From "Dating columnist reveals how ‘Sex and the City’ ruined her life" about Julia Allison, who I would think should have to write better than that to be a big-shot columnist.
I was considered by many to be Carrie Bradshaw 2.0. And I was happy to be given that identity for a while, but it was all a lie.Oh, come on. Carrie Bradshaw is and always was a fictional character. Who goes about in the real world as the double of a fictional character without knowing from Day 1 that it's a lie? I can't believe I'm supposed to read how she believed she embodied a fiction and took some time to discover that it was a lie. I could just as well read a column by a 12-year-old who used to believe she really was a magical princess but finally figured out it wasn't true and — don't tell me let me guess — that real life actually is more satisfying than the fiction. Let me glance forward into this mess:
I lived on food bought for me on dates... Different men I dated gave me YSL shoes and status purses... I also subscribed to Carrie’s ethos when it came to men. There was no such thing as a bad date — only a good date or a good brunch story....Right. Flying cheap is worse that being the victim of attempted rape. What a wit you are! Bleh.
In 2008, my two best girlfriends and I... were all invited by a 40-something billionaire to his Miami mansion; he even sent his private jet for us. It was just him, the three of us and his butler and chef. I don’t think this man was used to being told no, and he started chasing me around his mansion. I finally had to lock myself in the bathroom. The worst part: He sent us back on JetBlue.
I got to that article via Instapundit who seems to accept Allison's blaming "Sex and the City" for the fact that Allison's career of being a Carrie type eventually got played out. It seems to me that "Sex and the City" was a TV show. It mixed fantasy female fun with some serious material about finding love, and viewers with half a brain knew what we were looking at. Who goes out and tries to be one of the characters on a TV show then blames the show for how it didn't totally work? Allison got plenty of attention, amusement, and material gain working this career she chose. I don't for one minute believe she was tricked by the show. I think she exploited it. And it would be silly to empathize with her now that she has her own career reasons to reinvent herself. She's once again trying to use our interest in the excellent TV show to leverage her career.
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44 comments:
Played out or aged out?
The name of the show was "Sex and the City." Did she think it was "Tease in the City" when she accepted the trip to Miami?
Althouse:
"Who goes out and tries to be one of the characters on a TV show then blames the show for how it didn't totally work?"
This was exactly my objection when I followed the Instapundit link. I felt a bit sad for her, but the (rather mild) pathos of her story is not the show's fault.
I'll give her points though for reinventing herself as a "change activist." Having been a hollow person for so long, realizing she's messed up her own life, she now wants to fix the world.
I just had to go back and reread it. She now works "as a change activist, mounting summits for world leaders and serving as an adviser to startups and entrepreneurs looking to better the planet."
I want to know what summits she mounted and which world leaders were there.
Serving as an adviser based on what? On some un-hinted-at expertise? Oh, right - based on her opinions. I hope they're more original than her erstwhile persona.
Cosplayer isn't a real job.
"mounting summits for world leaders"
That sounds dirty.
I'd like to mount your summit, you world-powerful man!
Haven't read the article. But: Is she seriously claiming that she and two girls were invited to a billionaire's mansion for a private party and flown there on his private jet and she didn't expect to have to put out?
She must be very stupid to think her readers are stupid enough to believe that.
(P.S. It occurred to me that "put out" was a very old fashioned phrase, maybe no longer current, but it does show up on Urban Dictionary - from 2005 so maybe not in current use but still maybe understandable to the modern person.)
The whole article is a case study for why women should not get the vote until they are 30.
How you got into a Chanel bag I'll never know.
Sounds like you are chanelling Groucho Marx
She clearly fashioned herself after Carrie Bradshaw but as I was reading I wondered if she had even heard of Candace Bushnell. Bushnell is briefly mentioned late in the article but it's interesting despite their parallel lives Allison mentions no other connection to her.
Sounds like you are chanelling Groucho Marx
A cigar theme developing today at Althouse (see Clinton/Lewinsky).
Agreed, and to point out that she pursued the Carrie Bradshaw model for a decade.
That's a long time to be manipulated by a media image.
She is right in one way: the culture looks down on marriage and its benefits. There are downsides, and they love the happy ever after, but the pleasures of a good long-term marriage vastly outweigh the long-term single life.* And we rarely see that in the culture.
