Sex and the City: the Newer, Older, Healthy?
I was never a big fan of the show. I didn’t have HBO so most of what I saw was at friends’ houses or random episodes when it finally went into sindication on TBS. I new the girl characters and some of the guy characters, but I completely missed most of the stuff about Samantha going through chemo, and Charlotte trying to have a baby.
But, the movie did a great job of filling me in in the first five minutes, and from thereout no back story was even necessary, it was just a good movie about ladies living in New York City.
One of the most amazing things about the film was the age factor. I’ve seen movies with 40-something women before, and I’m always a touch embarrassed how the make-up artists and directors and actresses themselves try to squeeze their way down into their 20’s. They try to play younger than they are (I’m looking at you, Catherine Zeta Jones, and you too, Nicole Kidman, and even you, Jennifer Aniston, you’re no spring chicken anymore). I think this is a good part of why Hollywood doesn’t make room for the 40-somethings, because the 40-somethings aren’t acting like real 40-somethings.
But–with the notable exception of Sara Jessica Parker– the women in Sex and the City all play their age. Parker still does the girlish routine, though I suppose that’s a part of her character. However, the others act like real women in their 40’s. Samantha (can’t remember the actress’s name) shines as a woman on the cusp of 50. She’s still even got her beauty, and she wants sex as much as ever, but she’s got the stature, the dry attitude, and the personality of someone I know and like who herself is almost 50. She even chases after young men with washboard abs. The movie doesn’t lie either, they come right out and throw her a 50th birthday in one scene. There’s no age masking. And there’s no play on the woes of age. These aren’t women commiserating about not being 20. They’re women living the good new life of classic New York. The life the takes a few decades to obtain. The life of real 40-somethings.
All this talk of age has me thinking of life extension. And if there’s one sure life extension, it’s getting plenty of orac value.
