Happily Ever After

Last night I watched Sex and the City (I know, me and 80 gazillion other Americans). I have watched the show on and off again for the last few years, and there's enough information in the papers to keep up with storylines. The characters are truly great characters, each individuals and the writing is some of the best on TV. So, I was curious about how a show that is about women trying to cope with being single and still secretly looking for love would end. This isn't the most popular theme -- a lot of people poke fun at romance novels because they believe "happily ever after" is not reality. And that fiction should be "realistic". Ha! What a piece of...fiction.

In the last episode, all four women had found love AND happiness. And I gotta admit, it was the most satisfying ending, however, did the writers sell out their intial premise? Can a woman truly "come of age" without a man? Do we measure our accomplishments in terms of the sexual/maternal only? Perhaps that explains the current trend of a "kick-butt" heroine: Buffy, Xina, Anita Blake, the girl from Alias (sorry, don't watch the show). Perhaps we women are finding a new way to "come of age."

The truth is that there's a lot of women out there who will go through life without a man. Some by choice, and some by fate. Are these women damned to miss out on their own "satisfying ending"? Surely "happily ever after" is what we make it, not what cultural mores decree.
Or at least I hope so...