To think Carrie Bradshaw has no redeeming qualities?

[losercruiser]

I just finished the episode where she invites Big to stay with her and Aidan in their cabin in the woods.

Now if my boyfriend cheated on me (not just a one off but had a full blown affair with a married woman) and we had got to the point where I had somehow managed to forgive him and we were trying again. If we went on a weekend break and he invited the other woman because she was having boyfriend problems and they were good friends - I'd think fuck that!

I know Aidan didnt have to put up with that but there are many other examples of her not having any redeeming qualities -

Berating Charlotte for not offering to lend her thousands of dollars.
Always talking about herself - I remember when Stanford called her out on it.
Letting Aidan propose to her when she obviously didnt want to marry him.

I specifically said there was nothing wrong with liking shoes. I just find it deeply strange that current popular culture considers an obsession with things you put on your feet part and parcel of having XX chromosomes.

Aidan was vile! A complete control freak. I hated him on sight. You knew what you were getting into with Big at least.

Burden, I don't know one woman that's obsessed with shoes. Not in their twenties or fifties. Not one.

Burren It dates before SATC. The 'women are obsessed by shoes' thing.

Burren

I wasn't really referring to you.

I wouldn't say I was obsessed by shoes but I'm keen and that came way before SATC.

I loved shoes from about age nine when I saved for a year to buy a coveted pair from France that I saw when on holiday. I also saved money for books. The two can coexist and unless you go barefoot all the time or choose your footwear blindfolded, you do care about shoes.

Being obsessed is a tad different. I don't go into debt for anything. I do not have credit cards and buy what i can afford. That may or may not include a lovely and frivolous pair of shoes .

The idea that women are obsessed with accessories (because it's bags too) flowed into popular culture (and became a stick to hit us with) as a result of the focus of the fashion industry to SELL us shoes and bags. Accessories became bigger and bigger business in the 70s and 80s, by the 90s accessories were a key source of revenue (and more importantly, profit, because the ROI on bags and shoes is HUGE) for many designers.

Blahnik 'won' accessory designer of the year in the very early 90s. The shoe thing was a thing in 'popular culture' before then.

The reason handbags, shoes, perfumes became so important to designers (and thus consumers) is due to the decline in haute couture. Designers were struggling but they had access to people with money thus Big Business got involved and underwrote them / bought them out. But they needed a quick return on their investment.

Accessories and the like awarded that return as they are a relatively inexpensive as easy 'in' to designer goods.

SinglePringle that was a masterful summary of the economics of the fashion business, thank you.

Going back to SATC, I always think that its detractors are too quick to describe it as being focussed on shoes and fashion. Any more than a cursory viewing would show them clearly that those elements were always very secondary to the character-driven storylines. And, as mentioned upthread, the scene where Miranda explains to Carrie that she has spent the equivalent of a deposit for an apartment on shoes was clearly aimed at discouraging such nonsense.

I never coveted the shoes or clothes but I was amazed how often the plotlines and moral dilemmas chimed with my own life (I was the classic single thirtysomething target audience).

God, reading it back, it sounds just a tad patronising. Not the way in which it was meant so apologies .

It was in answer to 'why and when did woman supposedly become 'obsessed' by shoes?' debate - the economic downturn of the 70' saw the rise in designer goods of the 80's and beyond.

I didn't feel patronised singlepringle

I'm involved in luxury retail too - at arm's length - and when the first person mentioned it I was going to mention perfume and make up too. I just didn't bother, but there's no reason you shouldn't have.

Selling these things keeps these companies going which preserves jobs and adds to the gaiety of nations.

I don't see it as sinister.

Where I do agree with jessie is that SATC was about much more than fashion. That's not how it started. Fashion became more of a focus later and though I didn't exactly object, I used to raise my eyebrows at the prominence given to the show's costume designer. Forget her name. Patricia Something. Odd woman. Odd clothes. Harmless enough though.

But I really hated reading knocking pieces by laddish writers who clearly hadn't watched it. Especially when in women's magazines or women's pages in papers.

There was some fat tit called Bill-something who used to specialise in bloke-views-for-the-ladies in the Mirror. It was a recurrent theme. Colossal twat.

Just get back to reading your Andy McNab books and leave me alone.

