Rare luck fell on Russian viewers: with a difference of a few days, our series “Everybody 50” and the sequel to “Sex and the City” were released. The new season of “And just like that…”: a movie about the adventures of the resilient Carrie Bradshaw with her friends. True, they are already under sixty … If these projects came out at different times, no one would have thought to compare them. But when you watch one movie after another, first about the restless residents of the East Coast and then our single housewives, I really want to compare our two worlds, which are now even more divergent in different directions.
In these series we see two sides of the same problem, which I would kindly describe as the need to engage a person in hyperactive longevity conditions. New social opportunities were given to people with the same bodily resources: to communicate, to travel, to maintain attractiveness … But it all remained in the same body. Now and 5 thousand years ago, a 60-year-old woman has the same hormonal background, skin turgor, joint condition and various chronic diseases. But now there are more women and they look better.
It is one thing in our country that an increasing percentage of the population consists of elderly people with reduced mobility who need constant care. It seems that the world is slowly learning to get used to this problem. And what to do with the nearly one billion active people approaching retirement age, having nice clothes sewn for them, taught to be sexy, told by the new mass culture not to succumb to young people in anything from skiing to romance adventures? ? It seems these people have it all: chondroprotectors for running fast and venotonics for wearing heels. There are hair dyes, retinoic peeling, blepharoplasty. But the rest is old. In a sense it is arranged in the old way, as in the days of the ancient Greeks. Physiologically we are one of them, you wouldn’t believe it, we are no different. And even with the first homo sapiens, we are almost no different.
“She will eat something, but who will give it to her?” There are now all possibilities to be active and sexually active until old age. And every year the world more and more tempts a person to take care of his own attractiveness until old age. You can live young. So where does health and time come from?
The Americans offered their own solution to the problem of young pensioners. The female protagonists of the new season of “Sex and the City” are 57-58 years old, both characters and actresses. In the best years of Russian Radio, as he joked, 20 years in the arena, looking for his own adventures, the second “ninety”. Judging by the teaser, aunts looking for lovers have taken a new turn, despite such a tender age of their friends, transcendent passions are still simmering in their lives. Miranda, 57, broke up with Steve, with whom she had lived for more than 20 years, because there was no fire in the marriage. There were already questions back then, and more so this season: Miranda is in a passionate love affair with a partner who passionately pinches her somewhere in the toilet in a teaser…
Carrie – 58. Her husband died of a heart attack on the treadmill she was running for her charms. A 58-year-old widow who had surgery on her knee was already on dates a few months after her husband’s funeral because everyone around her told her so: one should always want love and passion. “They want me, I’m in” is the new maxim. All this is a lot like either an unscrupulous conspiracy by marketers or an apology for raising the retirement age.
Of all the girlfriends, Charlotte is the most normal. She is 58 years old, busy with children’s problems, sitting on the school committee, serving breakfast to her husband. Apparently, she will be served as a funny pet chicken in the second season in a row: after all, she is completely part of the family, in worries she forgot that she was a woman when choosing a tablecloth. But how did you forget? Charlotte takes care of herself, dresses well and is attractive. I’m not just running at night in New York looking for passion. at fifty-eight! He also has a body that is at least remotely appropriate for his age, and at least five kilos of fat and chubby arms. Irregularity!
Whether Carrie has anything to do with Miranda. Skinny, wiry, not fat. High heels Carrie, bulging veins. The absence of a thick layer of fat is early menopause and low estrogen, which makes the face prematurely saggy as the skin loses its elasticity. No facial oil – nothing to fill in wrinkles, close circles under the eyes. It is in the movies that they look beautiful, almost 60 years old, weighing 48-50 kg. But in life it is different, women of this age and complexion in life look older unless they are professional ballerinas dancing from the cradle. And they don’t run in heels. And excuse me, he does not rush in the metropolis to look for a random member.
It seems to me that the later seasons of “Sex and the City” were the result of the confusion of a well-fed Western society in the face of a new reality in which people are already mobile and active by the age of 80. Something needs to be done about it, but so far no one knows exactly what it is. The 58-year-old fairies are well-groomed, dressed, wearing high heels, spending a lot of time. But in fact, varicose veins are already tormenting, women have lost fertility, they do not produce lubricant during sex, so the risk of microtrauma and, accordingly, penetrating infections is higher, the risk of contracting hepatitis and HIV is even higher . In reality, they cannot run in heels. And in fact, if the units are developed normally and their hormones are normal, they feel the need for sex. And more and more exceptions are shown to us. Some time will pass, and marketers will come up with the idea that this is the norm, that you have to run on dates in heels to look for sex at 60, and those who do not run are deviant …
Everything will be just like that because it would be beneficial for the fashion and beauty industries to expand their pre-retirement sales market. It is not clear how all this will turn out. Most likely, new waves of various diseases, from mass neuroses and sexual infections to vaginal prolapse.
