Stateside with Rosalea
Midweek Musings: Life’s Biggies
** Sex **
The big news this week was the outcome of the final episode of Sex and the City. Seriously! It was evening network news
fodder on Monday night. Not having cable TV, I’ve never seen the program, though scraps of storylines had wafted my way
every now and then. Just last week, a commentator on the Newshour with Jim Lehrer voiced an opinion about it that I’d
probably agree with.
Being of the generation that took Mary Tyler Moore avidly to heart as a role model – happy, independent, with an
exciting job, not having to be supported financially or emotionally by a man – I was interested to hear the commentator
wonder if the moral of Sex and the City was that thin women in exciting well-paid jobs, happy to change men with the
weather, were still – God forbid! – unhappy.
Today I learned a little more about the occupation and preoccupation of Sex’s lead character in a column written by
Kerry Dougherty of the Virginian-Pilot. She wrote that she is not going to miss the program, because Carrie gave an
impression of the life of a columnist that was impossible to live up to -- dashing out her column in minutes and earning
enough money from it to buy Manolo Blahniks at $500 a pair.
Writes Dougherty, “The closest I’ve come to fashionale footwear is a pair of Ugg-knockoffs that I mail-ordered last year
from a New Zealand sheep farm.”
Ugg-knockoffs? I though we invented the damn things.
** Marriage **
Y’all know already that I’m with Dharma’s pre-Greg boyfriend on this subject. Marriage is just the state poking its nose
into folks business where it isn’t needed or warranted. But you can’t deny that the Springtime of Love—as February 2004
will no doubt come to be known—was a warm and fuzzy spectacle if ever there was one. At least as portrayed by the media
in the Bay Area.
Only the churlish and those terrified at the prospect of being turned down by 100 percent of the population instead of
by only half of it could be against the obvious happiness that so many people have gained from being wed in San
Francisco. It’s hard to remember, now that the memes have been coopted by the conservative right, that the first couple
married were two elderly women who’d been together for decades.
I grew up in a small country town that had as two of its characters women very like that couple. They were nicknamed
Cabbage and Cauliflower, and those prosaic names somehow fitted their ordinariness perfectly. Everyone assumed they were
more than friends and nobody minded; nor were they any more of a curiosity than the lady who gathered up newspapers to
recycle them. In the sixties, when there was, as yet, no recycling.
** Honeymoon **
Well, I hope some Kiwi entrepreneur is right onto this marriage thing and offering honeymoons in New Zealand. There’s no
better time you know, as the accompanying photo shows.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/images/0402/138ec397df6e9c965699.jpeg
It’s one of the many advertising pillars on Market Street—San Francisco’s main drag. Throw in a pair of Ugg-knockoffs
for the newly weds, and she’ll be sweet as!
** Breadwinning **
Casting about for an occupation to help support your new spouse? How about President of the United States? Yes, Showtime
is going ahead with its reality show called The American Candidate. First proposed in 2002, the new version only
requires you to be over 18 years old and a US citizen. And not running for office, or a reality show participant in the
past twelve months.
Go for it!
(EDITOR'S NOTE: Unfortunately it appears that NZers are not allowed to view these web pages.)
**** ENDS ****