Adventures and Productions

(My pal Vicki is starting on a quest in the fabulous world of manuscript submissions — head on over and wish her luck! Sailor Boy and I are heading on our own adventure this weekend. It’s entirely possible that we’re nuts, but here goes.)

I’ve been meaning to post about this for a while (in the sense that I’ve had this jpg on my desktop forever), but I keep forgetting. Who here has read the Shopaholic series? I had a really tough time with the first one, in that is scared the daylights out of me. I didn’t go to Starbucks for a month.

Now, I’ve never been in credit card debt. School loan debt? Yes, ridiculous amounts. Credit cards: not so much. I use my card in place of cash and pay off the balance every month. In fact, the year I graduated from college, this was a major problem, since my $500 limit wasn’t quite covering my monthly needs in Manhattan, and the company was refusing to up my limit, as I was “not a good credit customer.” I had no idea what they meant, since, according to what my parents had always taught me — I had great credit. Turns out, having great credit does not make you a good customer of the credit card company. So my friend convinced me (and it took a lot of convincing) to leave a small balance on my card for one month. Lo and behold, they upped my limit several thousand dollars.

Yes, it’s a ridiculous world we live in. Which brings us back to Becky Bloomwood.

Unlike a lot of chick lit heroines, I couldn’t get behind what I viewed as her extremely self-destructive behavior. I couldn’t identify with her, which I believed was the kiss of death for a book in this genre. However, I found her adventures hilarious, and I kept reading. And that’s when all that fancy lit analysis that had put me in school loan debt came flitting to the surface and I realized that though the Shopaholic series was packaged as chick lit, it was actually social satire. Becky Bloomwood was not an “everywoman” heroine like Bridget Jones or Amy Haskel. She was, in the literary sense, a clown. Not Helena, but Bottom.

Once I realized these things, I enjoyed the series much more. In fact, I loved it. Kinsella’s writing is brisk and amusing, and her take on the credit crisis is funny because it’s so spot on. My favorite was Shopaholic and Sister, where we got the fabulous foil of the frugal sister, Jessica. Though not quite as unkind to frugality as she is to shopaholism, Kinsella does have a few barbs toward those who make it a religion.

So now they are making Shopaholic a movie, starring Isla Fisher, who I think is a great choice, as she played such a fabulous clown in Wedding Crashers. (No, I haven’t seen her in anything else.) I’ve heard that they are relocating the film to New York, which is a wee bit appalling, since I think that of the two, Shopaholic is way more relentlessly British than Bridget Jones’s Diary was. All the stores she shopped in and the upper-class git she dates named Tarquin of all things, and etc. But I guess they can just change Liberty’s to Barney’s or whatever.

No, what really gets to me is the clothes. Listen to a description of a standard Becky Bloomwood outfit:

I’m wearing all black — but expensive black. The kind you fall into. A simple sleeveless dress from Whistles, the highest of Jimmy Choos, a pair of uncut amethyst earrings. And please don’t ask how much it all cost, since that’s irrelevant.

In this scene, she also states that she’s spritzed with Chanel.

The point is, Becky’s wardrobe is classic. She’s all about brand-print scarves and cashmere sweaters and designer black dresses and Armani suits.

And then this is what they put her in for the movie:

Well, they got the clown part right, at least.

Seriously, what’s with that? I heard the costume designer is the same chick who did Carrie on Sex and the City, which is pretty obvious, but Becky is not Carrie. She doesn’t dress like Carrie. She’s not a Carrie knock-off. I don’t think Becky Bloomwood would ever wear this outfit. I’m hoping it’s some sort of elaborate dream sequence.

Keeping my fingers crossed.