The Wake

Candace Bushnell is living the American dream, or at least the 21st-century female version. For many of us, Bushnell’s success and her column-cum-TV show “Sex and the City,” looks an awful lot like what we dream about on cold, dreary days hours before a term paper is due and the motivation to write it hasn’t yet surfaced.

Shod in deep periwinkle, diamond-encrusted Manolo Blahnik mules, Bushnell swept into Coffman Union April 26th for an hour of “Sex and the Twin Cities.” Bushnell, with her signature raspy voice, instantly charmed the overwhelmingly female audience.

“Minneapolis is known to us [New Yorkers] for a couple of things — good-looking people and rehab places,” Bushnell said.

Bushnell moved to New York in the 70s, leaving Rice University in Houston after discovering feminism hadn’t reached the south yet.

Motivated by what she saw in Texas, Bushnell decided to make it o.k. for women to go out on a Friday night with just their girlfriends.

Woven in with celebrity gossip, fashion, and personal anecdotes were snippets of feminist advice.

Bushnell began writing “Sex and the City” for the New York Observer in the 90s. According to Bushnell, being female, single and in your mid-30s during the 90s was not a good thing. “Sex in the City” not only chronicled the juicy details of a New York singles lifestyle, but found an audience in women who were hungry for validation.

In an interview before the show Bushnell said, “when I started writing ‘Sex and the City’ everybody thought that single women in their 30s seriously had something wrong with them. You know there was the whole idea, ‘they’re desperate,’ ‘they’re needy,’ ‘they had baggage,’ and I was kind of saying, ‘you know I’m single and I’m in my thirties and I actually think I am o.k. And I think ‘Sex and the City’ made it o.k. to be single in your 30s.”

During the question-and-answer section Bushnell told the primarily female audience to concentrate on their careers.

“Success gives you self-actualization, I don’t think we tell young women how important success is,” Bushnell said.

Bushnell stressed that feminism is an ideal that needs to be constantly relearned.

“Feminism is absolutely necessary,” Bushnell said, stressing that after her friends in New York became successful most of them realized they didn’t need a man as much as they once thought.

Bushnell, tottering around on four-inch heals, toting a four-figure bag was living proof that women can have what they want, but it might just take a little longer. She didn’t marry until she was 43.

“Society puts so much pressure on women to get married and be part of a couple, but I don’t think you can do that until some part of you clicks and you really do feel completely whole and you actually are happy with yourself. And sometimes you don’t get to that point by the time you are 25 or 30.”