I wouldn't say I'm a part of the Sex and the City generation, but I've experienced the tail end of the whole spectacle. Sex and the City troubles me as I'm confused by what these women symbolize in our culture. They certainly aren't run of the mill women, women who don't dress up in designer clothes every day and don't go out every night. The show definitely targets upper-middle class women, and I'd like to delve into all of the stuff, things, messages, ideas, etc... that I see in the Sex and the City television series and movies. The women are not domestic at all, they're independent, and live on their own most of the time. They're all working, as a publicist, an author/columnist, a lawyer, and an art gallery manager. They wear beautiful clothes constantly, and go out almost every night. While these women seem like single ladies living it up in New York, they're constantly talking about men and show an extreme reliance on having men around. These independent women are miserable when they haven't found the one, and then they're miserable when they have. They certainly face problems that seem endemic to the female gender or actually anyone mixing and mingling and settling down in a modern world. They worry about weight, and image, and they've addressed the subject of STDs, cancer, and other worries that often appear in an adult's life, (or that I assume appear in the lives of adults). The independence that Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha demonstrates is decidedly temporary. They live for the future men in their lives, and look forward to settling down and living their lives with a partner, usually a financially stable one. Even Samantha, who is by far the most free-spirited and least likely to settle down of them all, ends up spending five years in a monogamous relationship with a movie star before breaking free and getting back to her man-eating ways.

The one thing they never seem to worry about is money. They live decadent lives that are stable. Their apartments are beautiful, their clothes flawless, and constantly regenerating. They eat out every meal at fancy restaurants and attend over-the-top events. Money, something that dictates the lives of most Americans, even those in the middle class, doesn't even come up in the show. It's easy to absorb oneself into the narrative and sparkle, but there is one key thing missing in these women's lives, the worry about money.

Another interesting part of this television show is how the writers address the topic of children and the roles children play in a woman's life. Children in Sex and the City are like accessories. They don't get in the way of all the glamour. In the first movie, Lily, Charlotte's adopted daughter sits around while they discuss "grown up" stuff and then answers a phone call by saying "sex." She clearly has spent a lot of time sitting with the women as they discuss what they almost never stop discussing. In the trailer for the second Sex and the City movie, Carrie tells Lily that their lives are like the Princess Jasmine, except "with cocktails." Domestic life doesn't disallow Miranda and Charlotte, who have children, from traveling to Abu Dhabi for a major vacation in the second movie, even as Charlotte complains about how overwhelming motherhood is. Middle class women can't fly to Abu Dhabi with a bunch of girlfriends on a whim, and it seems questionable that the rest of them, who are not stay at home mothers but who work, are able to free themselves from their lives as easily.

I'm wondering how Sex and the City contributes to the idea of the New York woman and her life in the city that pervades my generation's goals and plans for the future. For starters, let's say that four normal, real girls were able to secure the jobs that the women in Sex and the City are lucky enough to have. They probably wouldn't be able to afford the apartments that these women have, in such great locations, and the clothes, nor would they so readily meet men of such different backgrounds. Working women in New York seem to be very busy, and probably mingle primarily with men in their offices or in their trade. My friend's sister works as a second year lawyer in New York, and works from 6 to 10 some days. She doesn't get to go out to parties or balls every night, and while she has a beautiful new apartment, she doesn't have a relationship and hasn't met many people since moving to New York from Yale law school. So many girls dream of ending up in New York one way or another, whether it's as an actor or singer or a lawyer or doctor. I have many friends who aspire to life after college in New York. They literally dream of things found in Sex and the City, of glamorous parties, and fashion shows. Two times at Andover, I've had friends compare a group of people to the women from Sex and the City. Freshman year I was Charlotte, this year I'm Samantha. I have little in common with the women, yet at some point someone thought I had "mannerisms" like Charlotte, and looked like Samantha and these things instantly secured a spot for me in the Sex and the City fantasy. A lot of my friends will probably end up wealthy, like these girls, and will end up with wonderful jobs, but they aren't going to fall into them after Andover.

