Why is Carrie Bradshaw (TV version) a hero for women?
// February 28th, 2009 // Comments Off // humour
When I was in Hong Kong, I bought the book “Sex and the City”. I had seen the film only a few months prior, was a big fan of the tv show and now I was ready to embark on the centre from which it all came. As I read the book, I thought – this woman is almost like a masochist. But I empathised with her. I related to her. Candace Bushnell made her alter ego feel like another person – one who seemed to be on the look for someone who would love her just the way she is, and got badly hurt along the way.
The television show lost the reality of this toward the end – I’m almost surprised that people were saddened when it was announced the show was finishing when it was so popular. To be honest, it began to border on “Fantasy” rather than the sexy, comedic tragedy of the earlier seasons.
Then there was the movie – and while die hards wanted to believe it was the best thing they had ever seen, I just kept imagining that dead, beaten horse. How could I empathise with a 40 something woman who finally decides to marry a man she’s been on and off with for 10 years? Watching the film was like watching a catatonic woman dressed in Dior – looks fabulous, but there is a whole heap of mess going on behind those eyes. So basically, what I am trying to say is – it was shit.
I liked Sex and the City because it seemed so normal – finally there was a show on tv that had women who (for the most part) talked the way normal women talk. It tried to break down those double standards that said women enjoy having sex too. And it’s got it’s too-funny parts – like when Samantha was trying to explain what exactly tea-bagging was, or the guy who fucked Carrie like a jack hammer, or when Charlotte dated “Mr Pussy”, even when Miranda faked every single orgasm she had with her lover at the time.
But as time went on, you think to yourself “I hope single women are not aspiring to be Carrie Bradshaw.” Sure, she has a shoe closet to die for, some awesome clothes and a job that everyone wishes they had – writing a column for a newspaper that takes up 3 hours of your week, leaving you enough time to spend your insane salary on shoes, lunches and clothes. But she’s emotionally retarded – she believes in a fairytale of the perfect man rescuing her from her life of singledom which she continues to say is “fabulous” but deep down in side knows that she doesn’t want to be alone forever. Who does? But her unrealistic view of relationships forces her to run away, or create problems so that eventually, whatever relationship she is in just crumbles.
I enjoyed being single, I thought it was awesome to do whatever I wanted with no one to answer to, not having to worry about someone else. And I could understand Carrie’s emotional retardedness when I started dating my boyfriend – but then I realised – I don’t want to be alone forever. I don’t want to be one of those women like Carrie Bradshaw (a fictional character, but you can’t say you’ve never met one like her) who just fucks off men because they’re not exactly what she is looking for and they can’t give her exactly what she needs. I don’t want to wake up one day at 38 and still be single because I blew some of the best relationships of my life.
So I was wondering what the second movie could possibly be about. I had just watched an episode earlier (for the 25th time) where Carrie runs into Aidan and his son and he says “I had a baby” and she says, with shrill and competitive excitement “I have a date!”. I mean, what the fuck? Are you 12? How is having a first date the same or even better than having a child with your wife who you just married?
I had remembered that there was talk of Aidan being in the movie, but those scenes were cut out. Then I wondered if he would be in the second film, and rejected the idea, but laughed out loud. I could just imagine, Carrie at 45, running up to Aidan with his however many children and saying something almost as retarded as “I have a date!” but she can’t since she is married. I’ll probably still see it – it’s a chick thing.
