There was a time when being a real life Carrie Bradshaw was a cool thing.
Single women relaying tales of their sordid romantic misadventures in columns, blogs, and books. All inspired by the antics of the 4 best buddies on Sex and the City.
If you're like me and you come across a blog, a book or a show that's all about the female experience, dating in a pre-menopausal chick-lit designer trimmed world, you probably greet it with the enthusiasm of a bitchy 13-year-old.
But, after examining my own blogging trends and hearing comments from friends "This post is soooo Carrie Bradshaw", I started to feel a little over exposed and very much unoriginal. My fears were confirmed, one of the biggest trends of 2005 were books and novels dedicated to the mid-thirties dating sexperience. Ah, Chick-Lit (or CLit as I like to call it)
First off, females can identify CLit a mile away. Usually identified by the appearance of the colour pink somewhere on the cover and accented by doodled drawings of martini glasses, lipstick tubes and frilly knickers. CLit most recently has appeared in its finest form as non-fictional books on dealing with dating, break ups, and just all around being fabulous in the city.
Non-Fiction is currently the preferred version of CLit replacing romances on the shelves of professional women nationwide!
So what is it about CLit that the ladies love?
We love knowing we are not alone, that others are sharing the same emotions we are. Ultimately we try to be easy going and optimistic people, but, occasionally we slip. At these moments we desperately grab for the easiest read that will help us through, the comfort read. Formerly magazines like Cosmo and Glamour, but, now why by a magazine for 1500 words when you could buy a WHOLE BOOK of 100 plus pages worth of fabulous female advice and tales from the dirty side of dating?!
But, as I discovered, once I started to read these books, they did make me feel better for a bit. Then reality set in and the one sided discussions the book put forward were not helpful to me in the slightest. Sure it was entertaining to read about women who went off the deep end during a break up, throwing themselves into snow banks desperately dialing their ex's parents at 3 am in the morning only to ask them if they knew where he was.
The only redeming element to these books was the hilarity in that I would never do that. Ever. In fact, the fact that some of these women shared their tales of ridiculous lows and in a way celebrates them make me feel like I want to keep those secrets to myself.
It's not good behaviour.
Where's the chick lit that celebrates independance of self and rejoicing in your own fabulousness? To consistantly demonize men as the causes to these women's lapses of sanity that they feel is appropriate to share with the world is a little trite. And, yes, I blog. But, there's a lot of things I don't blog about because I feel it's deeply personal and I don't want the world to know. I'm more interested in the differences between men and women as opposed to the crazy shit wacked out and newly single bitches get down to because somehow they feel entitled to behave poorly due to the hurt another person caused them.
Listen, I was hurt. But, I never:
- Snuck into his email
- Called him at 3 am in the morning to sob and ask why
- In fact, ever call him. Damn sucker dumped me, I'm not going to give him the satisfaction of having a women like me chase after a dumbass like him
- Called his parents
- Called his sister