... by Snish.

The internet is a wonderful thing. Five minutes tip-tapping away at a keyboard and one click of a button, and you can call yourself anything. So you’ve written a three-thousand word rant about something on your blog; congratulations, you’re a journalist. Taken a couple of artsy black and white photographs in the local park? You’re a photographer.

All it takes to be an artist these days is to Google a picture, run it through Photoshop and print it on canvas for £21.95. Best of all, though, is the modern day author. Hypocritical, I know, given what I’m sitting down and writing... but is it wrong to expect authors to have some kind credentials? Give it twenty years and there’ll be no such thing as the modern novel to teach to English Literature students; it’ll be the “celebrity” autobiography, or the kiss-and-tell sob story.

The truth is technology has ruined all of my childhood plans. As a kid, I had it in my head that by the time I was in my early twenties, I’d be sat at a desk with a typewriter, churning out some piece of amazing fiction as I sipped my coffee and mentally planning my article for the newspaper on the side.

Even as I embarked on my trip to university, I had into my head that there would be some dignity in researching an article. No such luck. At my university alone, over 100 graduating journalism students turned out in force on September 10th 2008, complete in gowns and mortar boards. How can we all seriously expect to land our dream jobs when there’s so many vying for so few? And journos are a notoriously vicious bunch. Hiding our contact books under our pillows, sneaking glances at those of the more naive first chance we get, just waiting to chew off a lesser dog’s leg to get that job.

Anything to prevent that stop gap job stacking shelves in Sainsbury’s from turning into our – gasp – career.
And the really horrible thing is, I’m not old enough to be this disillusioned. 21 and fresh out of university with a good degree - I should be happy. But in today’s Great credit-crunching Britain (I know, I know, I’m sorry... I hate it too...), it’s hard to be optimistic. I owe £13,000 to the government through my “interest free” loan and another two-grand to the bank on my overdraft. I’ve pissed £8,000 worth of wages up a Lincolnshire wall and my journalism and photography portfolio is outdone by a 16 year old on MySpace; just what have I got to be happy about?

Four words: Sex. And. The. City.

Carrie Bradshaw makes it all okay. Carrie Bradshaw fills my head with the joys of writing. I tell myself that one day, I too will sit in my Manhattan apartment on my laptop, tip-tapping away my third book in three years. I’ll check the paper on a daily basis and see my columns, skim a selection of magazines each month and see my photos, and all the while I’ll do so dressed head-to-toe in New York’s finest fashions.

Don’t get me wrong, the hedonistic spoilt little bitch in me laps up every minute of the show, the movie. I had a housemate who had the complete series boxset on DVD, and I’d skive off uni to sulk in my pyjamas and get drunk at three in the afternoon watching it.

But deep down, I know it’s shit. When my boyfriend (incidentally, that would be the bitter and twisted Kevin) bitches about it, I defend it to the bitter end, but I know it’s bollocks. For a start, a ginger woman has somehow found someone to help her pro-create, despite the fact she's a total controlling/neurotic/obsessive/ginger whore. Nobody in the real world would fuck a Miranda. So there's the first lie. Then there's Samantha; there’s no way in hell a menopausal old hag like her would get a guy like Smith in the real world. And as for our heroine... Sarah Jessica Parker? She looks like a fucking foot.

People claimed that Friends was the TV series of a generation; Sex and the City is more apt. Life revolves around sex, not friendship. That’s not even me being cynical, that’s just how it works. It’s in our genetics, it’s in our businesses - it’s even available as voyeuristic entertainment if you’re that way inclined.
Sex sells. Sex brings people together and it rips them apart in equal measure. It causes giant controversy and it unites people. Sex is universal, requires no knowledge of language, no social status. Six years of television and three years waiting for a movie to hit cult status taught me that.

Carrie Bradshaw taught me that, and in doing so managed to sell me the Cinderella love story in the process. Even when it fell apart for her, she eventually came up smiling. She got her Mr. Big, her apartment, her job and her friends. And her friends got everything too. Families, lovers, sex-on-demand and clothes you’d kill for. 

So I drift back to the vision of me in my Manhattan apartment, with my coffee and my typing and my pad of notes and I smile. And then I look around to the dingy four-bedroom student house where six of us regularly pass out only to wake up with the pattern of our nasty brown carpet engrained on our faces and vomit on our clothes.

Some say she’s the icon for a generation of young women; how fucked up is that? Gone are the days of a talented singer, actress or business woman. Oh, no. Carrie Fucking Bradshaw, who fucks her way around Manhattan, she’s who we want to be. She’s produced a generation of girls who would rather buy Vogue than buy dinner; who will max out their credit cards on a pair of shoes instead of paying rent. And why? Because it all worked out for Carrie, so it’ll all work out for us.

For every Carrie Jr. produced, there are ten that end up living in the gutter owing thousands of pounds to faceless corporations.  For every graduating, up-and-coming author, there’re ten-dozen shelf-stackers. And the really horrible truth is that it’ll be the nice ones; the ones with morals, who refuse to sell out their friends, refuse to kiss-and-tell footballers to make a quick quid.

So fuck her. Fuck Carrie, fuck Sex and the City. Fuck discussing dildos over daiquiris, banging over brunch. Kill the foot-faced bitch, because the truth is it’s never going to happen. You can only go so long telling the five year old that the tooth fairy’s real and that a fat-bastard is flying down the fucking chimney in the middle of December.