When you turn to your friends for relationship advice, who really wants to hear the cold hard truth? I know I don’t–I want to be reassured of my sex appeal and supported in the pursuit of whatever or whoever I’m after. According to Sex and the City consultant Greg Behrendt and executive story editor Liz Tuccillo, authors of the newish book He’s Just Not That Into You, this means I’ve got my head up my ass.
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On Thursday, December 16, they hosted an event in Nordstrom’s ladies’ department. Young guys in black served appletinis, water with lime wedges, and white wine; another catering employee tended a hot chocolate and creme de menthe bar where you could top off your drink with whipped cream, cinnamon sticks, marshmallows, or mint leaves. Female employees wore specially made T-shirts bearing the book’s informal slogan, don’t waste the pretty, with long strands of fake pearls and trendy tweed blazers. The shirts caused such a clamor that by the end of the evening the store was taking orders for them.
While he was working on Sex and the City, Behrendt told the crowd, the women he worked with “would talk about their love lives over and over again, and for the first couple years I was complicit.” Secretly he’d be thinking, Done that, yeah, done that too. Finally he couldn’t hold back any longer. When a coworker wondered aloud why a guy hadn’t called after what she thought was a fabulous date, he told her, “He’s just not that into you.”
But I have some issues with the proposed remedy. At the first sign of wrongdoing, for instance, we’re supposed to put our panties back on and immediately purge his number from our cellies instead of waiting around for him to fuck up again. Which seems to me like the same mentality that wants to give all murderers the death penalty.
I asked what he thought of the book and he said it all seemed simple and obvious to him, or at least what he’d read so far. His friend Liz added, “It’s nice [these women] can find some answers, but it doesn’t apply to everything. They treat it like gospel.”
