Jezebel
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the bushnell administration
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cover lies
the bushnell administration
Carrie Bradshaw's Method Of Investigative Journalism Gains Favor In China
How do transplanted Chinese in Manhattan feel about Sex & The City? What with the media's acknowledged reluctance to cover anything related Sex & The City, it's little wonder they hadn't gotten around to approaching it from this fascinating angle. Until now! Bilingual Wall Street Journal contributor Li Yuan, whose column "Beautiful Country" chronicles her life as a Chinese expat in New York for audiences in the US and Asia, attacks this subject in today's column, which she reported the way Carrie would: by asking her friends! "The show didn't mention how the characters became successful and rich," points out a 24-year-old banker. "I'm sure they worked very hard when they were my age." A 28-year-old trader has a more jaundiced view. "I find some of its content pretty disgusting," he said. "To me, New York turned out to be more like the city in Friends. More »
mag hag
Marie Claire Presents…Another Month Of Sex & The City Beach Reading! (How Will You Ever Repay Them?)
More Sex? Really? Oh, I know. But I also know you all are suckers for a hack photoshop job, which I'll share with you after the jump, and while I'm at it I'm just going to share what I learned from reading the accompanying piece, which I did. So: we learn Sarah Jessica Parker never liked the "Berger storyline," even as she realized it was "necessary" — like the Iraq war? — and that the idea behind the Berger romance is "what happens when it's the right guy at the wrong time," which should not be confused with the Big storyline, which was "The wrong guy at a succession of wrong times who mysteriously, through some combination of resignation and/or impotence, transforms himself into the right guy, because that is a message we should really be sending to modern women; this love stuff, it is a WAR OF ATTRITION YOU KNOW." Oh, and remember the scene where Charlotte meets Harry and he sweats on her paper? More »
hell's bells
When Did Divorce Become The New Death?
Miscellaneous observations noted the day after seeing Sex & The City: The Movie and reading about YouTube divorcee Tricia Walsh-Smith in 'New York' magazine and the anxieties of the newly-slightly-less-rich in the 'New York Times', vaguely petitioning the godless void to find someone to marry me before I look like this.
•Divorce is the new Death. No one wants it, really, but for some reason everyone assumes its inevitability. But when it comes, what happens? Who's the greater fool? This can be prepared for, like the Afterlife. Contracts can be drawn, assets accumulated and shifted. Carrie says she came to New York in search of the two "Ls" — "love" and "labels." Of course, "marriage" is just another variation on "label," worn like an LV to designate oneself as superior, uncommon, discriminating somehow, dignified. Whatever that means.
•Tricia Walsh-Smith is the worst-case matrimonial scenario. If you don't get married, or if you botch your prenuptial agreement, or if he leaves you at the altar (a.k.a. Big) or sleeps with a random stranger (a.k.a. Miranda), you lose all dignity; all of it, gone. And without that dignity, what is left? Shoes. The end.
More »
film schooled
I Like Sex, I Like This City. I Hated Sex And The City
Sex And The City was number one at the box office this weekend, in case you've been living under a rock. The flick made $55.7 million, which "exceeded expectations." How come people had such low expectations, anyway? Matt Lauer was on the Today show this morning saying something like it must have made so much because couples went to see it together. In other words, surely women couldn't make box office history without men! But no: Women made it number one; the audience was 85% female. On one hand, there's some pride in the fact that dollars-obsessed Hollywood has proof that women will go to the movies if you give them what they want. On the other hand, it's a little tragic that there's so much hoopla surrounding Sex And The City. Because the movie was terrible. More »
drunk email from my little sister
Will Sex & The City Make You Into A Communist?
