Candace Bushnell

April 2008

WS: What sparked the idea for Lipstick Jungle?

BUSHNELL: I started writing it at 44 and all the women I had as friends who were inspiration for Sex and the City—single women in their 30s—were now in their early 40s. Many of them had got married, had kids and their careers were bigger than ever because they’d been working for 20 years. And when you’ve been working for 20 years it’s very different than if you’ve been working for ten years and you are still paying your dues and nobody listens to you. All of a sudden at 40 you have some gravitas, and you know what you’re doing. You know how to get things done and implement your ideas. You are much better at the political aspects of a career and mixed in with all this was a lot of support, certainly in New York, that women have for other women’s careers and achievements.

The first part of Sex and the City is when you really need your girlfriends to get through your romantic adventures. But the other part of that was always one woman’s success makes all women look good. And that’s the other half of that equation that I was trying to explore. I’m fascinated with questions about the differences between men and women. Are what we perceive to be sex-based differences actually more due to money, power and status? [That] is something that I explored in Sex and the City. When women have a little bit more money, power and status, they are more willing to be sexually experimental as opposed to women who don’t have money, power or status, and are reliant on a man and they dare not step outside the boundaries of displeasing a man by their behavior. Because when you are reliant on a man you are also expected to curtail perhaps innate behaviors.

That was the question for me again with Lipstick Jungle. What happens when women have more money, power and status? My goal is to examine our assumptions about [gender] roles and responsibilities.

WS: Sex and the City changed the way that women are portrayed on television.

BUSHNELL: It certainly did. And it’s interesting because when Sex and the City started there really was an outcry, Who are these women? There are no real women like this. When it came out in England, they were debating it on TV: women weren’t really supposed to be like these characters. And then it turned out that there were many, many, many women who identified with the characters and felt that the characters gave voice to a side of themselves that society wouldn’t allow them to express.

Women’s roles [have changed] and we’re unlikely to go back to a traditional ’50s model. [Today is] a time of changing dynamics between the sexes. Part of us as women grew up on Cinderella stories. The reality is that for most women there isn’t even a choice about whether or not we are going to work. I am a firm believer that work is good, work is an important part of achieving self-esteem and self-actualization. It’s a challenge. It’s not easy. You can really find out what you’re made of when you work, when you pursue goals, when you don’t give up. There are so many times when one wants to give up and you have to reach down and keep going.

WS: What’s happened to the whole concept of feminism?

BUSHNELL: Feminism is really about a woman’s right to be recognized as a full human being. It is a woman’s ability to say no to unwanted sexual situations. It’s a young woman’s ability to say no to being objectified. It’s a young woman’s ability to say yes to pursuing her own goals and dreams. These are things that we really need to remind young women are not only important, but absolutely essential. It’s about being able to say no to the media and society’s insistence on what women should be and what we should look like and where our value comes from. And today so many teenage girls are very interested in sex and being attractive. That’s human nature—it’s absolutely human nature. They are very concerned about boys. But it’s really important to say to them that it’s essential to have other goals that are oriented towards the intellect—what is rewarding to you, what’s rewarding to the soul, having the courage of being an individual. And not being reliant on the opposite sex for your self-esteem. That is something that is very, very important to me.