We all know someone who made Carrie Bradshaw the author of their
yearbook quote. All the girls in high
school wanted to be her, and why not?
She was effortlessly thin, effortlessly wealthy, effortlessly cool,
effortlessly going to the best parties and meeting the best men. By the end of the series run, she was
aspirational rather than the realistic, glum portrayal of single life in New
York that she was in the first season.
Everyone ooh-ed and ahh-ed over her shoes and her wild outfits, but that
wasn’t realistic. She had a gorgeous
apartment, went out for drinks or dinner almost every night of the week, and
could still afford Dior dresses and Manolo shoes? Come on, no way. And yet, everyone believed it, and believed
that we were all Carries in a way. We
could write about our sex lives and dating escapades and become massive
successes, flitting around Manhattan from exclusive door to exclusive door in
our absurdly high and uncomfortable heels, having men take us to the most
fabulous restaurants and hotels. We
would eat cupcakes and drink martinis and still be in fantastic shape, and still
have money left for rent and cabs everywhere.
So now we have a generation of memoirists in the vein of Carrie
Bradshaw, girls who think it’s the extravagance of their lifestyles that make
them interesting and not their thoughts.
Carrie was only enviable for her glamorous lifestyle – we know nothing
of her family life, of her inner thoughts as they relate to anything but men
and dating, how she ended up a writer in New York (“The Carrie Diaries”
non-sequitur aside). Doesn’t it seem
crazy that we can desire and aspire so badly to be like someone we hardly even
know anything about?
Twitter, Instagram… these are tools devised for a generation of Carrie
Bradshaws. There is no space to develop
insight into ourselves, to consider the implications of what we do on the world
around us, to engage in meaningful conversation with another person about
anything other than ourselves in these media.
All there is is space for us to show off our most recent Carrie-esque
escapade: a picture of our new Hermes bag, a picture of the view from our
rooftop deck, a picture of us all dolled up and at a really cool new club. We hashtag everything in the hopes that
someone will see it and think we are important and interesting, we feel a mild
exhilaration when we receive a notification that someone has liked our picture,
we are ecstatic when a minor celebrity replies to us or retweets something we
say. At one time I thought these mediums
were about connection, the human need to connect with other people in order to
feel worthwhile in some way. But the
connections we seek here are just validation, other people saying how jealous
they are of our beautifully presented meal or the new Chanel Jumbo Flap someone
who isn’t us bought for us. It’s not
about connections so much as it is about narcissism. We probably hardly even care what other
people are doing, but we sure as hell want them to see what we’re doing.
A coworker of mine often gripes about braggy Facebook statuses. A picture of the Barclays Center with the
caption “VIP seats and meeting Kanye at the Jay-Z concert, you know no big
deal”, a picture of a bottle of Armand de Brignac champagne sitting in a bucket
of ice fashioned with the logo of a popular Vegas nightclub with the caption
“Just a typical Friday night…”. If it’s
a typical Friday night, why do you see fit to write about it? The faux modesty displayed here, pretending a
ridiculous situation is ordinary and nothing to gush over, is pure narcissism. What can you say to these pictures, pictures
and posts people make online, publicly, explicitly so you can see them, besides
“wow I’m so jealous!” (validating them) or “yeah I’m over Ace of Spades, so
hood rich” (being too narcissistic to let someone else enjoy something without
one-upping them). You can’t win, really.
But back to Carrie Bradshaw. This
all came from an article I read in Gawker just now. A woman was dumped via text message, and she
responded by publicly shaming the dumper (only a few week relationship, mind
you) on her blog, sending texts he sent her from his work phone to his company,
and telling him how great her life is and how totally uninterested she
was. If you’re doing so great and you
didn’t like this guy, why are you spending so much time trying to prove this to
him? Just say, “Okay cool, maybe I’ll
see you around!” if you care so little.
But then I read her description of her book. Now of course this is all how she has
presented her story, but basically she is that girl who wanted to be Carrie
Bradshaw. She claims to have given up
straight-A’s and medical school for vodka, boys, and shoes (oh, and a “VIP lifestyle”). She’s successfully convinced herself that
these things somehow make her interesting or different, or at the very least
worth reading about. Ignoring that fact
that most female memoirists offer this same narrative of being so close to
doing something meaningful but then giving it all up to get drunk and party
(Cat Marnell, looking at you), it’s upsetting to me that this is what is
presented to young women as the more interesting choice. I will bet this woman has more followers on
Twitter than my endocrinologist, making her more likely to be seen, more likely
to obtain that modicum of celebrity that every young person strives for. These women are even more anti-feminist than
the strippers and porn stars who amass enormous twitter followings by
objectifying themselves; these women are regular women with lots of great
options in front of them that opt instead for a life of materialism and
partying.
I say anti-feminist because the real reason these women were once
considered daring or interesting, and certainly the reason Sex and the City was
able to obtain such success, was because these women were acting like men. Whether conscious or not, these women were
pushing themselves into arenas typically occupied by men, proclaiming to have
the same feelings as men about love and sex, aggressively asserting themselves
as equals while simultaneously distancing themselves from other women who do
stupid, woman-y things. The whole
premise of Sex and the City was that these women were having sex like men – with
many partners, no strings attached, devoid of feelings or affection, and not as
part of some grander search for a life-long mate but just because they wanted
to. The problem is that this was not
about equality but about women forcing themselves to be more stereotypically
masculine to have the lives they want.
The idea of having feelings and being emotional was stigmatized even
more, pushing men even further into the depths of chauvinism to assert their
manliness among this new breed of beer swigging, casual fling having
women.
These are the women who think they are totally in control of their
dating lives but typically end up most broken hearted by rejection, case in
point the woman discussed above. This
idealized version of yourself, the one who is exactly what men want – partier,
big drinker, sexy, loves sports (just a guess here but I feel pretty confident
in that one), not bothering with stupid shit like feelings – is still getting
broken up with at times and that must be devastating. I can’t imagine that that’s what men want to
marry though. Who wants to marry Carrie
Bradshaw when all she cares about is herself and how your money will get her a
nice closet and give her good writing material?
After all, what did Carrie love about Big if it wasn’t that he was rich
and he didn’t seem all that into her?
Why do women chase celebrities and athletes and bankers to date knowing
that they, stereotypically, aren’t the kind of people who show you respect or
remain loyal? I can say this with some
authority because at one time, I pretended to be one of these emotionless party
girls too. My heart was broken and my
feelings were hurt over and over, but still I tried my hardest to always have
up the tough exterior. I thought that I
didn’t want to be a girly girl, I thought that I got along best with guys, but
then I realized that I was the problem there – it was my own outlook hindering
friendships with women and keeping me from being able to make girl friends
easily. I think a lot of these women are
probably doing something similar.
Maybe having fun and getting “likes” really is the meaning of life
though, and maybe I have it all wrong.
Maybe wanting someone to be interested in my thoughts about things other
than their life is really too much to ask for, and maybe I would feel
significantly more fulfilled if only I knew that there were some people out
there who were watching my life unfold, commenting on how fabulous and glamorous it is, desperately awaiting my next post just to read more about my life.
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