I am only 38 years old, at the age of sixty I do not know where to run. But I don’t want to find myself in 10-inch heels, running through Moscow at night for another date and then explaining to my grown daughter that yesterday was “just sex.” Frankly, I have other plans for this age. The American version of getting old running around on sex dates to the grave is unattractive.
The “Everybody 50” version of our story about pre-retirees is closer to me. It’s more realistic. And he approaches a person … with respect or something.
Especially a person of that age is not a consumer of anti-aging products and services. He is an established personality. Our 50 year old man is also ready for love and can have sex at this age. Friends Julia and Valya are tired of being alone. But there’s a huge difference between them and Carrie and Miranda: ours aren’t looking for sex, they want attention and human warmth.
Our show, of course, is your average sitcom, not Hollywood’s “Sex and the City.” But it also raises a fundamental question: What should people do with naturally occurring loneliness, when the kids grow up, they should work, if the mind-blowing heights didn’t happen, if they didn’t fascinate, sex and passion in marriage naturally disappeared, but people stay active and mobile? Humanity has never faced such a problem before, because more than 50 social groups have never been more numerous in history. I didn’t even have to think about it. Our people still do not know what to expect from life at that age in the 21st century. The previous model of behavior of the older generation – stockings and grandchildren – was outdated, because it was formed when longevity was achieved, but old age was still accompanied by obsolescence and, in the case of our country, additional poverty. Now old age has decreased again, and residents of megacities, as a rule, do not wear out until the last day. They zip up to 85, then straight to the cemetery. What should you do with yourself in this 50-85? It seems to me that our film provides a much more valuable answer than the American film.
Look at Maria Poroshina: her fifty-fifty heroine Julia is attractive, not skinny, but in normal human form. She’s obese, so she’s younger than Carrie of the same age. Julia lives a real life: children, grandchildren, surroundings, education. She has a hut and goes there. Julia has a shopping bag! She wears flat-soled or small-heeled shoes – it protects the joints, does not trigger varicose veins. Overly responsible, attracting her son’s family, suffering after divorce but seeing no reason to plunge into the whirlpool of everyday relationships: she has a grandchild!
His friend Valentina is a more adventurous lady: she has been married five times, lives for herself, has no children. All she wants is happiness! She dresses brightly, but not defiantly, looks her age, does not look young. She is always ready to sit with someone else’s grandchild. When she accidentally meets a man at a concert, it turns into a night date, of course she tells her friend that she’s been somersaulting all night in bed with a gentleman of the same age. Maybe he lied. Because in the next scene we see that her friend has sciatica on her next date. Valya, a seasoned woman, skillfully injects her new lover. As a mature and primarily love-seeking woman, she stays with her friend who is torn apart by her lower back pain.
Makes sense and is age appropriate. This is good. Such a life for a woman after 50, dammit, is normal: no heels, slightly overweight, summer house, grandchildren. Novels at least every day, but hormones are normal, so a woman is no longer looking for sex. Um, what kind of sex if by this age a significant proportion of women are having surgery for breast or cervical cancer?
The men in our series also look normal. Today – we would say normal. 50s, bags under eyes, slightly overweight, bald, grayish. No one runs to their death on a treadmill. Most are looking for love among their peers so they have something to keep quiet or nothing to look for. Only Yulia’s ex-husband Arseny left her for a young wife, and now he diets, plays sports, but the viewer sees that all this is the whim of a narrow-minded young woman, but he himself knows that he is a normal man and a belly of his age. Yes, he was often fed up with his young wife, he honestly admits that he is not the same age, he would have to eat fried chicken at the cottage at almost 60 and lie on the sofa.
They’re all human. In a sense, it corresponds to our biological species. But what if we’re famous up to 80 feet now? Everything is the same inside. If a person somersaults up to 80 times, flies into space, runs in heels and maintains fertility, then it is unlikely in our lifetime: such a radical breakthrough in medicine has not been observed today. Meanwhile, scientists and doctors aren’t ready to give our bodies such a margin of safety that we hold sex dates until we die, and after 50 the option of a summer house and a shopping bag is preferred.
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the editors’ position.