Yeesh, how much vaseline did they smear on the camera lens for Sarah Jessica Parker’s Red Magazine cover shoot? This is bad! I actually think SJP looks great for her age (51), I just wish she would change up her styling (the center part and the dark eye makeup do her no favors) and embrace her age more. She doesn’t have to look 30 years old anymore, so let’s stop with the soft-focus, blurry editorials. Anyway, SJP covers Red and she’s chatting about her HBO series, Divorce. But mostly she chats about her life, her kids and how she’s a control freak. Interesting little factoid I learned from this: her twins are named Tabitha and Marion, but they call Marion “Loretta.” Some highlights from Red:
Whether she shares domestic duties with her husband: “I do a lot, because I’m controlling. I’m a person who is fastidious and exacting, and so I do a huge amount. What is surprising is how much [my husband] can do and does in my absence. Everybody gets where they need to be. But still, he’s not going to put everything away at night. When I come home, I can see the path.”
A marriage is not baked: “The study of the landscape of relationships is endlessly interesting. A marriage is not baked, especially when you include children. There is no period at the end of the sentence; it’s just a run-on sentence. And there is so much good that comes from it and there’s so much complexity and people survive it and they don’t; and they contemplate affairs and they don’t have them; they have affairs and it doesn’t hurt the marriage; they contemplate divorce and they survive, or a divorce blows up a family to the degree it feels almost irreparable.”
Studying broken relationships: “I learned something really important, which is be smart enough to recognise that the things that annoy you about a long-term partner don’t actually matter. Like anything that annoys me about Matthew – and trust me, there is a laundry list twice as long about things I do that annoy him, I’m sure of it – fundamentally it doesn’t matter. So if you’re still talking about the minutiae that annoys you, then the stuff that really matters must still be in place. Generally speaking, you have to push men to have [meaningful] conversations, but then there are those men who want to talk too much and I’m like, ‘Ooh, that’s weird!’ Or much as you want your partner to be more loving, I’ll be at the school gates and some guy is always rubbing his wife’s back and I’m like, ‘Eurgh’. I don’t know why that bothers me!”
Her son has a cell phone now: “I don’t know what to do… [James Wilkie] has a phone for travelling to school, even though I travelled to school forever [without a phone], but we held off longer than most parents.”
Her relationship with technology & social media: “I’m not easy with it and I’m unclear of my own boundaries. I’m unclear of how much I want to engage and how to have it not be a personal experience and how to have conversations that I think are productive with people when they’re feeling anxious or angry, or they’re wanting to say really unfriendly things.”
Ha, I liked SJP in this piece. I love it when celebrities – or normal people – bitch about the smaller annoyances/gripes that drive them up the wall. Personally, I love it when a man is a talker, because it is so unusual (among American men). Like, I love it when a man is into gossip too and really gets into the petty minutiae of celebrities. But I will join her in annoyance at a man who rubs his wife’s shoulders for the school pick-up. That’s, like, performative intimacy.
Photos courtesy of Red.
Annoyances prove that you know someone really well and you know when that thing you don’t like is going to hit you.
When my husband interrupts me to tell the punchline of a story I haven’t finished. I could strangle him. He doesn’t notice. Now I look at him with serial killer eyes and mouth ‘don’t interrupt me’. His survival instinct kicks in.
Mine is when he eats cereals in bed at night. the noise he makes… I could smash his head in the wall. He doesn’t realise how much it pisses me off.
I wonder what his is? Maybe when I ask questions during a film. I sometimes do it to just piss him off. Lol
I do wonder what his are too… I guess I know a few. Shouting that we’re late when we’re not really really really late – yet. lol
I always liked SJP.
she was a celebrity kid, never been a famewhore, had trouble in her marriage and worked it out with no magazine drama. She seems like a genuine nice person who constantly ask herself questions and quite bright to no be self entitled and condescending while talking about other people’s lives and fellow celebrities. She doesn’t lecture you, she shares her experience with you.
If I had to take any advice from anybody famous, I would probably pick her because she has been on the rollercoaster and came out the other end with a bright smile and curious eyes.
Yea I gotta agree. She’s pretty cool and seems very sweet.
“Performative Intimacy!” Thank you for that. It describes SO many people.
Don’t you feel like telling them ” get a room ” ! So annoying.
That’s perfect and wonderful!
Exactly- total “AHA!” moment when I read that.
Perfect description is perfect. When I was eighteen or so and still a churchgoer, a newly engaged couple started attending church and he was just so over the top with his affections and she never failed to look uncomfortable with his displays. Rumor was he was gay so some thought he might’ve been trying to prove his heterosexuality. Me, I don’t think he’s gay. Just an obnoxious attention seeking a-hole.
She is so beautiful. Quit making her look so skinny. She is one hot 50 year old. Humble and funny too.
The photoshopping on this cover is really bugging me. Her arm looks ridiculous. We all know what SJP’s arms look like. She’s thin, and they’re veiny and gristly. She has the arm of a 12-year-old girl in that photo.
I find her comments on domestic duties interesting. “When I come home, I can see the path.” I totally get that — if I’m working late, I have to take a deep breath before I walk through the door, because I know how messy the house is going to be, and I know my husband will have forgotten to empty lunch bags and backpacks, there’ll be dishes all over the counter, etc. But seriously, you can’t tell me SJP doesn’t have a housekeeper who comes in every morning and puts the house in order!!! I’ve always thought that would be the best part about being super rich: Being able to afford someone to come in every day and tidy, vacuum, dust, clean your bathrooms, and clean your kitchen, so you can just come home, enjoy making dinner, and help your kids with their homework without having to think about the million other things that need to be done around the house. The amount of time that kind of help buys you… It sounds like bliss.
If I ever got really rich, I would still totally refuse to have a stranger in the house to clean. I am a very private person and I hatehateHATE the throught of a stranger in my home, going through my cosmetics/drawers/[insert private space here]. We have no children, so even if we ever got filthy rich, which, to be fair, doesn’t seem likely, our place would still be of a manageable size. Nah. Once a week, two adults can get the place clean rather quickly.
They probably have a weekly service. But, I have gotten the impression they live in a more reasonably sized home than many celebrities. And, she did say she is controlling in regard to home management.