April 19, 2004
Another Dumb 'Blonde' Joke
I spent this first weekend of glorious spring weather very productively — I read Plum Sykes's novel Bergdorf Blondes. I couldn't put the idiotic thing down, it completely took over my life for about 36 hours. I have to say I'm glad to be rid of "Moi" the nameless fashion magazine writer and her department store heiress best friend, Julie Bergdorf, but I found our time together illuminating in a few ways. Things I need now to be a real New York girl, apparently: a Bellini at Chip's (that Cipriani's to you mere mortals), a ride in a private jet and a pair of $325 Chloé jeans.
Actually, my big problem with this book is not the excess of just-this-moment fashion references and rampant consumerism, that's what I would expect from Plum Sykes. After all one time in the pages of Vogue, she taught me how to order a custom-made Burberry trench coat. No, its the utterly unlike-ability of the main character that you find all over the chick lit genre and is particularly bad in Bergdorf Blondes which raised my ire. Why am I supposed to identify with "Moi" or even smile at her as I stand behind her in line for a Magnolia cupcake? Like me, she's a New York girl but her actions are consequence-free. She makes dumb mistake after another in terms of men, with zero ramifications. She doesn't really have to work at her job, yet she's not fired. She lives in a West Village apartment where sometimes she doesn't pay the rent in favor of a new pair of Manolos. She's not torn about these hypocrisies, she doesn't question her charmed existence. That's not even the dramatic focus of the novel's plot. Not that I'm asking my chick lit to try to save the world here, I just want even a smidge of Bridget Jones attempting to be a good, productive person, even though the impulse still remains to stay home with a box of Milk Tray. Novels like Bergdorf Blondes can be entertaining in a way (a "sure saketinis nourish" way), but the idea that living so selfishly could be as desirable in the real world as Sykes makes it, is particularly icky to me.
The best part of the book for me though was the critic quotes on the back, in particular the one from Sykes's boss and fashion publishing icon Anna Wintour, Vogue's editor-in-chief. She declares, "Perfectly pitched — playful, funny, satirical, and sweet. I laughed out loud many times." Upon reading this, I conjured up the image of Anna sitting in her perfectly appointed room, while wearing a flower print Prada skirt and those huge sunglasses, reading the white volume and laughing out loud. Many times. Thinking about the silence of that glamorous room punctuated by Anna laughing audibly, not just once, but many times, made the 312 pages well worth that vitamin D I have forgone over the past few days.
Of course as always, Choire Sicha of eponymous Gawker fame, got there first and he published his thoughts on the book in the New York Times yesterday. The number of exclamation points Choire found necessary to explicate the plot made me laugh out loud. Many times.
Posted by at April 19, 2004 12:04 AM
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I'm very disturbed at the idea of Anna Wintour laughing. My favorite part of Choire's piece was "In fact, 'Bergdorf Blondes' makes 'Sex and the City' resemble a carefully constructed anarcho-feminist critique of capitalist society."
Am I the only one who thinks Choire is at his best NOT on Gawker? That review is amazing, and his breastfeeding piece on The Morning News was hilarious!
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