I went to see the SATC 2 movie last Friday. It was opening night and cinema thronged with thirtysomething women who have grown up to the antics of Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda. We all fancied that we could identify with one or other of them, and we all wished we had a shoe collection to rival any one of them. I sat through the entire series, glued to the implausible plot lines, ridiculous fashion and the quaint idea that female friendship really does transcend all.
I loved the first movie, when we all got the satisfaction of finally seeing the Big/Carrie storyline reach it's white tulle conclusion, albeit with a few bumps along the way. But movie number two left me cold. The problem, apart from the risible attempt to bring a serious commentary on women's rights in the Middle East into a frothy chick flick, was that married, menopausal mothers just aren't that glam.
When Carrie and co were bed hopping and sharing angst over their latest love affairs, I was hooked. I was on the edge of my seat as I waited to find out what would happen between Smith and Samantha, what was it that Miranda saw in speccy Steve, and could Charlotte sink her waspish ways to wed her semite in shining armour? But do I really want to know how sexy Samantha overcomes hot flushes? Do I care about Charlotte's woes over motherhood, and could I care less about Carrie's worries about becoming an old married couple or Miranda's work\life balance dilemmas? No.
Watching the girls whizz around the streets of Manhattan in their skyscraper heels was delicious escapism. I would revel in the fashion, the sophisticated bars and luscious young men. The cocktails, the brunches, the to die for apartments and glamourous careers. It was just the contrast I needed to making ends meet in rainy London, with a love life whose highlight was a takeaway on the sofa on a Friday night.
But the latest movie shows me that no matter how expensive the heels, sophisticated the decor or elegant the friends, as soon as age, marriage and motherhood catches us, we are all the same under the skin whether it's smooth and burnished with Fake Bake or chapped by washing up liquid. I don't want to know. I want the girls to remain perfectly glamourous. I don't want to see those starry women grow wrinkled, the fabulous dresses making them look like so much mutton dressed as lamb, the sex scenes becoming that little bit uncomfortable, not because of their kinkiness, but because of the creaking you can almost hear as those limbs entangle.
So I bid a sad adieu to SATC. It was great while it lasted, but now it's as stomach churning as watching your mum snog a waiter at a wedding.
Tuesday, 1 June 2010
Babies
I honestly, cross my heart, swear that I do not want any more babies, ever. Well at least not until grandkids and the benefit of them is that I get to skip the whole pregnancy, labour, birth and sleepless nights shenanigins. But when I stumble across pictures of my newborn sons I still feel a faint tug of the heartstrings when I realise I will never have another baby of my own.
I was searching for an email address today and found an old picture message I had sent just after the twins were born. It's a fuzzy snap of my babies, swaddled in their hospital blankets sleeping nose-to-nose in their see-through plastic crib. At 15-months it's a long time since those boys could sleep in a tiny crib, but seeing this picture took me right back to those otherworldly days spent in the cocoon of a hospital room, schedule dictated by feeding, check ups and gradually getting to know my two new sons.
After each birth their was a period spent in the bubble of new motherhood. Naturally it was more marked, and longer, with my first boy. The sheer horror of the birth followed by a painful adjustment to caring for my tiny boy kept me swaddled from reality for months, rather than days or weeks. My routine was sharpened by anxiety that I was getting things right, worrying that he was feeding enough, and why was he sleeping so little. My whole world shrank to a tight grip around my precious baby.
Of course things settle down, faster and faster the more children you have, but I still have a strange nostalgia for that post traumatic after birth period. When you are divorced from normality by the profundity of what has happened to you. When you are swaddled into a hospital routine yourself, and horrible as this might be, it also has a unique fascination. Nothing in your life has been or will be like it again. Any more trips to hospital are likely to be entirely of a negative nature, with no sprinkling of joy to give them that edge of ecstatic hysteria. I will never trail out of a hospital dragging foil helium balloons and a car seat filled with the rest of my life.
I wouldn't want to relive those day and I never want to deal with the physical and emotional demands of a newborn baby again, but those memories are etched, flashbulb bright, on my mind, and staring at that grainy, mobile phone snap of my boys, takes me right back beneath the blankets of my hospital bed, tiny boys draped delicately in my arms, like a crisp new page opening on a new chapter in my life.
I was searching for an email address today and found an old picture message I had sent just after the twins were born. It's a fuzzy snap of my babies, swaddled in their hospital blankets sleeping nose-to-nose in their see-through plastic crib. At 15-months it's a long time since those boys could sleep in a tiny crib, but seeing this picture took me right back to those otherworldly days spent in the cocoon of a hospital room, schedule dictated by feeding, check ups and gradually getting to know my two new sons.
After each birth their was a period spent in the bubble of new motherhood. Naturally it was more marked, and longer, with my first boy. The sheer horror of the birth followed by a painful adjustment to caring for my tiny boy kept me swaddled from reality for months, rather than days or weeks. My routine was sharpened by anxiety that I was getting things right, worrying that he was feeding enough, and why was he sleeping so little. My whole world shrank to a tight grip around my precious baby.
Of course things settle down, faster and faster the more children you have, but I still have a strange nostalgia for that post traumatic after birth period. When you are divorced from normality by the profundity of what has happened to you. When you are swaddled into a hospital routine yourself, and horrible as this might be, it also has a unique fascination. Nothing in your life has been or will be like it again. Any more trips to hospital are likely to be entirely of a negative nature, with no sprinkling of joy to give them that edge of ecstatic hysteria. I will never trail out of a hospital dragging foil helium balloons and a car seat filled with the rest of my life.
I wouldn't want to relive those day and I never want to deal with the physical and emotional demands of a newborn baby again, but those memories are etched, flashbulb bright, on my mind, and staring at that grainy, mobile phone snap of my boys, takes me right back beneath the blankets of my hospital bed, tiny boys draped delicately in my arms, like a crisp new page opening on a new chapter in my life.
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