(^22) – SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 everythingzoomer.com
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HE’S AGNOSTIC
about birthday par-
ties, the gal who
sprang Sex and the
City on the world.
Especially “dec-
ade” birthdays,
which Candace
Bushnell admits she hates “the way
I hate New Year’s Eve,” as she puts it
in her wistful new book, Is There Still
Sex in the City? “Somehow they’re
supposed to be more fun than any
other party, when in reality the best
times are always the parties that
aren’t planned, when things just
happen.”
“One of the things about 50-some-
thing birthdays,” moreover, she pos-
its, “is that people tend to forget
them. Once you pass the big five-oh,
they are not that significant. Partly
because at a certain point, you real-
ize there is not that much of a differ-
ence between 58 and 52.”
No wonder, then, that Bushnell
balked a bit when she turned 60
last December. To party – or not
to party?
Ultimately, though, after deciding
that the previous decade had indeed
portended much change (of redis-
covering old friendships and finding
new ways to have relationships, in-
cluding her own very public divorce
from her ballet dancer husband)
and that turning 60 was not unlike
“waking up from a bad dream,” as
she writes, she relented and had a
celebration. Just a small one.
“In many ways, I have never been
more content,” the authoress once
dubbed “Jane Austen with a mar-
tini” matter-of-facted when I rang
her up to talk. That is just the place
that she is at – both in life and be-
tween the pages.
Using a wickedly deadpan
okay-that-happened voice
combined with a spiky ap-
preciation for the absurd,
Bushnell has indeed re-
turned recently to the
essay form, harnessing
a genre that famously
laid the groundwork for the
pop culture pinata that was
the Sarah Jessica Parker
(as the author’s alter-
ego, Carrie
Bradshaw)-
led HBO ser-
ies over six
seasons (and,
later, two fea-
ture films). In
the book, she
muses on ag-
ing, romance,
social media, friendships, shopping
and grief, all the while covering the
gamut of age-reversing creams, va-
gina rebirths c/o something called
the Mona Lisa treatment, later-in-
life marriages, young guys who have
absorbed one too many MILF videos
and, of course, la vie en Tinder.
Referring to the latter, i.e., her
deep-dive into the culture of Tinder
in one chapter, she did agree with
me that a better title, possibly, for
her book, might just be Is There Still
Dating in the City?
“That is the big question!” she
S
Sex and the
60-Something
Zoom In Etc
Bushnell
wearing the
dress that
both she
and Sarah
Jessica
Parker ownWalk This
Way The
cast of Sex
and the City
Thank you, next. As Candace
Bushnell explores the next phase
of Sex and the City in a new book,
Shinan Govani dials in