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

Diane von Furstenberg, Nicole Miller (3 mentions), Coke, Marquee, Tiffany, Cain, Budwieser, Skype, Chanel, Tenjune, Matsuri, Pink Elephant (3 mentions), Pastis, Cipriani, Le Bilboquet, Mediterraneo, 1 Oak, Hotel Gansevoort, Matsuri, Lazaro

See if you can figure out which is the name of her dog!

And see, see how happy the last page is, rid of all those pointless proper nouns? Awwwwwwwwwww, puke.

I Was Jilted Like A Real-Life Carrie Bradshaw [Page Six Magazine]
Related: Buy This Harvard-Free Keith Gessen Book And Win The Culture War! [Gawker]
Earlier: Will Sex & The City Make You A Communist?

The characters in Friends are poorer, but their lifestyle is healthier and closer to that of me and my friends." As for herself, Li Yuan ends her column on an "empowering" note that is Carrie-esque in its hollowness:

The city hasn't let me down. In my five years living here, I've worked very hard, made mistakes and had a few sleepless nights. But I've also met many fascinating people, made a few great friends, have a job I like a lot and feel great about myself.

I can't afford Manolo Blahniks but I do have many pairs of shoes — too many for anybody visiting my small Brooklyn apartment. I don't feel the pressures to settle down, get married and have kids that a woman in her mid-30s would face in China. Nobody has told me — yet — that I'm weird. Above all, I don't feel guilty about enjoying my life. I'm proud of my choices, just like the characters in the show are.

Which is, you know, just great, Li Yuan, but I couldn't help but WONDER if maybe, speaking Chinese and all, you might have been able track down one of those rare transplants who does feel a little bit let-down, like one of the guys working 14 hour days and living in 6 bedroom apartment that used to be a 2 bedroom apartment after enduring months-long trips in container ships like all the characters in that story about Chinatown in Sunday's Times:

The journey that brought Mr. Zheng to Forsyth Street from Fujian Province in southern China began in 1991 on a fishing boat. The boat broke down in what he called “the sea of nowhere,” and the passengers were near death from starvation when they were rescued by another boat. Eventually they made their way to Guatemala. On his arrival in New York the following spring, Mr. Zheng moved into a one-bedroom apartment on East Broadway that was already occupied by 10 other men.

Seventeen years later, Zheng's doing okay for himself, but poverty among Chinese immigrants in the neighborhood has actually gotten worse.

Lin Ah-jiao, a pixielike 43-year-old from Fujian, sells tickets for a company called New Today’s Bus. She works 13 out of every 14 days, often from 10 in the morning until 11 at night. “Chinese people work very hard,” she said proudly. “Every day, working.”
…
Her family’s bedroom is dominated by a bunk bed that her husband built from scraps of wood. She and her husband share the bottom bunk; their daughter, 21, sleeps on top. Because there are no closets, the space beneath the bottom bunk is packed tight with bunches of clothes, and bulky plastic shopping bags hang from nails on the wall.

In the kitchen, a tight passageway with grease-spattered walls, a gold-and-red paper decoration bears the saying, “A good family brings in money.” Scrawled in pencil on the same wall are hundreds of tiny Chinese characters.

“My uncle likes to write poetry when he gets drunk,” Ms. Lin explained one day through an interpreter. Most of the poems, she said, were about drunkenness, though at least one of them was not. She read a few lines: “In the morning I go to the restaurant to work. I come back to my bed in the evening. My sweet dream has come true: I have turned into a ghost.”

Yeah, that guy doesn't mess with Cosmos.

Chinese Views Of 'Sex & The City' [WSJ]
Dreams And Desperation On Forsyth Street [NYT]

According to Kristin Davis, the director's instructions were to "think that's so sexy."

And I said, "No, listen, man, I've been playing Charlotte for awhile, and she would not think that's sexy. You have to trust me."

Oh good grief. Anyway, that's about all I gleaned from this story, except that the liquefy filter hasn't gone out of style and yes I'm talking to whoever touched up Miranda:

Here's the whole spread:

Also, Marie Claire shot four separate covers for this issue: bet you can't guess which one I found at my local newsstand! But as a consolation prize for those who can't be bothered to collect them all they give you four cover-like pages anyway, which brings me to:

I'm sorry, what the fuck does that even mean? Oh, whatever.

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.

•A recession is on; the specter of divorce is suddenly omnipresent. A prominent divorce attorney reports an uptick in her business on the basis of men worried their shrinking net worths will inspire their wives to leave them. “I literally had to sit there and tell him that he had to tell his wife that she had to stop spending,” she told one client. “He was actually scared she would leave him because their financial situation changed so drastically."