I used to wonder what was going on in the female commissioning editors' heads to commission such spiteful and lazy pieces.

SinglePringle, Limitedperiod, perhaps there should be a Mumsnet icon for "I am not being sarcastic". I was genuinely congratulating Single for summing up the economics of fashion so concisely, particularly the role and concerns of the investors; absolutely no intention whatsoever to be patronising.

Even the 'shoe shaming' episode was only superficially about 'shoes'. What it really addressed was the lack of validation a single women feels she receives in a Noah's Ark two by two world. Carrie discusses the money and time (and love) she has spent validating and celebrating the choices made by her coupled up friends- engagement parties and gifts, wedding parties and gifts, hen nights, baby showers, baby gifts etc etc. Then her sprog laden friend tries to claim that Carrie spending her own earnings on a pair of expensive shoes is somehow less valid and more frivolous than the thousands of pounds she has spent on having loads of babies. The Mother looks down upon the child free women.

Carrie is absolutely right when she asks when do we celebrate the decisions of a single woman let alone value her as equal to women who child bear?

'Carrie is absolutely right when she asks when do we celebrate the decisions of a single woman let alone value her as equal to women who child bear?'

If I'd have been the friend who sent her the 'Congratulations on being single' gift I'd have been straight on the phone once she'd married Big doing a face.

it's about celebrating rites of passage though. A lot of them are of the match hatch and dispatch category, but there are lots of career celebrations too. Didn't the show open with Carrie's friends' celebrating her new column in the newspaper and the ad on the bus? That's a big life moment, buying shoes isn't.
I recognise it's the symbolism you are getting at.

I agree with Kudzugirl!

perhaps there should be a Mumsnet icon for "I am not being sarcastic"

You're right JessieMcJessie. We can apply it to me,too. I don't like to do a because it appears that I'm taking the piss.

I often think that when I'm driving too. I was crossing the road yesterday and nearly got run over. Completely my fault. Apologised. The person who had to screech to a halt waved: 'okay, thanks' and drove off.

The git who'd nearly driven into the back of him because he wasn't paying attention either, pulled up at the kerbside and gave me the full hairdryer treatment.

There was nowhere I could go except keep saying: 'I said I'm sorry.'

Git.

But we all have certain moments- career moments, birthdays and we all die. Carrie's point was that their is very little to celebrate the non procreative single woman and that slagging off a woman for buying shoes (or anything she darn well pleases) when others are busy populating an over populated planet, spending and consuming all those extra resources and expecting her to buy them baby shower gifts.

It is a valid point about hypocrisy. As for her marrying eventually- well none of us can see into the future and the point was that by her mid thirties she had spent thousands of dollars validating and celebrating the life choices of her married friendss

Jessie and Limited thanks! for better reasons! .

It's something I'm fascinated by - media's role in holding up a mirror and reflecting ourselves back to ourselves. Is fashion / popular culture created by the media and held up as a desire to the masses or is media (in all it's forms) merely representing and reflecting our desires? And where does business sit within that? Are we ever able to make up our own minds or are we constantly following a dictated path?

Which came first, the fashion or the egg?!

I love the fact that SATC allows us to have such discussions. For all that it was seen as 'fluff' TV (not a position I agree with), it proposed exactly this kind of debate - both within the show and around it. It was clever stuff.

How exactly would a friend validate your being single?
Carrie herself would have to instigate it, like a bride instigating a wedding invite.

I do agree with you btw I am just wondering about the practicalities!

*and I include fashion as 'media' for at it's highest end, it's art and what is worn in the High Street is a diluted version of that art (remember the brilliant speech by the Meryl / the Editor in The Devil Wears Prada?).

Except when designers rob street fashions and make them designer! See - which came first again?! And Carrie was all about combining high end and high street. And she most definitely saw fashion as art!

I too agree with Kazugirl! And it's no coincidence that SATC was dealing with the the lives of single women at a time when there were / are more single women on the planet than ever before.

And as so how to validate the life and choices of a single woman is to not 'shoe shame' her.

Kudzugirl that was indeed a brilliant episode. SinisterSal if I recall correctly at the end of it she did indeed send out invitations to some sort of "celebrate me I'm single" shower.

That's just manners surely. It's not specific to being single or whatever