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Candace Bushnell's sexy female friends are still having sex in the city, just not as often since they are prowling the lipstick jungle of New York's most competitive and high profile industries --- fashion, publishing, filmmaking --- to secure the corner offices, multi-million dollar salaries and billboard recognition. The three friends --- Nico, Victory and Wendy --- are linked by their ambitions and their belief in one another.
The days of see-and-be-seen lunches at "café society" hot spots like "Michael's" or three martini meetings at "21" in Manhattan have become the domain of forty-something women who have moved out of the bedroom and into the boardroom. Bushnell's message to her mass audience of women in "Sex and the City" was to embrace and enjoy sexuality with confidence. LIPSTICK JUNGLE heralds career aspirations, hard work, success, and power as the secrets to attracting the opposite sex. "It's a jungle out there," a jungle of women with naked ambition and sheer attitude.
Although LIPSTICK JUNGLE is more about longer relationships with men than one-night stands and role reversal is predominant, there is a "giddy with excitement" and a "die from anticipation" sexual tension that is tempting to those who loved Samantha's ("Sex and the City") older woman-younger man relationship.
"Every woman knows that you have to combine at least two men to make one decent one" --- maybe not. I will never forget an article in the August 2004 issue of Town and Country written by David Brown, husband of Helen Gurley Brown, icon of the feminist movement and author of the groundbreaking international bestseller, SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL and founding editor of Cosmopolitan. Mr. Brown lovingly stated, "I'm never jealous of my celebrity wife. I've never felt less of a man because she was more of a woman."
Red is a symbol of passion, lust, power, heat, confidence and sex appeal, and in today's jungle, red is the only color on the cover of Bushnell's new book. Fittingly, "golden-reddish" haired Nico O'Neilly is editor-in-chief of Bonfire Magazine (I loved the connotation here) and is obsessed with being the first female CEO of the Splatch-Verner publishing division. Her timing and tactics are masterful. Feeling like nothing is new in her life, Nico takes a "hot male model who was eager to trade in his underwear for boy-toy status." Meanwhile, at home Nico's husband of 14 years, Seymour, is happy to teach one class at Columbia University, plan dinner parties and coach her on The Art of War in the office.
Victory Ford's rise to billboard recognition begins with the dazzling annual fashion week in New York and a less than victorious show. When the media and her peers reject her line, Victory rebounds with naked ambition and develops partnerships that result in her own couture line. Satisfied with her single and childless status, Victory treads cautiously with adoring billionaire boyfriend Lyne Bennett, who indulges Victory with his wealth, private jet and spur-of-the-moment trips, but acts as if he owns her. Victory wants to make billions in her own way and buy her own jet.
Wendy Healy is a distraught wife trying to keep her stay-at-home husband's extravagant spending and her three young children under control, but as President of Parador Pictures she is wildly successful and garners the Oscars to prove it. Unhappy with the role reversal, Wendy's ego-driven husband Shane demands a divorce and custody of the kids because of Wendy's hectic schedule. Wendy is in her forties, rich and successful and unthreatened by the male ego.
Candace Bushnell is one female who has successfully secured a place for herself in the lipstick jungle. The six-foot banner in the window of Borders Books announcing the release of LIPSTICK JUNGLE, a 20-city author tour and national television publicity affirms that she is the reigning tigress of the lipstick jungle. In fact, if I were to name a lipstick after Bushnell, I would call it "Manhattan Tigress." Publicity of this magnitude and expense is reserved for A-list authors whose next book is eagerly awaited by a mass audience.
From the runways of New York and Paris, the excitement of the Cannes Film Festival on the French Riviera, the sleek Manhattan boardrooms, and the New York Times bestseller list, Victory, Wendy, Nico and Candace are "staying in the game" and toasting with Dom Perignon as tigresses in the lipstick jungle.
--- Reviewed by Hillary Wagy
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