of manolo’s and girlfriends

Thursday, June 5, 2008

Saturday night saw me, Angel, Pat, and Queen Bee sashaying down Manhattan with Carrie, Miranda, Samantha, and Charlotte.  It’s been a while since I went on a movie date with the girls and what better flick to bond over than Sex and The City?

Four years after HBO decided to end the hit series, SATC fanatics clamored to see how it would translate onto the big screen.  It was just actually your typical SATC episode.  Only this time, the love and sex tales of these Manolo-clad New York hotties are told in two and a half hours.  

An excerpt from an article on Newsweek.com perfectly describes why we, girls, go gaga over the fab four’s escapades:

 

"…when ‘Sex and the City’ arrived, so many women in their 20s and 30s clustered around their TV screens and cheered. They had been waiting almost 200 years for it. The spindly-limbed, dirty-talking, loyal friends were thinner, wealthier and better dressed than most of us, but in their clumsy, often difficult relationships, their honest searching for love, their fear of suburban drudgery, their discomfort with conventional ways of living with and relating to men, we saw ourselves."

-Julia Baird, Girls Gone Mild

 

The Fab Four.  (L-R) Charlotte, Carrie, Miranda, and Samantha.

 

Less than halfway into the film, I cried.  Not so much because Big (spoiler ahead!) left Carrie at the altar but because I was moved by how protective her friends were.  They were like hitmen ready to pounce on any guy who trashes her heart.

And I realized, more than Carrie’s walk-in closet (in the huge condo unit she and Big were supposed to move in), it’s her friendship with Miranda, Samantha, and Charlotte that every girl feels drawn to.

That’s when I thought I have something that could give Carrie a run for her money.

I don’t have Manolo Blahniks I could strut in (the most expensive pair of shoes I have are from Charles & Keith), nor do I have racks and racks of designer clothes and bags (70% of my beauties, I buy from tiangges), or money that would allow me to treat my best friends to a four-day vacation at a five-star hotel in Mexico.  But I do have girlfriends who would hold my hair up while I’m barfing because the goddam Cocomangas shooters wasted me big time, girlfriends who would buy me a case of empty softdrink bottles to hurl against the beachbreak because I’m mad at the world, the same friends who would rush to Conspiracy because my boyfriend broke up with me and I was downing scotch like there was no tomorrow, or would scold me for dating an ass but hug me anyway and treat me to dinner after the ass leaves me to find another victim, girlfriends who would solicit bente-bente for lunch with me because I only have 50 bucks to my name ‘til the next sweldo, and girlfriends who would defend my honor even if it meant breaking a nail or two.

And the best part of it all?  I’m willing to do the same for them.

 My then "Board of Directors."  Taken at a surprise dinner cooked up by the girls during my birthday last April 1, 2006.  (L-R)  Ami, Ces, April, Ate Ains, Djong, Koryn, Pat, and Angel.

 

 

We’ve had the worst fights.  Some of them left a permanent dent on the friendship.  But we’re working on it.

Years into the friendship, I now know that I don’t need them in my life.  I WANT them in it.  Because what’s sadder than having to go through life without ever experiencing love is having to go through it without friends.  And I can rival mine against Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte anytime

 My bitches from Smart.  (L-R)  Abby, Jean, Koryn, Tin.  Taken at Rockwell during a one-hour escape from the corporate jungle.

 

—–

"Carrie Bradshaw did not answer questions about finding love and meaning outside marriage—she just asked them. She simply allowed us into her confusion, and reflected our own. And for this, women will travel thousands of miles to the house of a fictional character and cry when they see it. Perhaps the key to the show’s longevity is that, in grappling with the fact that it is impossible to predict, control or tame our hearts, it’s good to know we have company."

 

 

And I find solace in the thought that the next time a guy messes with me, I have someone who’ll do a Charlotte and tell him, “I curse the day you were born!”  Big tummy or none ;)