•Wealth (and wedded bliss) are useless if no one else is made to feel inferior in their presence. As a source of happiness, wealth, for one, is crap — just ask a rich person! As Carrie tells Miranda when she expresses reservations about her upcoming nuptials: "Can't you feel what I want you to feel for a second? Jealous?" The Times relates the story of a woman who sells $2 million in diamonds, because her friends wouldn’t notice that they were gone. "If I sold my Bentley or my important art, they would notice,’ ” she said. (In other words, now may be a good time to get in on a used engagement ring!)

•Following a worthy attempt by famous divorce attorney Raoul Felder to convert some of Tricia Walsh-Smith's capacity to withstand dignity ruin into currency, Tricia Walsh-Smith is in debt to Felder. She reports going to sleep every night feeling as though she's about to hurl.
•I felt like I was going to hurl throughout the entire SATC movie. Where do I live? How did I land here? I could barely walk up the escalator. Then I lit a cigarette, and looked at Dodai, who looked equally horrified. I decided it was satire. Thank the void for girlfriends!

The YouTube Divorcee [NY Mag]
It's Not So Easy Being Less Rich [NY Times]

To be honest, I was a fan of the TV show when it first aired. A female writer living in New York and dealing with messy relationships? Of course I could relate. Of course I was attracted to the glitter, the nightlife, the search for love and the dating psychodramas. And what the show did really well was to tell those modern urban love legends: The Guy With The Funky Spunk, The Guy Who Died Before The Second Date, The Time The Writer Fell On The Runway, The Time Your Friend Had A Brazilian Lesbian Lover For Like A Week. But the movie made me want to cut myself. It was a showcase for how hollow and soulless these characters were. Do they have hobbies, aside from shopping? Interests? Do they read anything beyond Page Six? They are just rich bitches who don't even have the decency to be over-the-top, and therefore amusing, like Absolutely Fabulous. I was seriously offended when Charlotte wouldn't eat anything except packaged chocolate pudding on their trip because "It's Mexico." I was also offended by Miranda's rudeness to her nanny and Samantha's "Honey, we can pay people to do the stuff we don't want to do" attitude. Then it dawned on me: These women are assholes.

Unlike many people who live here, I actually grew up in New York. I used to roll my eyes at the women wobbling on heels as they navigated the litter of soda cans and condoms on downtown streets. Real New York women need to be mobile. Real New York women never know when they might have to run for their lives. So when HBO first started airing Sex And The City, it was a given that the characters were ridiculous — their problems, however, were entertaining. Much like a Woody Allen movie, the New York pictured was very specific: Mostly white and subway-free, with oodles of money on display. While the SATC TV show often presented silly conundrums easily solved and then post-mortemed over cocktails; SATC the movie insists that the audience empathize with these fools. Carrie cares more about herself and her elaborate gown than her groom, and we're supposed to feel sorry for her? I always thought Big was a smug cad who dyed his gray hair black, so I didn't care if she ended up with him or not. Samantha breaks up with Smith by saying "I love you, but I love me more," and that's supposed to be empowering? Is getting a lapdog really a happy ending for a 50-year-old? I found myself hating every single one of them: Idiotic, superficial Carrie; stuck-up, naggy perfectionist Charlotte; cold, ruthless Miranda and bitter, narcissisitic Samantha. The worst part is that these women have spawned a new generation of materialistic empty-headed women: When Carrie thanks Jennifer Hudson's character, Louise (rightfully called a magical negro by Moe's sister) for bringing her back to life, Louise replies, "And you bought me my first Louise[sic] Vuitton." Because the only thing more important than soul-searching is having a thousand-dollar bag that will be out of style in three to six months. (Marketing Daily claims that the "feel-good" movie will get women shopping; but wasn't the message that "stuff" is not as important as relationships?" You know, the last line of the film: "Love, the one label that never goes out of style.") We're supposed to think Louise is smart because she cleans up Carrie's website, something every fifth grader in America can do these days.

Still, the movie gave women a chance to "remember the sisterhood" and bond, maybe because relationships between women is an under-explored topic in Hollywood. We need another superhero like we need a hole in the head, but those flicks keep on coming. Yet obviously movies like SATC, Juno, The Devil Wears Prada and Baby Mama prove that women are interested in movies about women (and pregnancy need not always be at the core). It also gave us a chance to read the many horribly sexist reviews ("Parker is an actress who puts the horse in clothes horse," Dominic Rushe wrote for the Times Of London) and to think about what we' d really like to see in a movie about modern women: Ethnic diversity, genuine soul-searching, "Big" questions — not about men, but about women. About our changing role in society, about our continued second-class citizen status. About the way we deal with each other. About the tough choices we have to make every single day. Especially this year, election year, when the focus on looks, cosmetics and cleavage became politically correct.

