urbanmennonite.com

I have resisted mightly, strenuously even, from commenting or linking to or in any way acknowledging the article that every navel-gazing blog and meta-media commentator has been buzzing about for the last week. But I can’t resist anymore. it’s been Chinese water torture … drip, drip, drip … for seven days. And I am weak.

Plus, there’s a little movie opening today. You may have heard of it.

It’s ironic and meta that Sex and The City: The Movie hit the buzz high the same week that Emily Gould did. And even more delicious that she was on assignment from Jezebel to watch the first 5 seasons of the HBO show. And there’s lot’s to dislike about Emily (just like the SATC girls) who is, in some ways, the hipster millennium-generation Carrie Bradshaw. But amidst all the huffing and puffing, there are some very well written and poignant posts about watching a young female writer trying to make her way in a city that delights in eating its own for sport.

The story in a nutshell: young Emily skips Columbia School of Journalism for a media gossip blog. She is an oversharer. Oversharing brings page views. Oversharing brings commentators. The dependable boyfriend not so impressed. The douchebag co-worker looks sexy. The breakup. The affair. The semi-disguised acknowledgment of said affair. The personal blog with some dirty laundry aired. The breakup. The very, very public airing of laundry. The panic attacks and withdrawal. The quitting. The gawker turned into the gawked. The turning of opinion. The attempt to understand and explain and regroup. And then, wham! cultural zeitgeist. The closed comment boards, the backlash, the photographs. I mean, there’s even a meme: the creative underclass.

What does this have to do with Sex and the City? Well, we like to think that our young female oversharers end up tripping prettily through the gleaming city, finding love and happiness and friendship. It’s the eternal myth of New York. After all, SATC wasn’t so much about actual lives as about the fantasized possibilities.

And who can blame anyone for buying into that. Hell, even I didn’t let go of my “I’ll take Manhattan” fantasy until the first time I hit the city in the middle of a freezing, sleeting March week that made me feel like I had wandered onto a BladeRunner set. It made me feel tired and old and, well, just kind of crapped out and depressed about ever realizing those dreamt-of possibilities. Which oddly enough is exactly how I feel reading the his and her tales.

So here’s this young woman (and she’s young — just 26 now — three-fourths of her life ahead of her yet) and she’s throwing her hat into the air and staking her claim, making her name.

But.

We love our fake young pretty female oversharers. The real ones? We adore them. And then we hate them. And we only love them again if they leave. Or stick their heads in gas ovens.