At Andover, we've spent four years as very privileged people. Our parents give us monthly allowances so that we can go into Boston, and go downtown. We have activities planned and paid for us by the school, and we live in a beautiful place surrounded by people who are intelligent and thoughtful and push us to think for ourselves and to think about the world. When we look into the future it looks like it'll be similar to the life we live now in terms of financial stability and intellectual pursuits, yet that just doesn't seem to be realistic. My parents will absolutely cut me off after medical school. They've dropped a small fortune on Andover and on the programs I chose to do my upper year, and I imagine will continue to spend a lot on me so that I can pursue the education I want. They're amazing people for paying so willingly for everything I've wanted to do in my life, and I would feel quite strange packing up after college or med school and going to New York and continuing to live off of their money to maintain a privileged lifestyle until I get off the ground. There's no way I'd be able to get to New York and immediately start living a life of glamour like the women from Sex and the City. We girls also seem to forget that these women are not in their twenties. One of the main things that plagued Carrie in early Sex and the City was turning 30. They've had eightish years to make money and settle down, but we never saw the studio apartments or the late night jobs and takeout dinners. Shows such as Gossip Girl further glamorize the New York lifestyle, as the characters who have just graduated from high school, all live and work in New York and live luxurious lives. They are openly wealthy and privileged though, and overtly mooch off of their parents, so it's a little less conceivable that we would ever live their lives. With Sex and the City we've seem to have been convinced more that we'll be able to live a life like this. Sex and the City women don't talk about how lucky or abnormal their lives are. Noooo, they're normal girls. Sure, they're incredibly fashionable and gifted, but in the end, they're just a group of gals trying to find love in the Big Apple. Even with all of my qualms and concerns about a dream like this, I still want to end up in New York. The glamour means less to me, as I hate wearing high heels and would do terribly released upon high society, but I want an exciting life. More than anything these women seem cosmopolitan and happy. Even with all their man troubles, everything turns out okay. Since they all have different careers and personalities, it seems conceivable that anyone can find a life like theirs in New York. I want to be a doctor, and I know I have many 21 hour days ahead of me and years of working holidays, but I would love to do it in a city where dreams come true, and be surrounded by interesting people. The myth of Sex and the City is a dangerous one, as it sets up any middle class girl to believe that a wonderful life in New York City is attainable no matter your hair color or shoe size or career. Faludi's theses that in post-911 America there has been a pull back to the house is represented in Sex and the City as well. Even though in the first few seasons none of them settled down, now they're all looking to settle down and have children. Sure, they don't represent the family with three kids living in the burbs that seems to be representative of the post-911 family mold, but they represent the desire to be domestic that has been sparked in women in America. None of these girls are feminists. The closest one to a feminist was Miranda, who ended up taking her cheating husband back, and settling back down in her family based life. In one episode Carrie and Samantha even go to a firefighter's gala on an island at which firefighters of the town will model for the guests. They end up meeting firemen and having a great time, and in the episode there are women oozing over the firefighters. I see a lot of Susan Faludi's theses manifested in Sex and the City, even behind its facade of individuality and free-spiritedness.

I look around my room and see accents of colors amongst the muted tones I usually prefer to decorate my room in. My bedspread is a very pale blue-gray, the furniture I brought from home brown and white. I don't really see any pink in my room. I don't see magenta or baby pink or floral colors involving every shade of pink, yet I feel as if I'm expected to love pink. I have nothing against pink, it's a perfectly nice color, but I wouldn't pick a pink shirt over another color except for maybe olive green, and I certainly wouldn't want to decorate my room in pink. Pink is one of many things I feel I'm supposed to identify with as a girl attending Andover. I have shirts from sports teams and dorms that always have pink on them. The senior girls pinnies many girls have ordered for the spring are bright pink. Of course, girls are expected to identify with pink across the globe, but something about living in a dorm emphasizes for me all the things I'm expected to be as a girl. My room is decorated with scarves, flags, and a map of Maine. People come in my room, and remark on how sparse it is. They wonder how I can live in a room so bereft of color and wall hangings. In fact, my map of Maine brings me more comfort than I could ever get from an extra stuffed animal or posters of dreamy boys all over my wall. The happiest times of my young life took place in Maine last year during my year away from Andover, and I feel warmed by the site of the tiny little Chewonki campus on the broad expanse that is the coast of Maine. The flag of the bahamas I have hanging above my bed reminds me of Island School and all the peace I found there, but I feel as if my room is viewed as a sparse and cold place for its lack of fuzzy, furry or heavily muscled things. My friends who remark on my sparsely or inadequately decorated room have pictures of bunnies and models posing amongst balloons and posters of Twilight characters on their walls. Some of them have cards from their parents and boyfriends and one has a James Dean poster, but in general when I go into their rooms I'm confronted by lots and lots of random things. Many of the things mean nothing, some random bunny in an advertisement for ice cream doesn't mean anything. James Dean could hardly mean something to us as we weren't even alive for his career, fame, and life. A lot of their bed spreads are pink and green, and an abundance of pillows can be found heaped on the beds. I had an allergy attack sitting on one of their beds, as the pillows were stuffed with some kind of weird pillow stuffing, and my friend said that that happened to her often. I asked why she left all the pillows on there, and she said because they were comfy and they looked nice. Im perplexed by this desire to openly show ones ability to be comforted by nice things, even nice, generic things infused with little meaning.

