Style Counsel EMMA
REGULAR readers will be well aware of my love for Sarah Jessica Parker.
You may also remember that I very recently dedicated a whole column to And Just Like That... her new Sex and the City reboot, which premieres next month.
But this week the 56-year-old came out with words so inspiring, that I make no apologies for writing about her again.
In case you haven’t heard, the actress is US Vogue’s December cover star. On it she looks utterly radiant in a fairy tale Dolce & Gabbana gown, her signature balayaged blonde hair pulled back in a ballerina bun.
In the accompanying interview, SJP takes aim at some of the criticism that has been levelled at the show before a single episode has even aired.
Criticism that centres not around the writing or the plot but about the women’s ages.
And, shock, horror... the fact that the actresses don’t look how they did 20 years ago.
Sarah Jessica told Vogue: “There’s so much misogynist chatter in response to us that would never. Happen. About. A. Man. Grey hair, grey hair, grey hair. ‘Does she have grey hair?’... Especially on social media. Everyone has something to say. ‘She has too many wrinkles, she doesn’t have enough wrinkles.’”
She adds: “It almost feels as if people don’t want us to be perfectly okay with where we are, as if they almost enjoy us being pained by who we are today, whether we choose to age naturally and not look perfect, or whether you do something if that makes you feel better. I know what I look like. I have no choice. What am I going to do about it? Stop ageing? Disappear?”
If I were religiously inclined I would be yelling ‘Amen!’ at that speech.
And yet I feel a twinge of guilt because I would be lying if I said I hadn’t pored over the on-set paparazzi photos of Sarah Jessica – shot in the unforgiving New York daylight – and found myself smiling.
Not in a schadenfreude kind of way, but because I am overjoyed to actually see a fiftysomething woman look like a real fiftysomething woman, not a puffed-up alien or a phtotoshopped avatar, in a hit TV show.
She doesn’t have to tell me that she knows what she looks like for me to know that Sarah Jessica is perfectly okay with where she is, or she wouldn’t have signed up to return to a TV series that attracts the sort of scrutiny usually reserved for presidential candidates’ tax returns.
But what lifts my spirits even more is to see her looking fabulous once again in Carrie’s designer clothes; the sort of clothes that women have been conditioned to think are ‘not appropriate’ once we hit middle age.
There is much talk these days about people wanting to ‘see’ themselves reflected in the TV shows and films we watch.
At 43, I am a few years behind SJP and her co-stars but one day I will be 55, 56, 57... and older I hope! And I want to see women that age looking sexy, glamorous... silly, overthe-top even.
I want to see them wearing bright colours, too many accessories and shoes as high as their feet can manage.
Judging by those aforementioned paparazzi pictures that is exactly what And Just Like That... has got in store.
It’s almost enough to make me rush out and buy a
pink tutu.