SATC 12 Years Hence: Part 2

Note: Had to break up the original post. It was too long, even for me.

Incidentally, a few days after finishing the book, aesa pointed me to a little interview on the National Public Radio, by girl blogger eM, who is famous for her SATC lifestyle in Mumbai, and a book she has written detailing a fictitious account of the same. The programme was an interview with three bloggers, from Mumbai, London and Shanghai, who are apparently changing the world.

eM goes first, so while you're starting to get suspicious that she sounds real lame and actually makes her own city sound lame ('bombay's a great city. but only for young people'), its only until you hear the bits with the other two super-bloggers from London and Shanghai, that you get the frivolousness of interview #1.

One line particularly stands out:
'yes, this is the kind of people there are in the country. Get used to it'

Its true. But that's not saying anything. There are a billion people in India. You'll find people in India living in every which way. Some people in India have always lived like that. You mean to say there was no smoking, drinking and sex in India in the 70s, 80s and 90s? No, there was no blogging in those days, so outside of the measly single digit number percentage that 'lived like that', the rest had to get through the daily struggle of life in a complex, developing country and let Hindi Films color their imagination as to what the elite do. Now those excluded from that party, have access to the internet and are insufferably curious, be it with a disapproving or aspirational attitude, about a girl who sits in her room, in her bra and boy-shorts, and blogs about her night out. What a revolution.

I don't disapprove of her lifestyle or anything. As in the case of the Sex and the City series, its just annoying when emptiness is so glamorized. In fact, its actually misogynistic as reflected by critic Stacey D'Erasmo:

'The new girl, tottering on her Manolo Blahniks from misadventure to misadventure, embodies in her very slender form the argument that feminism is not only over, it has also failed: look how unhappy the 'liberated' woman is!'