Celebrated feminism
Twenty years after its debut, we ask two women of different ages what the show means to them.
Millennial Tess wonders how Carrie could afford cocktails every night on a media salary.
‘So it ’s a show about three hookers and their mom?” Way before I watched Sex and the City ( beyond secretly sneaking a peek at the rude bits if it was on TV while I was babysitting at a house with Sky), I’d picked up on the backlash. Sex and the City was about shallow, vapid sluts and the main slut looked like a horse. The cultural narrative of a terrible show for stupid women was so pervasive it never occurred to me it might be worth watching.
The “hookers and their mom” quote is from Family Guy, a show I devoured as a teenager without noticing the hideous sexism (and racism and homophobia and transphobia) in most of its jokes. Then, at 21, I discovered feminism and began actively seeking out artists, musicians, TV shows and movies I ’d previously assumed weren’t worth my time.
It ’s easy to see why so many men — and shows like Family Guy are run and written mainly by men — felt threatened by Sex and the City. Here were women who not only enjoyed sex but pursued it, sometimes aggressively, later talking about their exploits with a frankness I ’m sure every straight man fears has at some point been directed at him. They were unlikeable — yes, that constant criticism levelled against female characters — but they didn’t seem to care. Bossy Miranda, critical Carrie, narcissistic Samantha and obsessive Charlotte saw each other’s f laws but they loved themselves and each other anyway. That’s what I loved about the show when I finally watched it, binging two seasons in about a
week because I was in my third year of a politics degree and had that kind of time to waste.
Of course, some critics had valid points — I mean, were you supposed to relate to people with loft apartments in New York City and wardrobes full of high-end designer clothes?
Where were the brown and black faces in a show set in one of the most diverse cities in the world?
Was Carrie even a good writer and how was her column enough of an earner to bankroll the life she led?
Most criticism the show copped, however, was sexist, unfair and looked past its skilled handling of four women and the nuances of their lives and friendships.
Besides, if this was the one current show tackling the reality of women’s lives, how could it relate to everyone?
The show didn’t change my life and I never watched beyond those two seasons, but it was perhaps the first show I ’d ever seen that centred itself on women’s friendships and all their complexities.
The characters fought, and when
The cultural narrative of a terrible show for stupid women was so pervasive that it never occurred to me it might be worth watching.
they did it was how I fought with my closest friends — messily and sometimes underhandedly but always with the knowledge that afterwards you’d still be friends because how could this dumb fight possibly be worth throwing something so important away?
One scene that has stuck with me was an episode in which Carrie has fought with Big and Miranda, and in the final scene she arranges to meet someone at a diner.
The show sets the scene up as the resolution of a lover’s tiff, but when it ’s revealed who Carrie is meeting, we see Miranda waiting at the table, not Big.
The idea a friend could be one of the great loves of your life is cropping up in shows more and more frequently. Who knows how much Sex and the City helped this along — this certainly isn’t a think piece trying to measure the show’s influence on how much we’re willing to value female friendships.
But it can’t have hurt, right?
Girls, the HBO show that wrapped its sixth and final season earlier this year, is often cited as Sex and the City’s successor, but it ’s just one of so many shows to come out in recent years focusing heavily if not exclusively on women’s friendships.
Broad City, Parks and Recreation, Orange Is the New Black, New Girl and Crazy Ex- Girlfriend are all probably a little in debt to Carrie and co as well.
They’re all shows I loved more than Sex and the City because they’re funnier and kinder, showing versions of adulthood that exist in the same world in which I ’m navigating mine.
But that’s the great thing about having so many women-led shows: the burden of expectation for one show to sum up all of womanhood is lifted. There’s enough space to tell all our stories.