Rachel Green, a waitress, lives in an apartment in Manhattan.
Carrie Bradshaw, a writer, lives in a spacious and beautifully furnished apartment with an even more furnished closet.
According to Professor of Media Studies Sarah Elder, it has always been the media's aim to glamorize certain sections of life. Since the advent of television, shows have represented beautiful families with no problems.
"America has fallen in love with what we watch and how we live," said Elder. "Young consumers are really unable to make a distinction between what's real and what's unreal."
With New York City typically known as an expensive place to live, the apartments of these two fictitious women require a tremendous income to maintain.
According to the Year After Graduation Survey published by the Center of Career Planning and Placement, the mean income of a 2001 UB graduate with a bachelor's degree was $35,000.
A person living on a $35,000 income in Buffalo would need to earn roughly $54,000 dollars to maintain the same standard of living in Manhattan as in Buffalo, according to Homefair Inc.'s Web site, http://www.homefair.com. Homefair Inc. aims to connect realtors and real estate professionals with consumers during the moving process, according to the site.
According to www.homestore.com, an affiliate of Homefair Inc., the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Buffalo is $444 per month. The same size apartment within Manhattan, Queens, the Bronx, Yonkers or Brooklyn would cost a tenant an average of $2,788 per month.
How can Green, played by Jennifer Aniston, and Bradshaw, played by Sarah Jessica Parker, afford to pay their rent, let alone stock their closets shopping at Bloomingdale's?
"Perhaps they should venture out into the real world instead of passively accepting that which is on television as reality," said Keith Hessian, a senior media studies major. "Commercials cannot be distinguished from the content itself."
The ratings for "Friends," the sitcom where Green makes her home, were higher last year than ever before in its nine-year run on NBC.
Watching shows like "Friends" and "Sex and the City," today's generation is likely to be influenced by their content.
Although the media is selling an image of a wonderful and glamorous life, Elder believes there is a justification for the media's infatuation with New York City.
" I had lived in Manhattan. . Being on the street, you feel you are part of the action. The shows capitalized on it," said Elder.
Members of today's generation are growing up being constantly entertained, furthering the idea that life is as it exists on television.
"People play a video game by the time they're six, so they're living in this magic world," said Elder. "There's a strange brave new world."
Many students return home from class and turn to their televisions, DVDs and computers. Elder believes this is a very lonely and empty existence.
The trend of going to New York and of living the life of Green or Bradshaw has proven to be a byproduct of both an elaborated glamorous life and the natural pull of a metropolis like New York.
But as far as facts and figures go, the actual cost of living is hard on the wallets of those who flee to the Big Apple.
With the popularity of reality-based television shows that glamorize a life too expensive for most, American television has idealized a materialistically unreachable metropolitan lifestyle. Unreachable, at least, for the demographic that "Friends" relies on for ratings, the 18- to 25-year-old population, according to Entertainment Weekly magazine.
Those planning to follow in the footsteps of their television idols by making a move to the city that never sleeps need to have the financial stability to not only pay rent, but also to shop at Bloomingdale's and drink cosmopolitans if they are to make their television dream world a reality.
Photo: Meredith Forrest Kulwicki
