ByJane, the Godmother of MidLifeBloggers, whacked tapped me gently with her magic wand, and I am called to do her bidding. Says she, of the film debut of Sex and the City: The Movie, “I keep coming across all these comments about how Carrie’s in her ’40s and Samantha’s in her ’50s — and I’m thinking, is 40 the new 20, 50 the new 30, and 60 the new 40?” From a midlife perspective, she challenged me, what’s up with this film?
Let me start out by declaring that I have not seen the entire television opus, and I have not yet seen the movie. (I’m still in London for another week or two, and I’m planning a Girls Night Out with my friends when I get home, complete with feather boas, little black dresses and ridiculous shoes.) But I’ve read enough reviews and discussions and seen enough trailers of the film that I am willing to take a stab at it.
For me, from the very beginning, SATC has been a complete fairy tale. These four princesses, while they do address a lot of contemporary themes (like sex and more sex), live a parallel reality from the rest of us. They have sparkling, high-end careers that they seem to have done little to merit. I’ve never bought the characterization of Miranda as a high-powered New York attorney with all that free time to breakfast and lunch at a whim and stay out until the wee hours. Eighty-hour weeks and lots of take-out (or brought-in) food is more like it. As for Samantha, believe me, speaking from experience, public relations is a lot more boring — and soul-sucking — than she makes it look. And Carrie tap-tapping away at her career on her bed in her La Perla underwear? Well, wouldn’t it be nice.
Producer Darren Star just doesn’t understand money. Forget the Manolo Blahniks and couture clothes. If he thinks those little girls can live in their New York palaces and still manage to eat, he needs to chat up Meghan Daum, another young woman who built a career out of a New Yorker essay on how completely impossible it is to live in New York. Unless they’ve got a trust fund, it can’t be done.
Despite its saucy premise, I often found SATC to be an incredibly moral show, in its own way. In an attempt to fill up their lives and their beds, one or all of those silly girls would do something incredibly stupid and repent of their foolishness, leaving Carrie to declare, in her little moral-of-the-tale ending, what they had learned, which, in the case of Samantha in particular, didn’t stay learned. I personally found her cougaring after all her young swains to be often pathetic and distasteful — and dangerous, to say the very least. AIDS and date rape, as significant as they are in contemporary culture, don’t seem to be acceptable fodder for this show.
And the relationships, particularly Carrie and Big? Please. This is no meeting of equals, despite all their carefully crafted verbal sparring. He is Big for a reason: in charge, in control, with the dominant career and point of view. She is the child-princess to his crafty king. And I also found it interesting that, despite all the sexual posing and posturing, what most of them really wanted was the traditional, monogamous happily-ever-after.
So, what would such a fairy tale as the charmed lives of our four princesses mean to Midlifers? Oh, a lot. Of any generation, we were raised, fed, weaned on and then re-fed the whole princess expectation. All those Disney films of the ’50s and ’60s, with their clear-eyed, clear-skinned glowing young goddesses, were aimed straight at us, and we devoured them whole. We would, we were promised, be rewarded for our goodness and our beauty. All we had to do was find our Prince Charming and life would be good. I mean, isn’t that the entire SATC thesis?
Only it didn’t work out that way for many of us. Some of us weren’t clear-skinned and Disney-beautiful. Our journeys through the forests were often long and perilous, with plenty of detours and dead ends. Our fairy godmothers didn’t show up to rescue or mentor us. We had a hard time getting out of the corners and the cinders where our families — and employers — often left us. We met more Rumplestiltskins than princes, and those Prince Charmings, after a few years, often changed into poisonous toads. Too many of my friends have been forced to abandon their castles, return to their corners and completely rethink their lives.
And yet — and this is what drives me stark, staring CRAZY — we, the tattered princesses, continue to lay this myth on our daughters and granddaughters. Last Christmas, at a big, multi-generational family gathering, I was astonished at the surfeit of Disney princess merchandising that abounded, the most popular being a doll collection of ALL the Disney princesses, which evoked tears among those little girls unfortunate enough not to get one — and excursions by their abashed parents to Toys-R-Us the next day. Oh, don’t tell me, I know, the newest generation of Disney heroines, the Belles and the Ariels, are spunkier than their predecessors, but they still create an expectation that is too likely to be unmet by all these little girls.
So, back to the beginning, in the wake of SATC-TM, “is 40 the new 20, 50 the new 30, and 60 the new 40?” Why would we want it to be so? Why do we spend thousands of dollars and endure grueling treatments and even surgery to pursue a youthfulness that hasn’t served many of us particularly well? Why can’t we, the most enlightened, educated and experienced generation of women of all time, call our own shots and make our own rules, the first being that whatever age we are is just fine, thank you very much?
It’s time for the tattered princesses to wake up and become real women.
Update: Oh, please do read Anthony Lane’s skewering of the movie in this week’s New Yorker.
June 9, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Come on, Ms Meta, lighten up!
Disney didn’t invent the fairy tales or the princess promises. Their origins are deep in the folk culture of just about every society and, on the whole, are about how Good – though set about by demons – triumphs over Evil. Good is indeed often personified by the beautiful maiden whose virtue, faith, steadfastness (sometimes even cunning) is rewarded.
Surely you aren’t suggesting we should raise our daughters without fairy tales? Or without the hundreds of years of literature where fair maid wins the day? Or that it is wrong for us to enjoy these (or indeed a fantasy movie – if that’s what SATC is – I haven’t seen it) with or without our daughters?
I think we can watch fairy tale movies (including the sex) and still warn our teenagers about AIDs, and we can give our daughters and grand daughters princess dolls while teaching them, by the way we lead our lives, by our mistakes as well as by our successes, that they have choices, that choices have consequences, that in real life the good guys don’t always win but it’s always worth the try. And yes, that beauty is only skin deep. Or, as my mother used to say, Pretty is as pretty does.
But, damnit, yes, in a way 60 is the new 40, and I don’t think that has to mean anything about planning surgery or being uncomfortable the age you are – it’s the opposite! You can get older and not be a write off. There was a time when unmarried women of 25 were old maids. When women of 40 didn’t have their first baby, when nobody changed careers or went back to school at 50, and fit, healthy people were forced to retire at 60 or 65 whether they wanted to or not.
Now, that’s all strayed pretty far from the movie, but you’ve got to admit that while Samantha may not exactly be an example to us all, she’s pretty impressive – for her age
June 9, 2008 at 10:53 pm
Good points, Duchess. My concern is still that many of my generation — and subsequent generations — have swallowed the princess myths whole, without learning the lessons of caution and clear sightedness that were required of the women in the stories. I see too many young girls flinging themselves into marriages with men who needed a hard second look. The weddings may have been a fairy tale, but the marriages weren’t, and there were plenty of signs along the way to indicate that those Prince Charmings were anything but. And being good and true isn’t always rewarded, more’s the pity. It is wonderful that women of all ages have so many more options. But Samantha still makes me squirm.
Thanks for responding! (And I’ll reconsider the design.)