SoBo’s Take On Park Avenue’s Elite | Verve Magazine - Part 5
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October 28, 2015

SoBo’s Take On Park Avenue’s Elite

Text by Sitanshi Talati-Parikh

What do the elite of Mumbai have in common with those of Manhattan? See if you can spot your neighbourhood sophisticate here….

MARRIAGE

1 Many Degrees and No Job
PARK AVE “The knowledge that their husbands could leave them for other women, the simple realisation that they could not support themselves without them, seemed to gnaw at some of the women I knew as badly as hunger pain. Some told me, in hushed tones, that like their mothers and grandmothers, they had secret bank accounts where they stashed their allowances…‘just in case’. […] My interlocutress had graduated summa cum laude from an Ivy. She also had an MBA. But she had never worked.”

HERE The many stories of smart, intelligent and high-educated (Ivy Leagues, no less) women who are happy to be stay-at-home wives. Home-makers with enviable degrees and an aggregating personal net worth. The combined intelligence of these women could potentially run a country — if only they could make the time for it.

2 Generations of Wealth
PARK AVE “Much of the spectacular wealth on the UES is intergenerational…. More than one woman described to me the strange pressure of needing to please one’s in-laws because they held the financial purse strings. […] Many very wealthy people in my town are, on some level, waiting for their even wealthier elders to die, with mixed feelings about it.”

HERE The need to remain a part of a joint family for the inheritance, is what reel and real life are made of.

3 The Imperfect Marriage
PARK AVE “In many instances their very identities seemed contingent and relational, hinging on their relationships—to their friends and in-laws and parents, but most of all to their husbands and children. If you are not in a perfect marriage—and who is?—then how can you be a powerful man’s perfect wife? If you do not have perfect children—and who does?—then how can you be a perfect mother, or even a good one? And how can you save face? Divorce is not an option, and neither is trading in the imperfect children you love for perfect ones. Many of the women I knew suffered from the strange, culturally specific anxiety of being extensions and reflections of others. In this sense, even their identities, their very selves, were not precisely or entirely their own.”

HERE Because to be without husband is worse than to be with husband and unhappy. Divorce is frowned upon at best. And if you go that route, then either disappear from society or find another even richer husband quickly.

4 The Successful Man and The Birkin
PARK AVE “In a town that values its signifiers of privilege and success – obsesses over them, really – the Birkin is a megastatus symbol, perhaps the ultimate one, for women. And, not coincidentally, also for the men who can get them for us. ‘A wife with a Birkin is an excellent narcissistic extension for a successful man,’ Manhattan clinical psychologist Stephanie Newman mused when I asked her for her thoughts.”

HERE Having your wife wear enormous solitaires and all the luxe trappings shows the world (and hopefully not the tax inspectors) that you are someone.

5 A Relationship of Means
PARK AVE “In this honor/shame culture, having a high status husband made you a high-status wife. […] Wives were their husbands’ expensive baubles and bottles of wine, proof of their awesomeness, and husbands were their wives’ meal tickets.”

HERE Trophy wife, anyone?

6 Pretty Tired For Sex
PARK AVE “In fact, the exercise and careful attention to dress seemed to take the place of sex in fundamental ways. Women were too tired, too stressed, too irritated for sex in Manhattan…. […] They strove equally to be beautiful for the men who were not there and for the women who were.”

HERE Always a question…who exactly are the women striving to impress?

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