A Take On Women

This past weekend was the rainiest one in the history of my life, or at least it felt that way. Not that I complained - on the contrary, I curled up for crazy amounts of time in my holey J.Crew yoga pants and read and read and read. In fact, I read my way through two books! And these two books kind of made me mad, sad, and a little irritated with myself that I wasted precious time on this earth reading brain crack when I could have been reading something worthwhile. Usually, I am all about some chick lit, but for some reason, it really rubbed me the wrong way.

I first read One Fifth Avenue, Candace Busnell's latest about glitz and glam in Manhattan. If you aren't familiar, she wrote the original Sex & the City best seller that HBO made into the series. First of all, I LOVE Sex & the City. I think it's hilarious and while it is racy and somewhat unbelievable, it's main basis is female friendship and I think that's what gives it staying power. However, One Fifth Avenue didn't portray friendship all. In fact, all it portrayed was women being conniving, manipulative, and obsessed with getting ahead, either monetarily or professionally. The women in this book didn't care about true love or friendship - they cared about having the best apartment and spending their millions the fastest. I understand that it's fiction, but when you look at society today, at the things our young girls concern themselves with and wonder where in the world they get these ideas from - well, not only is our television media saturated with it, our literature is saturated with it, too. From Confessions of a Shopaholic to He's Just Not That Into You (both originally books, for all your non-book worms out there), women are again and again being portrayed as materialistic piranahas who are more interested in the stylishness of their Christian Loubatain's than in being role models for future generations.

The other book that made my blood boil was Lauren Weisberger's Chasing Harry Winston. Now, I have been a fan of Wesiberger up until this book. She was the one who wrote The Devil Wears Prada, which I love, love, LOVE and she also wrote Everyone Worth Knowing which was pretty good, too. Both of these books showed the downside of trying to be hip and glitz. In my opinion, her latest just completely, excuse me, SUCKED. It is the story of three friends who make a pact to change some part of themselves, mostly involving relationships and sex. I guess my problem is in how it portrays sex - casually, promiscuously, and, in my opinion, dangerously. I find it very irresponsible to refuse to go into the emotional trauma that most women experience after one night stands and rather portray characters as happy go lucky females who can hop in and out of the sack with zero repercussions. Yeah, that doesn't happen and we all know it.

Amazingly, these authors are both women! You would think that it would show in their writing, but it doesn't. Rather, it seems more like a callous, horny fifteen year old male wrote these books.

Although they both provided a few laughs and kept me occupied, I would suggest to avoid at all costs.