Last midnight my sister somehow saw the Sex & The City movie and furiously wrote me a review that made me wonder, could this be the movie that finally shakes my faith in the virtues of market capitalism? Seriously, ever since she took this Marxism seminar my sister has hated her fellow man too much to want to extend him the benefit of any sort of social safety net, but this movie seemed to force her to reconsider. Is Sex & The City just a movie cashing in on a cash cow, or a tool of dialectical materialists designed to incite class struggle? Does this movie have a "message" other than"feel free to wear absurd outfits to work"? Yeah, probably not, but check the amusing email — and, uh, note the time stamp — after the Leap. More »
Sex And The Shitty
The Sex & The City movie's promotional website features an obnoxious application allowing users to "hack" into Carrie Bradshaw's MacBook and IM with the "characters." Their answers are so stupid I could have probably programmed the thing myself, so you pretty much have to create your own fun by asking hilarious questions, but I don't have the patience for that so it's a good thing there are other blogs in the world. Click the pic for Videogum's most biting query. [Videogum]
living viCarrieously
36 Straight Hours Of Sex (And The City): The First Two Seasons
It's around 9pm on Tuesday night. I'm midway though the second season of Sex and the City right now. I mean, right now right now, like, as I type this, Big just held up a piece of veal and asked Carrie, "Is this a piece of veal or is this a piece of veal" and then she invited him to have dinner with all her friends for the first time on Saturday night at a hot new restaurant called Denial ("Apparently, everyone in Manhattan wanted to be in Denial." Ha ha.) I'm in kind of a weird headspace. More »
living viCarrieously
36 Straight Hours Of Sex (And The City)
Editor's note: Remember how I said I was going to watch every episode of 'Sex and the City' between April 1 and the May 23 premiere of the film? Well, for reasons of time, energy, and impending marriage, I didn't do it. What I did do, however, is pawn the task off on someone else: Emily Gould, Jezebel contributor and coiner of my favorite 'SATC'-related phrase, "Scary Sadshaws". Between today and Thursday, Emily will be watching all 94 episodes of the HBO series — that's 36 hours' worth! — and report back with her findings. A stunt? Yes. Insane? Probably. Wish her luck.
Last night, Anna and I were sitting in a chic little winebar in Queens sipping adorably-pink glasses of rosé when she announced that she had a present for me. The present was pink, too! And it came in a case made of sensuous faux-suede!
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the bushnell administration
The First American Sex & The City Movie Review Revealed At Last!
Yesterday Jessica and I were interviewed on the subject of Carrie Bradshaw; do we like her, is she a narcissist, etc. And the utterances I found coming out of my mouth surprised me. I was, like, defending Carrie Bradshaw, holding that she was a victim of a societal self-absorption addiction that was a natural outgrowth of New York's suspended adolescence, and arguing that Sarah Jessica Parker, in all her suspended adolescent charm, had salvaged from the grim creations of Candace Bushnell — Candace Bushnell being one of those icky dogmatic narcissists who sees only hypocrisy in New Yorkers who claim to have agendas other than fame and shoes and real estate — a sort of heart. In the forgiving glow of distant drunk memory, Sex & The City was a poignant statement about the limitations of all that, a subtle expose of the atrophy that results from the neglect of the basic human need to be needed. "OMG, I'm so kind of exited to see it suddenly!" I told Jess as we walked past a billboard displaying it. So imagine my delight when today, the first ever American review of the movie appears in Anna's RSS feed! More »
sex and the shitty
Earlier: Toby Young: Sex And The City Depicts An Essentially Pre-Feminist Society
New Sex And The City Clips Leaked
Some new clips from the Sex and the City movie have leaked and — surprise! — Carrie cares way too much about money, material things and what other people think! (But we already knew that.) There aren't any real spoilers here that we didn't already know (Carrie and Big are engaged; they're moving in together; Jennifer Hudson can't act her way out of a Birkin bag), although Samantha is curiously absent from all the scenes. What we do learn from these clips is just how much Carrie makes us cringe — from clits to toes — and how we still can't wait to see this stupid fucking movie.Earlier: Toby Young: Sex And The City Depicts An Essentially Pre-Feminist Society
A scurrilous spoiler rumor about who dies in the Sex & The City movie is trickling out, and yesterday it made its midnight ride through our inbox. Read the (somewhat Season 2-esque) tip we by clicking the pic. If true, it would be by far the most wrenching made-up tragedy ever to visit the misfortune-plagued fake lives of those Joads of the millennial New York City man famine, the Sex & The City cast.
