Washington, D.C.: Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places

2 years ago

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Woman Up Editor

Single women looking for Mr. Right in Washington, D.C., have profound regional challenges. The ratio of 80 unmarried men to 100 single women in the 10 mile square D.C. geography compares catastrophically to, say, Chatahoochee County, Ga., or Fairbanks Alaska, where there are supposedly 159 single men for every 100 women (disclaimer: It's been said that though the "odds are good" a girl should consider also that "the goods are odd").

Maybe their scarcity enhances the high self-regard of bright, young Washington players and strivers like Lizzie's erstwhile suitor, who narrowed his lady friend scope to "within 5 miles of the White House" in a blow off email ("best of luck in your multi-state manhunt") in which he dumped our fabulous UPpity woman before the two had actually met.

The nation's capital was long considered a society of "powerful men and the women they married when they were young." Dynamic single women with their own intellectual portfolio are a late 20^th century phenomenon who walk a high wire staying upright in a town full of power. Emily may have opened Pandora's Box with her question of how an adult woman who writes about -- among other things -- her own life experiences can meet and fall in love in a city where men have traditionally expected a say in what their women do. She wonders how Carrie Bradshaw escaped this dilemma.

Well, she didn't. Although Carrie Bradshaw was fictional, the NY Observer's Sex in the City column written during the 1990s by Candace Bushnell was based on the columnist's thinly cloaked actual life. Her boyfriend, the guy she code named "Mr. Big" in her column, and came to be played by Chris Noth in the subsequent TV series and movie, was Ron Galotti, then a Conde Nast executive, who did not, as in the fable, marry the author - so much for happy endings. As their fictionalized personae went on to have renewal contracts and lots of closet space, fortunately, both Bushnell and Galotti did find wedded bliss ... to others. Life has a lot of episodes.

As authors, we get to write our own version of the chapters we're living, but we cannot dictate how the story turns out. I think it helps results in both the living and the writing, however, to stick to a few good practices. Though we must take ourselves and our work seriously, it helps to enjoy the irony that we may be the only ones who do, and to try our best to be honest and kind in both our writing and with people we would hope to love.

It's a tall order to find those habits in the corridors of political power, but at least we can bring them to our own games.

Filed Under: Woman Up

Tagged: sex and the city, SexAndTheCity, washington, washington dc, WashingtonDc

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