In the end, while it's embarrassing that SATC: The Movie is the woman-centric sensation of the summer and will go down in history for its record-breaking weekend box office, it probably will not stand the test of time and become a classic, like, say, The Women, All About Eve, Breakfast At Tiffany's, La Femme Nikita, Alien or even Clueless or Mean Girls. Which is fine with me: I'd rather forget all about it.

'Sex and the City' Opens Strong [Wall Street Journal]
'Sex and the City' Is No. 1 At Box Office [LA Times]
'Sex/City' Poised To Become Era's 'Feel-Good' Movie [Marketing Daily]
Aren't you just sick of Sex and the City? [Times Of London]

Related: Will Sex & The City Make You Into A Communist?

Christina Tkacik
to Maureen Tkacik
date Fri, May 30, 2008 at 4:14 AM
subject satc movie was RIDICULOUS
mailed-by gmail.com

hide details 4:14 AM (12 hours ago)

Reply

but i saw it so you dont have to!

The labouring population therefore produces, along with the
accumulation of capital produced by it, the means by which itself is
made superfluous…"
(Capital, Volume I Section 3)

I would quote a longer excerpt here but if Marx were actually a
quotable sort of guy then right-thinking people would actually have
listened to him and the Sex and the City Film would never have
happened. Or, as Marx would say, the conditions that produced the
world of the Sex and the City film would never have been brought into
existence.

While Marxist critiques surely have only begun to scratch the surface
of this film (and will write untold unread tomes in years to come
regarding the significance of the choice of Vivienne Westwood to
design Carrie's wedding dress)… I will here provide a brief analysis
of key elements of the film.

a) The characters are slaves to their own fetishization of
commodities. This fetishization is responsible for the failure of
Carrie's wedding to Big. Dressed in their billowing designer costumes
like unwitting circus clowns, she and her friends fuss around the
limousine to carry Carrie to her wedding. "It's like trying to push a
cream-puff through a keyhole," comments the token homosexual figure
(who serves as the Jester) regarding the difficulty of fitting
Carrie's extravagant Vivienne Westwood gown within the limousine.
Here, Carrie is quite literally overwhelmed by her own materialism.
She does not realize that the Groom, the key component to her Wedding
(the church ceremony of materialism in our times) — is missing.
Castrated by materialism as he may be, Big is overwhelmed both by the
public spectacle of the Event and fear of commitment. Following the
embarrassment of the failed wedding, Carrie returns to her apartment,
where stacks of wedding gifts mock her with their now obvious
uselessness. While the irony is apparent to the viewer, Carrie is too
fatuous to pick up on it.
b) A key component of the film is the use of hired labour to address
all bourgeoisie problems: when, for example, Carrie wishes to have her
possessions from Big, but does not wish to face him in person,
Samantha comments "We can pay people to do that." These anonymous
servants — be they movers, nannies (see Magda), or the man Carrie
hires to hold the coats at Charlotte's baby shower — may be paid as
intermediaries for all human contact. Thus the wealthier characters
only further alienate themselves from one another, and become lost
within their own materialistic egos.
a. Another significant use of hired labour may be seen in Carrie's
hiring of Jennifer Hudson, Louise from St. Louis, who serves as a
Mystical Negro character representing some vaguely "alternative"
viewpoint to Carrie's New Yorker bourgeosie; this is sufficient to
satiate Carrie's shallowly "bohemian" perspective. (Bohemian only in
the modern connotations of the word, which bears little semblance to
the 'bohemians' of yore...) However, their relationship imparts no
true "change" upon Carrie, and instead only serves to further
indoctrinate the Jennifer Hudson character into the cult of the
commodity when Carrie purchases for her a louis vuitton handbag— thus
ensuring she share in future enslavement to the capitalist system
which has claimed Carrie and her "friends."
c) Samantha is the only character of the film who possesses, against
all odds, and despite her inherent materialism, a true sense of
compassion for her fellow man. She is also the only character who
claims to yearn for some sense of "meaning" in her life; unable to
find it either in her romantic relationship with a television star or
the new age literature she reads, her only recourse is to purchase a
dog, whose tendency to "hump" inanimate objects Samantha relates to on
a level impossible with her "friends". At the end of the film, she
naturally turns away from her vapid circle to her dog, as well as to
binge-eating. However, she herself remains entrenched within the
capitalistic system and cannot bring herself to fully escape its iron
jaws.

