Bushnell updates NY's history

Bushnell is now one of the world's best-selling writers

Candace Bushnell, the woman whose newspaper column inspired the hit TV series Sex In The City, has told the BBC how she sought to bring a 19th Century woman into 2003 in her latest book, Trading Up.

The book is based on the life of Janey, an ambitious and grasping lingerie model.

A number of critics have compared it with the American writer Edith Wharton, and her view of American society at the turn of the 20th Century.

Wharton's works centred on the restrictions surrounding women at the time, and how they coped with them.

"I was thinking about, what would that woman be like today?," Bushnell told BBC World Service's Everywoman programme.

"In those days, a hundred years ago, women did not have very many choices."

Marrying for money

Bushnell said that in some ways she felt society had changed little between the times she was looking back to and what women were faced with in the modern world.

"A woman who was beautiful but didn't come from the right family actually could not marry up - society prevented it - but she could become an actress or a courtesan," Bushnell said.

Critics have compared Trading Up to the works of Edith Wharton

"I think this idea of marrying up is an idea that we do still sell to women today."

In Trading Up, Janey is cynical about marriage - her plan is to marry a rich man, entertainment executive Seldon Rose, and progress in life from there.

"I suppose one calls that cynical - she sees that as being practical," Bushnell said.

"I have to say she certainly is not the first woman who has had thoughts of marrying a wealthy man, let's face it."

Bushnell herself married last year - something that she said prompted her to change her mind about some of things she became famous writing about.

"It was the very fact that I fell in love," Bushnell said.

"He's really one of the first guys I've ever been with where I didn't find myself slowly sliding into those sort of traditional female kinds of roles.

"I realised - maybe I'm sort of weak, but I do find after I've been in a relationship for a while I find myself sliding into a kind of, 'oh, we'll watch whatever you want on TV darling,' and it's like, 'why do you do that?'

"But the reality is that I met someone who is just a fantastic person."

Adventures

Bushnell's forthright opinions on men and relationships were first chronicled in the New York Observer.

The author told the BBC World Service's Everywoman that the creation of Carrie Bradshaw - played by Sarah Jessica Parker in the TV series - was down to Bushnell's fear of what her parents might think if they saw her name on the column.

I am just so thrilled with what they do with the show, and it feels very real to me Candace Bushnell

"When I started writing Sex And The City, it was about this new reality of women in their thirties who were still single and what their lives were like - and also why they couldn't find any guys," Bushnell explained.

"Carrie Bradshaw was my alter-ego, and I started writing the column and my parents called up and said, 'oh, we've got a subscription to the New York Observer, we want to read your column every week.'

"I thought, 'uh-oh - the stuff I'm doing is a little bit racy so I'd better change my name.'

"It's still by Candice Bushnell but I changed my name to Carrie Bradshaw, so Carrie's adventures were very similar to mine."

Sex In The City will end after its current sixth series.

"I am just so thrilled with what they do with the show, and it feels very real to me," Bushnell stated.

"Recently there's been an episode where Carrie walks down the red carpet and she has a new boyfriend, and he gets very huffy when the photographers say 'can we have a picture of you alone Carrie.'

"That has actually happened to me."

Bushnell added in particular the character of Mr Big - who Carrie has an on-off relationship with for much of the series - was drawn from her real-life experience.

"I had the Mr Big in my life - to me he is that guy who, when you get into your mid-30s, you meet and he should be the right guy for you and all your girlfriends say 'this is the reason you've been single for so long, you've just been waiting for Mr Big'," Bushnell said.

"Then of course it turns out that, unfortunately, Mr Big is not the answer."