that she "had a thought," to conclude that "the truth was," to sum things up with "and just like that," — these are all things that Carrie is sharing with a public. She's a little bit famous. "I'm a huge fan of your column," random characters say throughout the series. "I'm sort of somebody and she's definitely sort of somebody," Samantha tells an indifferent gatekeeper at a fancy restaurant.

So as Carrie and her friends navigate the many pitfalls that can imperil romance in New York — modelizers, married people, lesbians, twentysomethings, butt sex, vibrator addiction, pregnancy, flatulence and Catholicism in the first season alone — they're doing so in front of an audience. Not just the people who are unfortunate enough to be seated around them at brunch or at so-hot-right-now restaurants — no, Carrie and co. are figuring out whether nice girls do anal in front of all the people who read Carrie's column. You have to wonder whether this scrutiny is affecting their relationships — well, you have to wonder, but Carrie never does. It's the one thing she never wonders about.

Carrie's column is the elephant in the room for a reason — what if Big and Carrie had ever argued over how he was portrayed in her column? It's like wondering what Friends would have been like if Rachel had married that dentist — which is to say, probably nonexistent. And of all the credulity-straining things about SATC — you know, the 'how can she afford those shoes/that apartment?' factors — this is, to me, the most egregious. As I watched my 17th episode of the day, I HAD TO WONDER: How does Carrie constantly, publicly pontificate about her personal life and still manage to, you know, have one?

Also, why does Miranda always talk with her mouth full?

More things to WONDER about in this season one highlight reel: are women "things?" Is Big calling Carrie ugly? Is Carrie good at dumping people? And is Charlotte, in fact, a hole?

Earlier: 36 Straight Hours Of Sex (And The City)