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"Sex and the City" author says success is new sex

Posted on: Thursday, 1 September 2005, 14:46 CDT

By Claudia Parsons

NEW YORK (Reuters) - "Sex and the City" author Candace Bushnell has a reputation for breaking taboos with talk of sex toys and intimate acts but she says readers shouldn't expect too much sex in her new book, "Lipstick Jungle."

"'Sex and the City' to me never really was about sex, that was kind of the icing on the cake," Bushnell told Reuters in an interview before the September 6 publication of her new book.

"Success is the new sex," she said, adding that the women she knows spend more time talking about their careers than their love lives, and the new book reflects that.

That may come as a surprise to viewers of the HBO series "Sex and the City," in which journalist Carrie Bradshaw and her three girlfriends regularly divulge the most private details of their sexual exploits over brunch or cocktails.

From one-night stands to love-making techniques, "Sex and the City" never shied away from shocking its audience.

But Bushnell, now 46, said it was possible to have too much of a good thing. "Sex in a book has to be used judiciously."

"Certainly when you're in your twenties and thirties, yes, you spend a lot of time thinking about it but when people get older there are other things that are more important," she said. "The reality is most women have to work."

"Lipstick Jungle" is the story of three successful career women in New York -- a magazine executive battling her way up the corporate ladder and having an affair with a young underwear model, a film producer whose marriage is in trouble, and a fashion designer who dates a billionaire.

"It's really the next step after 'Sex and the City.' It's basically what happens to all of those great single women in their thirties when they get to be in their forties."

Bushnell is in talks to turn the book into a television series though she said nothing had been finalized as yet and it was too early to say who might play the three main roles.

"One character is an executive, the cool calm always collected always under control executive kind of business woman," Bushnell said.

"The second character is Wendy, she's the earth mother girl next door who happens to find herself as the president of a movie company. And the third character, Victory, is the free spirit, she doesn't want to be part of corporate America."

The Wall Street Journal lamented that "calculating, arrogant females are not more likable than calculating, arrogant men. 'Lipstick Jungle' is either a sour feminist rant or a satiric comment on sour feminist ranting."

The author said "Lipstick Jungle" was "a pretty philosophical kind of book" that offered some alternative role models to the caricature of tough and unpleasant businesswomen. like Alexis Carrington in the 1980s soap opera "Dynasty."

"The idea of feminism is certainly one that I've embraced my whole life," she said. "Of course our modern day idea of feminism is probably a little bit different than it was in the 70s where you weren't supposed to shave your legs, you would never wear high heels, all of those kinds of fun things."

She said the reality for women was that there is a price to pay whether one chooses a career or not.

"I try to show my readers what real life is really like, as opposed to the fairy tales about what life is supposed to be," Bushnell said. "It shows the realities of life and some of the realities of being successful but it also shows the upside to it and how the struggle is really worth it."

Source: REUTERS

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