bobos in paradise
Sarah Jessica Parker Doesn't Care About Money, Except When She Does
I predict that a lot of people are going to pillory Sarah Jessica Parker for her comments in this week's New York magazine cover story, "Sarah Jessica Parker Would Like a Few Words With Carrie Bradshaw." The crux of the piece is Parker's apparent life of contradictions: she hates things that are "vulgar" and yet she spent years playing a freewheeling sex columnist (albeit one who never took her bra off); she helped usher in a Cosmo-drinking Manolo-clad, expensive-cupcake-eating era in New York, but laments the loss of the gritty, unsanitized Manhattan that existed when she moved here in 1976. Writer Emily Nussbaum paints these contradictions as intrinsic to Parker's charming personality, though I think it will be easy for others to see the internal conflicts as hypocrisy. Thing of it is that Parker is just like every other urban bobo, who partially misses the creative poverty of her youth but mostly likes the arugula at the now-conveniently located Whole Foods. And I don't fault her for it. More »
the bushnell administration
Maybe It's Time To Stop Hating On America's Scary Sadshaws
When I began conceiving of Jezebel, one of the first "Don'ts" on my list concerned one Julia Allison, sex columnist, media figure and self-promoter extraordinaire. Not only was Julia amply covered by Jezebel's big brother site Gawker, to me, she represented everything that was wrong with young women in the 00's. Called "Scary Sadshaws" by former Gawker editor Emily Gould, these ladies worship at the altar of Manolo Blahnik, regard writer Candace Bushnell as some sort of saint, and, of course, take instruction from a certain HBO series that bore no similarity to how life is lived by the majority of single women. Scary Sadshaws are NYC's version of the stars of Girls Gone Wild, except that Patrick McMullan is their Joe Francis, and they substitute luxury goods for bare breasts. In my mind, they were not only ruining New York, but ruining what it means to be a serious young woman with ambition in the turn-of-the-century America. They were ruining everything for all of us. More »
Sex And The Shitty
Mere weeks before the debut of the hotly anticipated Sex and the City movie, Business Week blogger Lindsey Gerdes is wondering if the Carrie Bradshaw brand of empowerment gives feminism a bad name. Gerdes romanticized the lives of Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha when she was in college, but once she was in the real workaday world, she realized that there were much more suitable role models. "The bottom line," Gerdes writes. "If you were going to choose a gender-specific role model, why one of these four cardboard characters? As American women have won more and more rights, the feminist movement has had the luxury of branching off in many, even contradictory, directions. Feminist icons run the gamut from activist Gloria Steinem to porn star Jenna Jamison...not to mention our first viable female Presidential candidate in Hillary Clinton." [Business Week]
the bushnell administration
In Defense Of Sex And The City
Michael Patrick King, the author and producer of myriad Sex and the City episodes and the writer and director of the forthcoming SatC movie, was interviewed in the April issue of W. The article begins thusly: "It's been said that New York was so essential to Sex and the City that it functioned as the HBO megahit's fifth lead character." And particularly in show's first season, Carrie, Miranda Samantha and Charlotte had the patina of real New Yorkers: Carrie was constantly broke; Miranda ate lunch from dubious-looking deli salad bars and bought cereal at the bodega; Samantha had serious roots and a cheesy haircut; Charlotte went to low-rent fortune tellers in the Bronx. Superficially, they had the trappings of actual people who live in actual New York, but over the years, the glamorous Manolos-and-Cosmo elements took precedence. Which is precisely the problem with the current stable of SatC wannabes, Lipstick Jungle and Cashmere Mafia; the lack of depth in the appearance and activities of their characters reveals the lack of depth in their construction. More »
clips
Before Sex & The City, Talking About Sex Was Practically Illegal
Candace Bushnell went on the Today show this morning to self-aggrandize in her affected accent and promote her new show Lipstick Jungle. The show, she claims, is all about balancing your career with your family and sense of "morality." As someone whose life would appear to be devoid of the latter two ingredients — not to mention, someone whose career has consisted entirely of writing about herself and her friends and tell me why that gets to constitute a "career" again? — it was a little annoying. But not as annoying as when she said that women "weren't allowed to talk about sex" before Sex & The City. Wow, Candace, we never thought of you as the rightful heir to Erica Jong before! But thanks for adding to the already lengthy list of absurd notions for which the world has you to thank!!
critical mass