* YMMV.
She was living her life as a gay man created by gay writers. The writers used their own experiences to create the female characters' adventures, as has been pointed out by some of the female cast members--hence the "never pass up a dick" mentality.
This woman says her life (food, clothes, rent, travel etc) were being paid for by men.
She sounded like a whore. She sounded like a whore whether or not any sex was had. She sounds like a whore whether or not any cash actually changed hands.
Nttatwwt. Her body, her choice.
But she still sounds like a whore.
John Henry
How do you manage to graduate from Georgetown University and be so ungrounded and so stupid?
Of course Julia spent her college years writing a sex column for the school newspaper and dating 31 year old Harold Ford, Jr., then a Tennessee Congressman. Julia ALLISON was known as Julia BAUGHER then.
-- Being publicly linked to Harold has neither helped nor hurt my career. Perhaps if I had gone public with more information, it might have had more of an impact, but as it was, I downplayed my involvement with Harold as much as I could. ... Other than a fabulous weekend ski vacation and a few fancy dinners, all Harold gave me was the certainty that dating a [politician] is overrated." ("Ford Ex Thinks Dating A Politician 'Overrated,'" The Memphis Flyer, September 27, 2006)
I stepped onto the pink carpet in my Allison Parris dress and Chanel bag.
"Hey, Fred, you remember when me & you did door to door sales & that time that hot chick opened the door in her negligee? To this day, it still gets me, Fred -- what a strange place to have a door!"
The Bat Masterson theme song has a similar phrase worth arguing about on and off for years:
"Back when the west was very young,
There lived a man named Masterson.
He wore a cane and derby hat,
They called him Bat, Bat Masterson."
Does one wear a cane?
I have to take issue with your phrase "the excellent TV show." No, it was not.
It has always been true that a pretty young woman with flexible standards in men and morals can leave the house with nothing more than the clothes on her back and be assured of finding someone to look after her. It will always be true in future. #MeToo will not change that, it will just force the standards even lower.
"I don't for one minute believe she was tricked by the show"
Of course not. But prog conversions are all for show.
It seems the Miami billionaire forgot about the hot/crazy matrix.
The 40-something billionaire acted really beta.
She used the character from a hit TV show as a role model for her own life. Was it dumb? Yes! Do lots of others make the same mistake to some degree or another? Again, yes.
When I was 16 and just starting to date, I had no real idea how to behave on a date. There were lots of questions -- should I try to hold her hand, kiss her goodnight at the door, would she be offended if I didn't at least try to kiss her, etc.? These were questions to which I sought answers from my friends and from my friends' parents. (My own parents, of course, knew nothing of such things.) But, I also learned from watching Happy Days. Sure, it was fictional and it was comedy, but no one was saying it wasn't based on reality.
As it turned out, the Fonz wasn't the best role model that I could have adopted. (He may not have been the worst, either.) Following his lead, I made a lot of errors that I came to regret. And, in the end, I learned that my own parents were smarter about such things than I'd believed.
"mounting summits for world leaders"
That sounds dirty.
I'm going to add it to my list of "things that sound dirty, but aren't."
Stroking the peacock.
I'm squeezing the lemon.
Does one wear a cane?
It’s archaic usage, but yes. One often reads older gunwriters talking about “wearing” a concealed weapon rather than “carrying” it. A ship “wears” its ensign (another archaic term for flag) rather than “fly” it from a staff or gaff or yardarm.
Althouse is not respectful of women's feelings in this one.
@Darkisland,
She sounded like a whore. She sounded like a whore whether or not any sex was had. She sounds like a whore whether or not any cash actually changed hands.
When I bitch & moan about the lack of a notion of feminine virtue in modern society, this is an example of what I'm bitching about. There are some women who are just amazingly upfront about their greed. Their greed is tied to their sexuality, & they are most proud of the times that they used their sexuality to further their greed. The two are inextricably mixed. Acquisition takes on a sexual aspect, & sexuality without acquisition is a failed sexual encounter by definition.
