Big Books Issue 2005

More information about the Baltimore Book Festival.

Shame on you if you’re more familiar with Sarah Jessica Parker than the original cosmo-swiller, Big-lover herself, Candace Bushnell. Bushnell wrote the dating/drinking Sex and the City column for the New York Observer in the early 1990s, compiled a book of the same, and sold the rights to her column and book to HBO in 1996 for $60,000—minutes before it became an identifiable, however slight, fantasy for single women everywhere. She has since found her niche as the author of 4 Blondes and Trading Up, novels that continue the story of New York’s girls in high heels. Now in her mid-40s and married for the last three years, Bushnell focuses Lipstick Jungle, out this month, on career women who work harder than they fuck and find they’re butting heads against a glass ceiling, not a pair of Mr. Big’s balls. This genuine girl’s girl hits the Baltimore Book Festival Sept. 23-25 to discuss and sign but talked to us with her cigarette-smoky voice from New York.

City Paper: Lipstick Jungle has been called a grown-up version of Sex and the City. Do you agree?

Candace Bushnell: Yeah, I do, I do. Sex and the City was really about thirtysomethings and Lipstick Jungle is about fortysomethings. Of course, the characters aren’t the same—they’re married—but they’re like the characters in Sex and the City. They’re very much indicative of a certain kind of woman who lives in New York.

CP: Do you think that you’re maturing at the rate of your characters?

CB: I hope so. I don’t feel that mature sometimes. (laughs) I feel like I should be a little more mature. I’m in my mid-40s, so it’s more interesting for me to write about women in their mid-, early-mid-40s.

CP: Your earlier characters use relationships to forward their careers, or their relationships almost are their careers, while the characters in Lipstick are working on their careers while trying to hold on to their relationships.

CB: I think that’s absolutely true.

CP: When it comes to love and life, is it possible to have it all?

CB: I think the key is to decide what you want, and it’s so funny, because no one asks men if they can have it all. The problem is so indicative that we would even ask that question of women. You can certainly have lot of things. Can you have a huge career, can you be married to Mr. Big, and can you have kids? Probably not. Can you have a huge career and can you have children? Yes. I know lots of women that do. Are you going to be married to Mr. Big? Probably not. And if you’re married to Mr. Big, you’re probably not going to have a career, because being married to Mr. Big is your career. I feel like I have it all, but I don’t have kids. But I’m happy with that decision. I think there are plenty of women that don’t work and take care of their kids. That can be having it all, too.

CP: It seems the three characters in Lipstick Jungle have worked their asses off, have found success, and are happiest working.

CB: I think the reality is that they enjoy their work and love what they do. I think that Nico’s really happy when she’s with her daughter. Wendy has all those issues at home with her husband. But what I see here is women who have a real passion and excitement for their work, and to me, when Sex and the City first came out, people said women don’t have sex like that and they don’t talk about sex. That simply wasn’t true. I think again, this is a situation where we’re saying women aren’t happy with their careers and they don’t talk about work. That simply isn’t true. One thing that inspired the book was I noticed about five years ago [that] my friends and young women spend more time talking about their careers than they do about relationships. They spend more time talking about their triumphs at work, their problems at work, their goals, their ambitions. And you have to remember, New York City is a place where we see women who are super-successful.

CP: Even Victory, in Lipstick Jungle, a fashion designer, is told she won’t see any successful women fashion designers.

CB: I think unless you live in New York and unless you are in the fashion business, you wouldn’t put those two things together, but it’s really true. Most successful designers are men. And for the women who are fashion designers it’s a struggle to be taken seriously. Although everyone is really making clothes for women, the fashion business is oddly a little bit sexist.

CP: The women in Lipstick Jungle didn’t have body issues, although Wendy was worried about her sagging breasts.

CB: You know what? It happens. [laughs] And you know she was saying that maybe she would get implants, but she never would. I think when you don’t need to get your self-esteem from male approval, when you get self-esteem from inside and from the work that you do and the contributions that you make, you don’t need to worry about your body that much. Most of the women who I know that are successful, yeah, they’ll exercise and they do whatever, but at a certain point, it’s not the most important thing on their list. You know, you are what you are.

CP: With some of your books, characters continue to move on and to grow through your novels, like Janey Wilcox, now in in three of your novels.

CB: Exactly.

CP: So do you think that Carrie Bradshaw would have ended up a character in one of your novels had she not gotten her own TV show?

CB: Probably. Once you have a character that goes on TV or appears in a movie, people then associate the character so much with the actress.

CP: Who would you want to play you in a biography of your life?

CB: I never even thought that anyone would make a biography of my life, so I guess it if were a biography it would have to be me. [laughs] I have never really thought about that it. I have no idea. I do sometimes think about who would play the characters in Lipstick Jungle, and I think there are so many actresses out there who could play those characters.

CP: And these characters are in pretty good parts of their careers.

CB: One thing that’s hard to realize when you’re in your 30s, because I didn’t realize this when I was in my 30s, I thought I wanted to be really successful and I’ve got to keep working, but I don’t know if I’m ever going to get there. Should I give up? Am I doing the right thing? If you stick with it, when you’re in your 40s things really start to come together. People kind of don’t tell women that. A career is kind of like a marriage: There’s times when it’s bad and it’s just about not giving up.

CP: Do you think love works the same way? Like when you’re in your 40s things eventually smooth out?

CB: Things do get easier when you get into your 40s. You just know yourself so much better, and when you’re younger you always want to try on different personas. You know, maybe if I’m like that person, maybe I’ll be happy. When you get to be a little bit older, you’re more accepting of, well, I’m this way and that’s it. That’s usually when you do find the right guy.

CP: How did you manage to find a straight New York City Ballet principal dancer, and is it true you asked him if he was gay when you first met him?

CB: No.

CP: I totally found that quote on the web.

CB: No. [laughs] I mean, of course you have to ask that question, probably half of the male dancers are gay. On the other hand, half of them are straight. And, believe me, I figured out pretty quickly [laughs] that my husband was straight. It really wasn’t too much of a question.

CP: Was doing Wickedly Perfect any kind of fun?

CB: Oh, I loved that show, but they cut us down to like two minutes. We had so much fun. Well, the truth is we were laughing all the time, and the crazy thing was when they did those parties we had to drink. So after a couple of hours, we were like, whoo-hoo.

CP: Is fashion as important to you as it was 10 years ago?

CB: Ten years ago I really would find myself a little bit in that mind-set, for instance, that Janey Wilcox has in Trading Up. Janey always feels like if she has the right shoe, or the right handbag, or the right skirt that she’s OK.

CP: It was like armor.

CB: It was like armor for her. And I’ve loved fashion since I was a kid. I don’t feel like, oh, I have to the have the latest bag. It’s weird, yes, I like to have a nice handbag, but I don’t care if people see me with the same handbag. You know, I don’t have the time.

CP: I like how Nico wore Victory’s suits almost as a uniform in Lipstick Jungle.

CB: Those three women dress in different ways. Nico, I would love to dress like Nico, you just get it all made, it’s all kind of the same, it’s consistent. You know what you’re going to put on every day. No fuss. It fits perfectly. Victory, of course, is kind of the independent, noncorporate person, so she would dress much more creatively. And Wendy [laughs] just tries to wear something clean.

CP: Are you working on a something now?

CB: Yeah, well, I haven’t starting writing it yet, but I’m thinking about it. I’ll start writing it soon.

CP: What’s your favorite cocktail?

CB: Ummmmm, you know I do like a nice glass of pink Champagne.

CP: So when you’re in Baltimore, would you like to have a cocktail after the Book Festival?

CB: (laughs) Let’s do it.

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