Beyond sex, more than a city
How an old TV show still asks relevant questions
As Sarah Jessica Parker teases about the return of Carrie Bradshaw via an Instagram post (for a charity event of some kind), I could not help but reflect on the character and the show, the namesake of the column you are reading right now. It was an easy pun with my own name, Carrie Bradshaw and Kerry Tinga. She was a columnist, I was starting a column. It just seemed the most obvious choice. Nonetheless, despite being sidelined as a “guilty pleasure” nowadays, Sex
and the City and its protagonist Carrie Bradshaw honestly spoke to me. So much so that the name of this column and the pieces I have written are in the vein of what I consider to be the modern day significance of this groundbreaking television series.
Some, maybe even most, of its jokes and lines did not age well. These could be read as tone-deaf in our time, properly offensive and insensitive even. But its modern day significance is not found in its then progressive (now, not as much) “feminist” agenda. Rather, it was about its open dialogue of stereotypically taboo topics, topics that everybody in the show had an opinion on, which was, and is, okay. For six seasons, from the late 1990s to the early 2000s, Sex and the City followed the lives of four 30-somethingyear-olds (and one 40-something-yearold) female friends living in New York City—Miranda, Charlotte, Samantha, and, of course, Carrie. They were the epitome of the modern woman, independent and successful in their career paths. The show and these characters were a sensation then and even now. Watching the show when I was younger, I dreamt of moving to New York City to work at an art gallery like Charlotte. I took online tests that asked “Which SATC character are you?” and I always ended up with Miranda. I wanted to have the guts and one-liners of Samantha. And, of course, I loved writing, just like Carrie.
Nonetheless, like many “shows for women,” the storylines of these four independent and successful women often involved their relationships with men. This provides the majority of the contemporary criticism of the show. Was it really sending the right message to young women? Were these four appropriate role models? I say yes and no. Carrie, whose character provides the voice overs and narration for the show, is a sex columnist for the fictional New York Star. She makes a million and one mistakes throughout the show that I do not wish any young woman to follow. But she is one of the most flawed, and thus most real, female protagonists to have ever graced our television screens. Not in a comedic way like Elaine on Seinfeld or Rachel on F.R.I.E.N.D.S., but emotionally complex and grounded in reality despite being a fictional character.
In a time where women on television were either the girl next door or the femme fatale, she was a character any woman could honestly relate to. We yell at our screens saying how could she have done that, but deep down we understand that it is the sort of thing we ourselves would have done, may do, or know someone who has done, or may do.
What struck me the most with Sex
and the City, years after it has gone off the air, years after the first time I watched the series, was the support group these four women found between each other despite their differences. They would meet at the newest, coolest places in New York City and have an open discussion of what was going on in their lives, each with differing, often contrasting, views. And that was okay.
Carrie would have a voice over that asked the audience a rhetorical question, not looking for an answer, but giving us something to think about and to form our own opinion on. Was Charlotte, or Miranda, or Samantha, or some other character on the show, right? The answer is never yes, and it is never no. It is something in between and different for anybody you ask. Between the four women were four different viewpoints, some similar, but never any exactly the same. While some of their opinions may be considered old fashioned and outdated, their conversations were dialogues to educate each other on different views, not shame each other into a single, specific viewpoint.
I write this column in that vein, in opening up a point of discussion for young people reading this by expressing my own opinions, but still welcoming others to voice theirs. While Carrie and the other women of Sex and the
City may not be the greatest fictional female role models, they were women who listened to each other’s different views and still supported each other.
In a time where women on television were either the girl next door or the femme fatale, she was a character any woman could honestly relate to.