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)

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!

We marveled over its size and heft and giggled before I discreetly slipped it into my purse. On my way home, I had to wonder. Would I be able to handle it — all of it? I only had a few days, and it was so, so... BIG.

As you can tell, my brain has already been warped by this project. But over the next few days, I'll be soaking up all the pontification, all the scary reverse-aging, all the 90s eye makeup mysteries, all the saxophone solos ... God, the saxophone solos alone are going to drive me insane and I'm only on episode 2 ("Models and Mortals")!! What will happen to my brain? Well, I'll be keeping you updated. As a certain cigar-smoking, receding-hairlined lothario says in episode one, "What are you waiting for? Get in!"

Earlier: Maybe It's Time To Stop Hating On America's Scary Sadshaws

And...yeah I'm sorta over it.

Without giving away too much regarding the story, one theme explores the boundaries of forgiveness — a touch ironic for a romantic comedy that commits the near-irredeemable sin of stretching to nearly 2 ½ hours....Those arcs, however, ultimately prove less satisfying than the simplest scenes, such as the four getting loopy on champagne together.

Sex & The City Review [Variety]
How I See Carrie [EW]
Related: Because No Man Should Feel The Agony Of This Film [Chicago Tribune]

Earlier: Toby Young: Sex And The City Depicts An Essentially Pre-Feminist Society

Ladies,

The sexy fuck head I hook up with who happens to work in the movie industry got word today of who dies in the SatC movie.....

....I don't have any details on how or when or how he even KNOWS but I'm trusting it to be true and I wanted to pass the news along just in case ya'll can pull some research together and get the facts.

Cover your eyes:

Big dies. Big dies of cancer. Probably, from all the cigars.

Fuck head just called me, I picked up the phone, and he spat out the details and hung up. I don't think I'm going to fuck him anymore.

There you go. The secret of the year....I mean, it was kind of obvi, but whatevs.

Ok bye!

The one thing I do fault her for is the creation of SJP the brand. New York's Nussbaum touches on the issue of Parker-the-brand with her subject — Parker says she was reluctant to do commercials because she found it, in her favored parlance, vulgar, but eventually did it because someone whom she respected told her it was okay. I mean, she probably did it because Garnier offered her some astronomical sum for one day of work and that shit is impossible to turn down — even for someone who purports to not care about money. If Parker really didn't care about money, she wouldn't do those ads. As executive producer of Sex and the City, there's no way she didn't make tens of millions of dollars. Maybe she did those ads, and her Bitten line for Steve and Barry's, so she'd stay in the public consciousness once Sex and the City was over. And that's a fine reason! But her whole "I'm really above this vulgar advertising" schtick is so tiring. She even calls her choices "unconsciously conscious." She even claims that Carrie never cared about Big's money!!!! I mean, come on. Mr. Big's alpha-male, captain of industry thing was a huge part of Carrie's attraction to him.

Nussbaum writes that "Parker's solution is to be almost religiously involved in product development, creating her own perfumes and insisting on a democratic ethic for her clothing line, which runs up to size 22, 'so I don't feel it's vulgar. So I don't feel it's just arbitrary or mercenary.'" But ultimately it is mercenary. If only she would own up to it.

Sarah Jessica Parker Would Like a Few Words With Carrie Bradshaw [New York]

Earlier: Sarah Jessica Parker Not Afraid To Equate Celebrity Endorsement Deals With Rocket Science

Related: 'Sex And The City: The Movie' Proves That A Great Reunion Is Possible [NYDN]

The edict against Julia was lifted once — in a stunt carried out during New York Fashion Week last September — but for the most part, no mention of her was made. Readers (most of them, no doubt, New Yorkers) wrote in unsolicited after the blog launched to request that we not mention her, which only served to underscore that I'd made the right decision in keeping her off our roster of blog-worthy media and cultural personalities. Except when I spotted her and her (admittedly adorable) white dog from afar at some media clusterfuck, in my mind, it was (almost) as if she didn't exist.