Having an allergy attack while leaning on an ornately decorated floral covered pillow must have a lower comfort level than leaning on a normal rectangular, pillow-cased pillow. Seeing pictures of family members or things that mean something to us is more comforting and homey than pictures of random animals and men right? I'm confused by this trend and why I feel the need to fluffisize and pink-out my room. In some ways our rooms are the only way we can distinguish ourselves amongst the rest of the forty girls in the dorm. Is the decorating a way to show other girls that we live up to the standards of comfort and coziness that girls are expected to cultivate? With things such as clothes and makeup, boys are often who we target our appearance to, but why do we feel our rooms need to be so dang pretty. What are we even trying to prove? Sure, Andover is a stressful place and going home to a comfortable room is an important part of unwinding, but why is our idea of comfort apparently so homogenized? Of course, a soft fluffy pillow is comfortable physically but why are cutouts of other people and other people's animals comforting? Why is seeing the picture of a while attractive, completely unknown to us actor? What about throw pillows that cause allergies is comfortable? If we decorate our rooms in this way in order to stand out, why do our rooms look so similar?

When one of my friends entered my room, he immediately commented on how it was so "artsy," as if I was trying to appear to not be like other girls. I immediately asked him what he meant, partly because I was angry at being accused of trying to be "artsy," and partly because I was interested in what he thought made a girl's room. He pointed out that I had a throw at the end of my bed, something that only "chicks" would have, and said that all the shelves I had with clothes was a girly thing, as well as having all my shoes lined up against the wall. Apparently, girls are supposed to be organized and neat? The "throw" at the end of my bed is a ratty old blanket I had from camp that my mom brought me after I woke up with what felt like ice cubes in my blood in November. I needed that throw, it wasn't about show. He pointed out how the lack of bright colors and wall decorations made it seem like I was trying not to be a girl, but all the neat stuff was indicative of my gender and gave away my real persona. Wall decorations? I have a map and a flag, as well as some dark colored silk scarves hanging on my walls. Apparently, he expected "pictures of dudes and flowers." Alright...

When I google, "pottery barn teen," above is what I found. Pottery Barn kids elicits:

If teenage girl are being told their rooms should look like the first two, and mothers are being told that their little girls' rooms should look like this, no wonder the pink, plush, fluffy girls room has become such a staple in girls dormitories at Andover. We are the Pottery Barn generation. No one knits their own bedding anymore, and more often than not it's easiest to order an entire bedroom on Pottery Barn than worry about picking out disparate parts and bringing them together in a bedroom. Bedrooms are meant to be slept in but we treat them as some extension or expression of who we are, yet we seem to cheat and buy all the same stuff from one store. Do we decorate our rooms like this to escape criticism and give the illusion of fitting in? Is it easiest to just not attract attention to our rooms by decorating with other things? A Pottery barn bedroom is a luxury, so is furnishing our rooms like those above a sign of status? I wonder if Pottery Barn sales went up after 911, when there was a shift back towards conventional families. Pottery Barn is "modern," it's furniture made of new materials, but its advertisement display images of families coming together, and kids who spend time alone in these ads, are spending it in the rooms their moms decked out for them with everything they'd possibly need or want. The families in the ads are perfect, the parents give their kids their own bedrooms, yet they all end up coming together as a family. They balance the modern movement of children away from the home, towards independence at a younger age, and keeping family values of trust and loyalty alive. Do we buy furnishings like these for ourselves and our kids because we really believe they're the best, the most adept at creating a truly comfortable place to live or because we believe it creates a comfortable landscape, capable of giving off the illusion of pure domestic bliss. What is true American comfort? What do Americans value when we want to relax?