This website was archived on July 21, 2019. It is frozen in time on that date.

Sonya Mann's active website is Sonya, Supposedly.

Pretty Stereotypes Of City Women

Excessive lyricism lies ahead. Sometimes I can’t resist over-writing.


I love cities, but I don’t want to live in one. Every time I visit San Francisco it smells more like piss, you know? For me, home is a mid-size town, a suburb on a hill. But of course I’m grateful to be able to access urban cultural nodes, to watch live theater and buy pricey drinks, to browse bookstores and pretend the panhandlers aren’t talking to me. Momentary immersion is exciting. High-profile cities are glamorous despite all the grime — the word “cosmopolitan” accrued its connotations honestly.

girl fixing her motorcycle
Photo by Mike Babiarz: “My downstairs neighbor Marni doing some maintenance on her Yamaha XS650.”

City women are easy for me to idolize. Do people find the opposite of their own attributes attractive, or is that just me? I’m drawn to sophistication, to convincingly affected indifference. What’s more enchanting than the ability to stroll past mounds of trash without paying attention?

city woman walking past garbage in NYC
Photo of NYC’s Greenwich Village by Ryan Vaarsi: “There is not, despite appearances, a garbage strike underway at the moment.”

I’m not a city woman. I could never be a city woman. I care too much about how I’m perceived, and the temperament for regular cocktail parties has never been my strong suit.

Yes, realistically, my two-dimensional idea of a city woman doesn’t exist, but let’s roll with it.

Nicole Kidman as Marisa Coulter in the movie version of The Golden Compass.
Nicole Kidman as Marisa Coulter in the movie version of The Golden Compass.

I think of Mrs Coulter from Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. Vaguely evil under the tight dress and well-cut wool coat. (In Mrs Coulter’s case, extremely evil.) A tool of power who nevertheless wields it, a woman among men who relishes her feminine influence because the alternative is recognizing their masculine advantage.

I realized while writing this that all of my notions about femininity are particular facets of an inferiority complex dressed up by certain aesthetics. The observation is not new. Besides, I have the same reaction to, like, indie music. I’m such a born hipster but I feel mad defensive about it. (A reaction that became classically hipster immediately after the phenomenon achieved meme status.)

I want to be aloof and reserved and brash and sassy and especially never self-conscious. I want to have Marie Antoinette’s cake and eat it too. Okay, fine, I want to be Blair from Gossip Girl, even though she’s excruciatingly self-conscious.

I am continually trying to parse femininity, to practice ladyhood, and stumbling on contradictions. Being human is weird. (QED.)

cosmopolitan fashion collage
Collage by Joana Coccarelli.
graffiti woman, red lipstick
Photo by Sarah Murray.

Thoughts Are Never Static

Writing about the fallibility of recorded memory, Walter Kirn cautions, “Despite our tendency in the computer age to think of ourselves as soft machines, the human mind is not a hard drive, a neutral repository of information.” Rather, “Memory is an imaginative act; first we imagine what we’ll want to keep and then we fashion stories from what we’ve kept. Memories don’t just happen, they are built.”

Beautifully put, and very true. We do not impartially, objectively store all of the information gathered by our senses (at least not in a retrievable way). We pick and choose the images and conversations that will create narratives, often self-serving ones, and reconstruct our stories every time we recall them.

Graffiti of two sad faces
Graffiti spotted in Portland, OR… if I remember rightly.

You can only trust your mind when it’s skeptical of its own results. Even then, are you sure that you’re sure? This is why eye-witness testimony is dangerous.

Dave Pell ruefully describes giving his son “paparazzi” treatment at the toddler’s birthday party, positing, “The digital age gives a new (and almost opposite) meaning to having a photographic memory. The experience of the moment has become the experience of the photo.”

What are we sacrificing when we save so many snapshots?

UPDATE: Some telling lines from “The Problem with Eyewitness Testimony”:

“The process of interpretation occurs at the very formation of memory—thus introducing distortion from the beginning. […] Rarely do we tell a story or recount events without a purpose. Every act of telling and retelling is tailored to a particular listener[.]”

“[T]he mere fault of being human results in distorted memory and inaccurate testimony.”

Sign up for my newsletter to stay abreast of my new writing and projects.

I am a member of the Amazon Associates program. If you click on an Amazon link from this site and subsequently buy something, I may receive a small commission (at no cost to you).