The thing is, Julia Allison and her sisters in conspicuous consumption and shameless self-promotion do exist, and it's getting harder and harder to ignore them. Their latest assault came via the NY Times' "City" section, which devoted some 2,000-plus words (and multiple four-color photographs) to Julia in a piece titled "Channeling Carrie" yesterday. My reaction to the piece was not unlike the expression shown on a woman shown standing behind Julia in a photograph taken at her 27th birthday party in NYC's West Village: a mixture of curiosity, uncertainty, discomfort and mild disgust. (Or maybe I'm just projecting.)

In the article, Julia practically crowns herself the new queen of New York narcissism: "If Carrie Bradshaw were coming to New York today," the Times quotes her as saying, "she would be me." To a Times reporter interviewing her on video for an accompanying web feature, she strikes a more humble note, explaining that being "compared to a character who has inspired a lot of women by opening herself up and questioning the issues that concern not just single people in their twenties and thirties but of all ages, that's a compliment."

Maybe so, but here's the question that no one seems to be asking regarding both Sex and the City and the Scary Sadshaws it has spawned: What important issues did the series identify and illuminate? What barriers did it break? What did the characters ("Carrie & Company") ever do for anyone outside of themselves? What, praytell, was so damn groundbreaking about a group of narcissistic rich white women with a love of shopping and gossiping about their sex lives? (Despite what Candace Bushnell thinks, the themes of no-strings-attached sex, female friendship, conspicuous consumption and social-climbing had been amply investigated long before she came on the scene.)

I'm willing to admit that it's possible the problem isn't with the Scary Sadshaws but with me — perhaps, as Julia asserts, I can aspire to be both "serious and thoughtful" while also being "shallow and frivolous", although I don't see how I'd have the time — so last night, I went online and spent $300 on a box-set of every episode of Sex and the City ever produced. (It comes in a suede cover in a hue of hot pink not unlike the plastic case covering Julia's white MacBook.) I've decided to watch all 94 episodes between now and the premiere of the Sex and the City movie on May 30 — around 12 episodes a week — in the hopes that I can embrace my inner Carrie Bradshaw and figure out what all the fuss is about (perhaps I'll even learn to like pink!). At the very least, the next time I see Julia, we'll have something to talk about...although Candace Bushnell can still kiss my middle-income black ass.

Channeling Carrie [NY Times]
Web And the Single Girl [NY Times]

Earlier: Before Sex & The City, Talking About Sex Was Practically Illegal
Julia Allison Asks: What About Fashion Makes You Want To Hurl?

All the women in Jungle and Mafia are high-powered to the point of absurdity. They're all uber-wealthy, they're all at the tippy-top of their fields. They have assistants to wait on them and they seem fairly unencumbered by the basic functions that weigh the rest of us all down. SatC was built around the little things — they constructed an entire episode around Carrie farting. But in the few glimpses of Jungle and Mafia that I've seen, the women are portrayed in the broadest strokes possible. Say what you will about Sex and the City, but those women, as Michael Patrick King says in the interview with W, "were always alive for me."

It's not really the series' fault that legions of superficial women embraced only the basest parts of the show — the pink drinks, the rich men, the heels worth one month's rent — and ignored its soul, which was marked by clever observations and often-relatable storylines. I'm not claiming that SaTC was Hamlet, but I do think it was something special, and that's why the movie is so hotly anticipated. "The real pressure, for me, is I have these four characters that people care about and know so well," King tells W. "There's a lot of expectation about what these women should be doing." As long as you focus on keeping it real, Mr. King, you're all right with me.

Bed Fellow [W]

Related: Extended Sex And The City Trailer: Carrie Gets Jilted! (LOL)
OMG! It's The Sex And The City Movie Trailer!

Variety

"Lipstick Jungle" is the superior product of this winter's "career-woman pals try having it all" dramedies, but that's not an especially esteemed sorority. Like ABC's "Mafia," it's all fairly surface-oriented stuff — grappling with ruthless bosses (who, in Sands' case, always seem to know the gossip first), fending off ambitious underlings and solving other problems particular to the filthy rich, like getting kids into a prestigious private school or having the former nanny pen a tell-all book.

"Lipstick Jungle" is plodding and heavy-handed. "Cashmere Mafia" isn't much better, but it at least has a slightly lighter touch...This pilot opens with a montage of fancy footwear: four-inch pumps, leopard-print wedge boots, silver slippers. Those who love by the shoe, die by the shoe. "Lipstick Jungle" is a wooden clog of a melodrama squeezed into a flimsy, satin and marabou mule.