Needless to say, straight women never see this side of women face to face. They only hear about from their fellow women generally in cleaned up versions, as women are very sensitive to other women criticizing their sex lives (why "Slut" still has any sting as an insult between women for the last 50 years bewilders me, but clearly it does). These women are the female equivalent of Pick-Up Artists, & every bit as amoral. For the PUA, it's "Penis in Vagina = Victory", but for these women it's "Money in my Purse, No matter how it got there = Victory".
Sometimes, however, it can go awry.
I wouldn't waste my time reading anything this used up whore has to write, but I get the impression she is a good indication of why the 19th amendment was a bad idea.
She will die alone and be eaten by her many, many cats.
-- Being publicly linked to Harold has neither helped nor hurt my career. Perhaps if I had gone public with more information, it might have had more of an impact, but as it was, I downplayed my involvement with Harold as much as I could. ... Other than a fabulous weekend ski vacation and a few fancy dinners, all Harold gave me was the certainty that dating a [politician] is overrated." ("Ford Ex Thinks Dating A Politician 'Overrated,'" The Memphis Flyer, September 27, 2006)
I wouldn't be bragging about a Tennessee state assemblyman. I'm embarrassed for her. It's a part time legislature and they bring in twenty grand a year. Ooooh wee we got ourselves a big shot courtesan over here!
I don't want to make you guys jealous or anything but I sleep with a member of our local airport board.
It's pronounce "soo-mitt". It's French.
>> Flying cheap is worse that being the victim of attempted rape. What a wit you are! Bleh.
The thing was, it was almost like it wasa condition of flying on a private jet that they have sex with him. He didn't tell them before, and they didn't agree to that.
Nurse Betty was a great movie. But that worked out better for her because it was fiction and The Force (plot requirements) was with her.
rhharden had a riff once that women don’t come to realize how unattractive their selfishness is until their thirties.
She will die alone and be eaten by her many, many cats.
No she won’t. She is still hot.
This reminds me of this story from The Onion
Unemployed Miserable Man Still Remembers the Teacher Who First Made Him Fall in Love With Writing
I don’t think you wear a cane, you ‘sport’ a cane:
"Back when the west was very young,
There lived a man named Masterson.
He sported a cane and derby hat,
They called him Bat, Bat Masterson."
I got to that article via Instapundit who seems to accept Allison's blaming "Sex and the City" for the fact that Allison's career of being a Carrie type eventually got played out.
I read the article and assumed that it had been posted by Helen and not Glenn. The author isn't the first woman who swapped her affections for food, YSL, and designer dresses. Won't be the last. She made a conscious choice and is expressing regrets -- that she blames a TV show doesn't change the regrets. Still, if I swapped a cow for a handful of beans and tossed them out the window, I wouldn't expect to see a giant beanstalk there the next morning just because that's what happened to Jack. Why she thought she'd snag "Mr. Big" is beyond me.
Oh, yeah, Nurse Betty. I remember that. I’m also thinking of the Teri Garr character in Afterhours.
This poor kid has my shallowest sympathies.
Just because it's not right for some guy you barely know to offer you a private plane ride to Miami with the assumption he's entitled to sexual favors DOES NOT make it right for you to accept that trip and choose to deny the favors. Rather few women seem to be able to grasp this concept.
Even at the lowest, most basic level: A stranger at a bar should not believe you owe him time or attention or affection if he buys you a drink and you're not interested. And you should not accept that drink if you're not interested. Conflict solved.
'My name goes here', your 12:27pm comment has 4 extra words in it.
In 2008, my two best girlfriends and I... were all invited by a 40-something billionaire to his Miami mansion; he even sent his private jet for us. It was just him, the three of us and his butler and chef. I don’t think this man was used to being told no, and he started chasing me around his mansion. I finally had to lock myself in the bathroom.
Oh, come on. Nobody is that naive. This has been a thing since Count Dracula started looking around for castles.
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia had a great spoof of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yUafzOXHPE
I agree with out hostess about this particular writer, but plenty, as in hundreds of thousands or millions, of young women who were more pliable were affected by the show, and I would think badly in almost all cases. No successful marriages, almost none attempted, men and women using each other for sex and as social accessories. and bearing a child shown as a career- and identity-ending catastrophe.
brunch stories all dried up at 37
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