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]