"Lipstick Jungle" is to "Sex and the City" what New Coke was to Coca-Cola — a brand extension best forgotten. Whereas "Sex and the City" minted a genuine, shiny, new modern heroine — the sexually active, sexually explicit but still romantic good girl — "Lipstick Jungle" is content to play dress-up with a bunch of frayed-at-the-edges paper dolls. Here's Wendy Healy (Brooke Shields), the nicest movie executive you'll ever meet (she doesn't even swear), dutifully struggling to fill her roles as deal maker, mommy, wife and BFF. Needless to say, she's on the phone a lot.

Not for a second will you believe Shields as a movie mogul, not when she fights to cast a "Galileo" film or when she tangles with a director who added a gay twist to her summer romantic comedy. Shields fares better when the stories veer to her guilt about being the family breadwinner.

It's nearly a certainty that someone will call "Lipstick Jungle," NBC's new drama series about sensual and successful women, a "guilty pleasure," but it's really more of a guilty horror. You feel you're not watching a show so much as flipping through a catalogue of gaudy and pricey luxuries — glittery junk that nobody needs — and being expected to drool on cue.

Just imagine the anti-Hillary forces condemning these two network shows about type-A female personalities, as if they had anything to do with serious achievers. The assertive-to-the point-of-aggressive woman is getting special scrutiny this year. Whether they're sparring over a lover, a promotion or a condo, women can be sharks. At least that's the vision of successful cosmopolitan women offered by a certain strain of TV series suddenly in abundance. Don't bother to call it post-feminist or third-wave feminist, just call it tacky soap opera.

Lipstick Jungle Review [Variety]
Shoe-Savvy Friends Against the City [New York Times]
Lipstick Jungle Review [Los Angeles Times]
Glossy 'Lipstick Jungle' Smacks Of 'Sex' [Boston Herald]
'Lipstick Jungle': NBC's Thick Application of Gloss [Washington Post]
'Lipstick' Is Just Another Shade Of Tacky [Seattle Post Intelligencer]

Earlier: Could Lipstick Jungle Be A Show You Actually Watch?
Critics Say Cashmere Mafia Has Polyester Quality

So anyway: we fully intended to feel the same way about Lipstick Jungle, the Candace Bushnell project that will premiere next week to compete with Cashmere Mafia viewers, the show that tore apart the lucrative friendship of Bushnell and Darren Star. I mean, seriously: Lipstick Jungle: if there is a title more obnoxious, more shamelessly pandering to the sick set of values perpetuated by Sex & The City than Cashmere Mafia, that would be it, right? But according to a story in today's New York Observer — the newspaper that started it all by printing Bushnell's wretched columns every week! — there may be a reason to give Lipstick Jungle a chance. Specifically, an executive producer and director who intends to make it somehow palatable to dudes, thirtysomething star Timothy Busfield:

"I really wanted this show to be about the little problems," he said. "I do not like necessarily, even in our show, when we get too hijinks-orientated. Too high profile. I'd love the show to be, at its core, about the difficulty of the working mom, a leader in the workplace, who still is a mom and wife who provides for her husband and kids. My dream moment is to see Brooke come home after an enormously long day and have to load the dishwasher. Those little problems—not the business going under, or flying to Scotland to get J.K. Rowling ... That stuff? Great, we have it. But the matters of self-doubt and overcoming self-doubt, that is what the show is about."
Mr. Busfield, who was raised by a single mom, has encouraged the cast to bring their kids to the set (Ms. Raver has a 5-year-old son and 3-month-old baby) in the name of creating a happy work environment. "If Kim breaks to nurse, no one is allowed to make her feel bad or rush," said Mr. Busfield. "This is a show when women can bring their kids. I don't expect you to leave them at home, I'll wait for you to finish pumping if you need to."
He also expects the show to offer sympathetic and complex male characters. "I felt the men were a little two-dimensional on Sex and The City," said Mr. Busfield, adding, "I think men's reaction to Sex and The City is like women's reaction to The Three Stooges.
"I want the male audience," he continued. "I want them to think, What can I do better?" He laughed. "They laugh, but the actresses know I want to shoot them like John Wayne. They're all John Wayne to me. Shoot the costumes, get the moments, let me see the spurs."

But shit, people, there's a writer's strike on. What else are you going to watch, Millionaire Matchmaker?

Okay, seriously, Millionaire Matchmaker is kind of awesome, but still.

Carrie's Sister [New York Observer]

Sex and the City felt like New York. Its characters were ironic, self-deprecating, and funny... Watching it made me think about an early Sex and the City episode in which Miranda realizes that she's a smart-lady beard for a serial modelizer, trotted out to assure his friends he's not shallow. She's invited to dinner parties and ditched the second Lotus opens. It was about the push and pull between beauty and brains, and a city that values both but sometimes gets confused.

