Forty Years of Groovy Single Gals

I don't think of any of us who, in 1968, felt like rare kayakers pushing off from the known continent called You Had To Get Married Right After College could imagine that 40 years later there'd be a stiletto stampede to see the film poised to exponentially phenomenize the already-branded notion that single, sexual women are an enviable species. That's because back then -- when Joni Mitchell was elegizing her 15th St. half-floor-through in "Chelsea Morning," and Carly Simon was moving into the Murray Hill walk-up where, she's said ,"I hated to sleep alone and because it was the Sixties I never had to," and Carole King was leaving a New Jersey tract house and husband for sexy Laurel Canyon -- we were just a few years away from novels (not just Rona Jaffe's but Keroauc's) that painted unattached female non-virgins exactly one color: desperate.

What would those first-generation Quixotes -- the Girls Like Us, if you will -- have done if, in 1968, they'd accidentally (bad Owsley?) time-zoomed to some strange America where guys typed, huge corporations ("Google"? "Yahoo"?) had been named by Wavy Gravy, and music rebels preened on red carpets like Rock Hudson and Doris Day. And: What if today's Blackberried, 401-k'd babes, crackling-with-self-referential jargon -- the Sex and the City-ites -- were tasked with devising a Power-Point imagining template for their quaint, Qaunt'd foremoms in their exposed-brick lairs.

Here -- along the lines of a French/English, English/French Pocket Webster's -- is a brief two-way translation, just in case.

Sex and the City-to-Girls Like Us Dictionary

Category	Sex and the City	Girls Like Us
(1) LARGE, ROUND, FLAT, WHITE, REGULARLY INGESTED ITEM	Chevre mound on frisee salad	Enovid birth control pill
(2) BODY ART	Small-of-back butterfly tat	Hairy armpits
(3) PREGNANCY	Condition befalling your friend who caved, married, and moved to Westchester	Something you faked, by way of girdle in which you smuggled hash out of Afghanistan
(4) DATE	Rite male invites female on; sleeping with same on first of which Carrie ponders efficacy	Oblong candied foodstuff, popular in holiday baskets
(5) WARDROBE FROM:	Marc Jacobs	Paraphernalia
(6) ZINGY ONE-LINERS SUPPLIED BY:	Sanford Blatch	Timothy Leary
(7) WITTY GAMBIT THAT BACKFIRED	Carrie strutting on the catwalk during Fashion Week	Grace Slick bringing Abbie Hoffman to her Finch College reunion
(8) PRISSY DEB WITH BIG HOTEL WEDDING	Charlotte	Tricia Nixon
(9) YOU-GO-GIRL LAY SOCIOLOGIST	Carrie	Isadora Wing
(10) NO-CRAP-TAKING LAWYER CHICK	Miranda	Bernardine Dohrn
(11) IMPERIOUS BABE WHO SLEPT WITH EVERYBODY	Samantha	Linda Eastman
(12) JOCK CRUSH	Derek Jeter	Sandy Koufax
(13) EXPLETIVE-BIFURCATED MALE WAR WHOOP	"Abso- f---ing - lutely!": Big, in Episode One	"Far - F---ing - out, man!:"Crosby, Stills and Nash roadie, any time
(14) BOYFRIEND'S FAVORED FORM OF TRANSPORT	Car and driver	Marrakesh Express
(15) HOST WITH MOST	Amy Sacco	Mickey Ruskin
(16) CLOSETED HUSBAND	played by Nathan Lane; marries Bitsy in Hamptons	Jann Wenner

Girls Like Us-to-Sex and the City Dictionary

Category	Girls Like Us	Sex and the City
(1) OUTRAGE INDUCED BY:	Getting gonorrhea in Third World country	Being broken up with on a post it note
(2) PHILOSOPHICAL TRUISM	"I really don't know love at all"	"He's just not that into you"
(3) MONO-MONIKERED EMO MAN	Donovan	Berger
(4) OVERRATED CROWD-MAGNET	Woodstock	Magnolia Bakery
(5) LURKING IN BUSHES EVERYWHERE:	Narcs	Frenemies
(6) MOST INEXPLICABLE MATE-DUMP	Benjamin Braddock two-timing Elaine for Elaine's mother, Mrs. Robinson	Miranda ditching Dr. Robert Leeds (Blair Underwood) to go back with Steve
(7) MALE NOVELIST WHO INADVERTENTLY LAUNCHED THE SCENE	Leonard Cohen	Jay McInerney
(8) "SHOE" + "ADDICTION" IS A:	Non sequitur	-priori
(9) BACHELORETTE PAD MUST-HAVE	Incense owls	500-thread-count Pratesis
(10) A BRIEF HISTORY OF CHICK-GROUPS:	Gen One: The Chantels, The Cookies, The Shirelles Gen Two: The Crystals, The Ronettes, The ShanGriLas Gen Three: Martha and the Vandellas, The Marvelettes, the Supremes	Gen One: Gloria Vanderbilt, Oona O'Neill, Carol Matthau Gen Two: Mary, Rhoda and Phyllis Gen Three: Carrie, Miranda,Charlotte and Samantha
(11) CELEBRITY GIRL CRUSH	Julie Christie	Gwyneth Paltrow
(12) DEALING WITH BEING SINGLE BY CHOICE	"With a heart that's full and hollow, like a cactus tree"	With acceptance, power, camaraderie, laughter ... and a shit-load of Cosmopolitans

Comments

[tatler]

Sheila, I love the book and I want to read more of your blogging. You seem like a great person! We were writing confessional books and articles that changed the world in the 1970's. Of course we want to look good, but the consumerism advocated by the movie Sex and the City is terrible. Let's look on the bright side. Let's take it as a wake-up call--and honor our heroes: male and female. like Pete Seeger and Susan Brownmiller .

[seawolf77]

Just get married and have a mess of mealy mouthed kids who grow up to hate you. Be like everyone else. The SATC broads are as old and tired as chewed gum. Why is it today we have to watch shows that in no way reflect reality. Bunch of middle aged women talking about blowjobs. This is worse than Freinds or Seinfeld. At least with Seinfeld you could feel superior to George and Kramer and get an occasional laugh. After watching SATC for the last few years, I KNOW i don't have a chance. Who the hell are these people?

[Dlynne14]

Sheila,
I read your book. I LOVED it. It was amazing and it said so much about these three very talented, women who blazed a hard road to the top in an environment that was not woman friendly. They are all my heros for different reasons, but I enjoyed reading about Joni the most. She was my life line when I was coming of age in the early 70's. I still listen to her music today and love it even more.
Thank you for writing such an informative book. It was not just about these three great women, it was about how they affected a generation and made such a difference to so many other women.
Sad thing is, i never got to see any one of them live in concert!