Today we introduce the first in our new series of letters from New York.
One of our dearest friends (who just happens to be a writer) has recently
moved to NYC and brings us an inside view of life in the big apple.
My Sex and the City 2 scare!
When I moved to NYC two months ago, I blocked the big things like children, family and homesickness from my head and focused on my appearance. It was a shallow, easy distraction I thought.
Before moving I had imagined I might dabble in the world of cosmetic surgery as I’m 46, a bit saggy and aging fast. Instead, I’ve gone the other way. Why, I’m even growing my armpit hair!
In a city of supermodels and super-slick women, I just don’t want to look like a sad copy. Also, I’ve rediscovered the New York of my youthful dreams. It’s all the first Fame movie, Lou Reed, flea markets and punk rock. I am SO not interested in the Upper East Side. In fact, going over there to my son’s school depresses me. All that is Super Bad about Western life is there, in one small coterie of streets and shops.
Instead, I prefer to take the subway downtown, or hang out with the eccentrics in the caffs on the Upper West Side where I live. My fashion choices revolve around the Tibet Bazaar and whatever is left over from my summer wardrobe with a jacket over the top. I’ve stopped wearing make-up altogether apart from the odd slash of ultra-red or purple lipstick, neither of which I have ever worn before in my life.
The biggest scare out of my old NY beauty plan and into my new one, was the sight of the SATC 2 women filming a scene from the new movie. I stumbled across them outside Bergys (Bergdorf Goodman) two weeks ago and honestly! A sadder selection of examples of our sex you would be hard pushed to find. Half naked, embarrassingly over-made up with faces contorted from chemicals, needles and surgeons, I’ve never seen more pitiful creatures. Clinging to youth and beauty with their false fingernail ends, they reminded me of the rabbits of Watership Down.
SJP is pretty enough but she is wizened. The rest are freakish. Cynthia looks evil, Kim looks desperate and Kristin has face-lift wrinkles and is a lost soul. These women personify all that is bad and desperate for women in our times. If you are a free-thinker you will shun SATC 2, you will find humour in something other than variations on the Cinderella theme and you will never, ever have plastic surgery.
More soon!
