Responding to a story about the craze for surgical virginity restoration making news in China, a commenter writes:
I got a distinct group of female friends of friends in their 30’s. Some of them have racked up huge numbers of notches on the bed posts. Reputations and stories have been established.
Just how understanding should a guy be in this Sex and the City culture?
While they are nice people (at least to my face), they spend money freely on superficial things, are still immature (catty, taste in men), and act like Prince Charming is going to overlook everything.
My friends who are good guys don’t want to date them.
It hasn’t helped that getting to that old maid stage with no prospects for marriage has made them a bit more crazy.
No surgery can undo damage to reputations.
***
Multiply that comment by… what? 10,000? 100,000?
I can think of three women I’ve known over the last 10+ years who fit that description almost word for word: The spending. The “Prince Charming.” The “bit more crazy.”
The one bit that really stands out is “nice.”
All these women were nice. Great listeners who remembered to ask about your sick relative. Really thoughtful, about everything from sending sympathy cards to picking out that perfect birthday or shower gift, and grabbing donuts on the way to work because we all had that long 9AM meeting to sit through.
All very smart. Got your jokes. Didn’t think “somebody shot Ted Kennedy!”
In Toronto, these are the single girls who book (half) their vacation time around the TIFF, and know what the “cool” artisanal cheese and designer wedding dress and martini flavor is now, or at least, was about a month or two ago.
In many ways, from the thank-you notes and knowledge of “finer things” arcana to their impeccable manicures, these women could be living in the 1950s.
Yet they literally, deliberately, meticulously set out to imitate characters on a TV show.
If you “joked” about it to see their reaction (and remember: no one is ever “just kidding”) they acknowledged that that’s what they were doing.
At my last cubicle job, when the women weren’t obsessing about what (not) to eat for dinner, or whether or not to grab that last piece of stale birthday cake in the conference room, the chatter inevitably turned to matters Sex and the City.
Maybe feeling bad about leaving me out (see “nice,” above), one afternoon I was asked breezily, “So, Kathy! What do you think?”
My blood pressure got the better of me.
“But those women are WHORES!” I whined through gritted teeth.
So you can see why a straight office job in Toronto is not my ideal working arrangement.
PS: (Send money. Thanks!)
