From ‘Sex in the City’ to ‘Cashmere Mafia’: The Chic Shift to Mommy Lit

Don’t worry folks, this is not another review of ABC’s latest premier. I think the traditional media already has that covered with reviews ranging from Ooo-la-la to ho-hum to eee-gads. (See reviews by Tom Jicha in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Robert Bianco in USA Today, and Brian Lowry in Variety.) No, Cashmere Mafia isn’t really winning any critical acclaim. Like the upcoming Lipstick Jungle, this one hour dramedy seeks to fill the viewer void created by the wrap up of Sex and the City. But while most of the critics are busy analyzing the what, I can’t help but consider the why. Why would ABC invest in a SATC knock off and why are some women eager to defend it?

In September, ABC premiered the new series Big Shots, a dramedy following the friendship of four high power men and their woes with women. Labeling it the boys club revamp of Desperate Housewives, TV Critic Linda Stasi notes: “Interesting that when the suits at ABC think women they think desperation, and when they think men they think power.” Clearly Cashmere Mafia, counters that criticism. The women of Cashmere Mafia are crashing through the glass ceiling while attempting to manage their personal lives.

Much of the negative criticism surrounding the show is do to its obvious similarities to Darren Star’s other series about fashionable, confident women—Sex and the City. Although, Cashmere Mafia may use the same stylebook developed for that ubber successful HBO series, I do see one significant plot difference. Two of the power divas are married moms, an idea SATC flirted with developing Charlotte’s dream of the fairy tale marriage and complicating it with fertility issues and later with Miranda’s unexpected pregnancy that pushed her into the realm of working moms.

In Cashmere Mafia, both Zoe Burden and Juliet Draper are married with children, and both are struggling to balance work and family with varying levels of success. The transition from the all single cast of SATC to the partially married cast of Cashmere Mafia marks the shift in the working woman’s life style.

In a recent Modern Matriarch interview, writer Laura Zigman discussed a similar phenomenon within the publishing industry—the transition from ‘chic lit’ to ‘mommy lit’:

“When I was writing Animal Husbandry, chick lit didn’t exist. It happened afterwards, when my book and a bunch of other books proved that a collective consciousness exists and at the time that collective consciousness was focused on single women who were trying to figure out their lives. “Mommy Lit’ is sort of an extension of this: the same single women who are now married with children are still trying to figure out their lives.”

ABC obviously recognizes this shift as well. Ok, so Cashmere Mafia is over the top. That’s the ABC dramedy formula. Consider shows like Big Shots, Brothers and Sisters, Dirty Sexy Money, Private Practice and of course Grey’s Anatomy. What is interesting is the way ABC is tracking it’s demographic and how they represent women and our current concerns. I find it particularly telling that both Cashmere Mafia and Big Shots depict conflict between work and family obligations with the invasion of children into the workplace and the stigma of placing a priority on family.

In the pilot of Big Shots, one of the CEOs gripes “Men are the new women.” Well, at least that’s true for the cheeky chic ‘man’ series that’s adopted the mommy lit format. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out—what will strike a cord with women who enjoy the incorporation of both identifiable character types and outrageous escapism. Let’s face it after a long day of balancing work and family, women don’t want more reality, they want a break. They want to laugh or achieve some cathartic release through a good revenge plot, hence the tacky title Cashmere Mafia and ABC’s eagerness to back it.

Although many critics use terms like ‘mommy lit’ and ‘momprenuers’ in the pejorative, I think it’s more detrimental to men than to women. After all, if men buy into that softened female identity, they maybe underestimating a growing social network—the new ‘girls club’.