See, I would interpret that situation to not really be about "push and pull" or any sort of "conflict" in values whatsoever, because there's sort of a common theme running through: "appearances", specifically how "they're all that matters in this town." And yeah, that's not totally true, because money also matters, as evidenced from the aforementioned Darren Star-Candace Bushnell feud (and also: Candace Bushnell's entire body of work) but if you think brains really have a place here, Amy, ummmmm, why do you and Robin Givhan consistently seem to be lone two ladies in town capable of intelligently writing about the fashion industry?

Sex & the City Creator Darren Star Returns With Cashmere Mafia [New York]

"I've Had It Goin On Since Before You Were In GrrAnimals!" [5 Resolutions, via YouTube]
Earlier: Bea Arthur And Rock Hudson Gaily Sing About Drugs
Bea Arthur: Golden Bitch

Major brands and designers around the world spent months jockeying for prominent placement on this high-profile movie runway. Money was offered, calls made, favours called in and publicists begged to get their brands on the backs of this glamorous quartet of women.

Brand strategist agencies work as corporate matchmakers and are involved in the movie-making process from the very beginning. They are given advance copies of scripts in order to analyse whether there are opportunities for a partnership, giving money to the studio in exchange for promotion.

Forget the fact that the large majority of writers can't afford head-to-toe designer wardrobes (trust us on this one), Carrie Bradshaw's wardrobe is unrealistic because it isn't even comprised of what a writer would want to wear even if she could afford to. But hell, who cares? After all, what is narrative integrity compared to cold, hard cash?

Cash and Carrie: How Top Designers Have Spent Millions To Get Their Outfits in the SATC Movie [Daily Mail]

Earlier: OMG It's The Sex And The City Movie Trailer
Patricia Field + Barbie = A Drag Queen's Wet Dream

With its rude, slutty and unapologetic programming, Oxygen is clearly Samantha. Strippers fellating beer bottles, plastic surgery advocating Janice Dickinson and her modeling agency, and re-runs of Absolutely Fabulous just scream Samantha with their combination of glitter, foul mouths and trash. (Remember when Carrie caught Samantha blowing the UPS guy? Total Oxygen material.)

Wedding-obsessed WE: Women's Entertainment is Charlotte. WE has four shows devoted to the wedding-industrial complex: Bridezillas, Platinum Weddings, My Big, Fat Fabulous Wedding, and Rich Bride, Poor Bride. [Jesus. -Ed.] WE also reflects Charlotte's overwhelming sense of entitlement (of course she deserved a multimillion dollar Park Avenue apartment as compensation for a failed marriage!). Of WE's newest offering, Party Mama$, Patterson opines, the level of entitlement has "previously [been] seen only on MTV's My Super Sweet 16".

Finally, Lifetime, the old guard of women's television channels, is Carrie. Lifetime has a serious side, like Carrie, with its made-for-TV movies about "terminal diseases and/or children in peril." But, as Patterson says, Lifetime is "quaint and mildly daffy," with its Will & Grace reruns and embrace of psychics. Just like Carrie, who enjoys a "mildly daffy" pun, loves hanging out with her main gay Stanford, and is always wearing those mystical head wraps!

But whither Miranda? Where's the kind of judgmental, career woman-oriented programming? I guess Star Jones does have that show on Court TV, and Miranda does say the phrase "I'm a lawyer," at least once per episode, but it's not really a perfect match. Television executives take note! A major hole in lady viewing must be filled post-haste!

Who's the Fairest of Them All?: A comparison of all of the women's television network [Slate]

Earlier: Bad Girls Club: Stripper Mom and Porn Star Have Threesome With Dude

"That is so sad. You won't like it when you get there."

"Get off our planet."

Then he'd go and smoke a cigar and sulk, or go to the store again with Mr. Marvelous.

In the middle of July:

"Is there somebody else?"

"This is not about anyone else. This is about us."

"That's not answering the question."

"This is about us."

"It's a yes or no question. Is there somebody else?"

"No."

"Liar. You've been coached, haven't you?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Someone's been coaching you on what to say."

"This is about us. Not about anyone else."

"See? There you go again."

"Why do you have to make this harder?"

"I'm not making it harder. I have to get a cigarette."

"I have to go to sleep. Why won't you let me sleep?"

"You don't deserve to sleep."

"I haven't done anything wrong."

"You haven't done anything right, either. I want to get to the bottom of this coaching business."

"What are you talking about?"

