There's only one problem: eventually women do want to settle down. In fact, many of the women who bought into the Sex and the City lifestyle twenty years ago are coming forward to share their regrets. Julia Allison says the show literally “ruined her life.” She says it peddled a “fear of intimacy disguised as empowerment.” Writing for The New York Post, Allison wistfully wonders what her life might have been like if she hadn’t bought into the Sex and the City philosophy. “Perhaps I’d be married with children now?”
In her memoir, Unwifeable, journalist and former dating columnist Mandy Stadtmiller describes how a decade of living the “real-life Carrie Bradshaw” lifestyle left her fearful that there “might be no one out there left for me at all.” She writes, “I told myself I was a feminist,” but, ultimately, she came to realize that happiness came, not from casual sex and no-strings-attached relationships, but from “only revealing [her heart] when someone has proven themselves worthy.”
The fact that the women of Sex and the City ultimately want to settle down is not the unrealistic lie the show sold these women. The lie is that they can settle down after spending their 20s and 30s sleeping around. At the time, it seemed like a radical act of feminism to do away with Prince Charming and focus, instead, on the dress, the shoes, and the physical attraction. After all, as novelist Keira Cass said, “Cinderella never asked for a prince, she asked for a night off and a dress.” But suddenly, with biological clocks ticking and one man after another running away from the thought of commitment, these women are beginning to wonder. Maybe Cinderella knew something they didn’t, after all.
MOORE: Twenty Years After Sex And The City The 'Real-Life Carrie Bradshaws' Are Wishing They Hadn't Slept Around
In her memoir, Unwifeable, journalist and former dating columnist Mandy Stadtmiller describes how a decade of living the “real-life Carrie Bradshaw” lifestyle left her fearful that there “might be no one out there left for me at all.” She writes, “I told myself I was a feminist,” but, ultimately, she came to realize that happiness came, not from casual sex and no-strings-attached relationships, but from “only revealing [her heart] when someone has proven themselves worthy.”
The fact that the women of Sex and the City ultimately want to settle down is not the unrealistic lie the show sold these women. The lie is that they can settle down after spending their 20s and 30s sleeping around. At the time, it seemed like a radical act of feminism to do away with Prince Charming and focus, instead, on the dress, the shoes, and the physical attraction. After all, as novelist Keira Cass said, “Cinderella never asked for a prince, she asked for a night off and a dress.” But suddenly, with biological clocks ticking and one man after another running away from the thought of commitment, these women are beginning to wonder. Maybe Cinderella knew something they didn’t, after all.
MOORE: Twenty Years After Sex And The City The 'Real-Life Carrie Bradshaws' Are Wishing They Hadn't Slept Around