"Someone's been telling you what to say. It's an old shrink trick. When you're in a difficult situation, you keep repeating the same phrase over and over again. That way, you can't have a conversation."

One hour later:

"What are you doing? Who are you seeing? What time are you getting home?"

"Early. I'm getting home early."

"You're out of control."

"I am not. I'm home at 11."

"Don't lie to me."

"Don't lie to me."

"I could have you followed. How do you know that I'm not already having you followed? I'm rich enough to have you followed."

This was several weeks after Carrie had begged to be taken to a mental institution.

And Carrie keeps repeating to herself, "Thank you for making Mr. Big a nicer guy," as if she totally knows her story is going to be adapted into a colossal television franchise in which Mr. Big will be played as a charmingly sentimental, if stubbornly emotionally unavailable, man-about town who eventually comes to his senses and makes way for happily ever after.

Which brings us to the moral of the story: anyone who lives her real life as if she is a character in Sex & The City should be institutionalized. Well, duh! But still.

Goodbye, Mr. Big [New York Observer]

James and Winnie agree on just about everything. They have definite opinions. "There's something wrong with people who don't have informed opinions about things," Winnie said to James, when they met for the first time, at a party in an apartment on the Upper West Side. Everyone at the party was "in publishing" and under 35. Most of the women (like Winnie), were working at women's magazines (something Winnie never talks about now)...

Here are a few of the things Winnie and James agree on: They hate anyone who isn't like them. They hate anyone who is wealthy and gets press. They hate trendy people and things (but James just bought a pair of Dakota Smith sunglasses, and they drive a BMW). They hate anyone who has appeared on TV, with the exception of Michael Kinsley and Ted Koppel (everyone else is a "lightweight").

They believe in the poor. (They do not know anyone who is poor, except their Jamaican nanny, who is not exactly poor.) They believe in black writers. (They know two, and Winnie is working on becoming friends with a third—whom she met at a convention.) They hate music. They think fashion is silly (but secretly identify with the people in Dewar's ads). They believe in women writers (as long as the women do not become too successful or get too much attention or write about things the Diekes do not approve of, like sex—unless it's lesbian sex).

James says he is a feminist, but always puts down women who are not like Winnie (including her sister). They put down women who do not have children. Who are not married. Winnie gets sick at the sight of a woman she considers a slut, a gold digger, a whore.

Okay, anyway, James wants to do Winnie's dilettante sister because she has implants, and the whole thing is "To Be Continued," and yeah they're pretentious and don't drink enough but they are definitely the most finely-drawn and least reprehensible people ever to appear in one of her columns. I mean, I know couples like this; everyone in New York knows couples like this although they're a dying breed, and yes, they can be tiresome but Jesus Christ they are sooooooooo highly preferable to the Bitchlorette publicist Scoop-shopping Scary Sadshaw crap Candace Bushnell ushered in.

Which is, obviously, why Her Heinousness decided to render them extinct.

And to think this whole "New Girl Order" thing was just a fluke enabled by strong actresses and good writers with a backdrop of a booming economy and post-Starr Report era of sexual frankness!

Yeah, she must die.

Sex Lives Of Serious Journalists [Observer]

Me: So, what do you think about this?
Me at 17: Um, do you remember that time Sister Elizabeth made you write that essay taking a side as to whether Gregor in The Metamorphosis actually turned into a bug, or whether he was just suffering from some mental illness?
Me: Is that a trick question?
Me at 17: Exactly!
Me: Wait, what? I've killed a lot of brain cells since them.
Me at 17: God that's so lame.
Me: Fuck you.
Me at 17: Well anyway, I wrote this essay about Gregor and was like, "Ummmm, if the whole point of the story is that it's a, like, allegory about alienation, than who the fuck cares if he turns into a bug or just goes insane? I mean, the point is no one cares, right? Why the fuck are you asking me to busy my pretty little head with your completely pointless question?
Me: So, like,you think Candace Bushnell is up there with Kafka? Or reading these columns is profoundly alienating? Or what?
Me at 17: Well I was going to say the whole exercise is pointless, but actually I also think whoever wrote this probably has a mental illness. I mean, check out this excerpt:

"You don't feel much of anything, do you?"

"No," she said. She shrugged. "Guys don't stick around. So why not beat men at their own game? Use them. I'm a feminist, Zack," she said, which somehow made her feel better.

"Oh, the modern woman speaks," Zack said. "How old are you?"

"Twenty-eight."

"You look older," he said, and laughed. "You use men, but you yourself are totally useless. You think your views are revolutionary, but they're not.