“I'd like a cheeseburger please, large fries, and a Cosmopolitan.”
Twenty years ago, Sex and the City introduced us
to one of the most iconic TV protagonists of all time:
Carrie Bradshaw.
“I had to wonder: are we the new bachelors?”
Her character lived the fantasy of being a successful writer
who could afford a Manhattan apartment and a closet full of expensive shoes.
“I have this little substance abuse problem.
Expensive footwear.”
And Carrie represented a new form of agency.
“For Carrie she was a writer too, that was the thrill of her.
She loved the idea of trying to form her life
into little short stories.”
As she put her experiences into her own words,
she embodied the idea of being the writer of your own story --
going your own way.
This new vision of the empowered, self-reflective single woman in her thirties
still captivates us to this day.
“The only time we don't speak is during ‘Sex and the City.’
She gets Carrie fever, but soon as the show is over
she's right back to being my soldier.”
So we couldn’t help but wonder...
what gave Carrie that “it” factor?
And what did her popularity say about her times?
“The fact is sometimes is hard to walk in a single woman's shoes.
That's why we need really special ones now and then --
to make the walk a little more fun.”
Before we go on, we want to talk a little bit
about this video's sponsor -- Skillshare.
Skillshare is a superb online learning community
with thousands of classes about everything.
Writing, blogging, even fashion.
Click the link in the description below
to get 2 months access to all classes for free.
Now, back to Carrie.
Sex and the City framed Carrie as attractively flawed --
"Some flaws can be good."
"Flaws are the best part."
her shortcomings didn’t make her damaged --
they gave her complexity.
And this characterization made it seem more appealing to be oneself,
with all of your flaws, than to be perfectly put together.
"I would never be the woman with the perfect hair
who can wear white and not spill on it,
and chair committees and write thank-you notes.
And I can't feel bad about that."
The opening sequence visualizes this message:
we see Carrie out in New York,
when a bus bearing her picture drives through a puddle and splashes her.
This sequence sets up the theme of Carrie being fabulous
but far from the flawless image on that bus.
The show often reminds us of Carrie’s imperfections
through scenes where she looks stylish, then falls or gets clumsy.
Of course, the pretty, clumsy woman is a common comedy trope.
But Carrie’s falls are a statement that she messes up.
The takeaway is that she is more interesting and charming
because of her ability to fail, get back up and walk it off.
The show juxtaposes attractively flawed Carrie
with Big’s younger, more refined wife, Natasha.
“You know, she’s shiny hair, style section, Vera Wang.
And I'm...you know, the sex column they run next to ads for penile implants.”
Carrie envies Natasha’s poise and sophistication --
but the show implies
that Natasha’s flawlessness makes her boring
and that Carrie is inherently a more fascinating person
because she’s not so impeccable.
In season two, the girls compare the Big/Carrie/Natasha love triangle
to The Way We Were,
and Carrie likens herself to Barbara Streisand’s character, Katie.
“Ladies, I am having an epiphany.
The world is made up of two types of women:
the simple girls and the Katie girls.
I’m a Katie girl.”
Katie is an outspoken activist who doesn’t get the guy in the end,
but she’s the one viewers like and root for.
"Your girl is lovely, Hubbell."
Of course, in Sex and the City, the Katie does get the guy,
so the show is again endorsing the idea that flawed is irresistible.
Carrie Bradshaw showed the world what a fulfilling life could look like
for single women over thirty.
Even the fact that she didn’t have kids, or particularly seem to want them,
was pretty ground-breaking.
"I don't even have time to eat this cookie."
"How is it?"
"It's so good I forgot to have children."
Carrie was an alternative version of modern womanhood in her time --
an ideal that encourages us to aspire to imperfection --
that encourages us, still, to embrace the messiness of the journey.
"As we drive along this road called life,
occasionally a gal will find herself a little...lost.
And when that happens, I guess she has to let go of
the coulda, shoulda, woulda, buckle up and just keep going."
When Sex and the City first came out,
it was revolutionary for a show to focus on sex and relationships
from an honest, female perspective.
“I’m sort of a sexual anthropologist.”
There’s something incredibly positive
about seeing a female protagonist as the lover --
the one doing the desiring of the guys --
rather than being the beloved or the object of desire.
“For me the show is really about, um, the fact
that women don’t need to be defined by men, or by marriage.”
“More and more single women of a certain age
are looking for a certain thing.
And that certain thing does not necessarily involve a certain ring.”
It’s easier to sum up
what Carrie’s three friends want from their love lives --
Charlotte wants a picture-perfect marriage,
Samantha wants great sex,
and Miranda wants independence and control.
Carrie says --
“I am someone who is looking for love.
Real love.”
But what exactly love looks like to Carrie Bradshaw
takes six seasons and two movies to pin down.
“Just tell me I'm the one.”
She's so obsessed with love
that she sometimes gets a little carried away.
"Don't get carried away!"
And her defining romantic trait seems to be
that she needs conflict in her relationships
in order to feel satisfied.
“I'm used to the uh, you know, the hunt.
This is...effortless.
It's just...it's freaking me out.”
In season two, Carrie dates a guy who strikes her as too normal,
so she tears apart his apartment looking for proof
that something’s wrong with him.
Her need for struggle explains why for the entire series,
Carrie’s completely fixated on the elusive man
we know as Mr. Big.
“I mean you're obsessed with talking about Big
and frankly, we can't take it anymore.”
“It's out of our league.”
“What is this, an intervention?”
“Yes, stop her before she obsesses again.”
“With her love interest Mr. Big she believed they belonged together.
And in a very good romantic comedy that works out,
and in life sometimes that’s a pathology.”
Big keeps Carrie constantly guessing about their relationship status.
He's hot and then cold, and refuses to commit to her,
“Why is it so hard...for you to factor me into your life
in any real way?”
yet all this manipulative behavior just makes Carrie double down
on her mission to make Big love her.
"Something about him... you should see me around him.
I'm-I'm not like me.
I'm like, together Carrie.
I wear little outfits -- sexy Carrie, casual Carrie."
Each of the women on Sex and the City has a defining relationship with a man
who’s not the person she expected to end up with.
This man offers her the chance of a more fulfilling happiness.
For Carrie, that person is Aidan.
When the two of them start dating in season three,
Aidan’s openness and loving nature make him the anti-Big.
“My folks are coming to town this weekend and I want you to meet them.”
On their first date Aidan tells Carrie --
“I don't wanna be a jerk, but I-I can't date a smoker.”
This symbolizes that to be in this relationship,
Carrie will have to change her ways and break her self-destructive habits.
But Carrie can't adapt to a healthy relationship
and the opportunity it offers her for growth.
She’s so unsettled by her drama-free relationship with Aidan
that she actually gets night terrors.
“The irony is Aidan's acting exactly the way I wish Big would have behaved,
and I'm behaving just like Big.”
“Maybe you don't believe it's for real unless somebody plays hard to get.”
It’s not long before Carrie goes back to her two main addictions:
smoking and Big.
“I'm having an affair with Big.”
“I swear to God I think my heart just stopped.”
“And also, I'm smoking again.”
In season four, Carrie sees Aidan again,
and urgently wants him back --
probably because he’s no longer right there waiting for her.
“But I lie in bed at night, and I think about us.
And I think about you holding me, and--”
“You broke my heart!”
Once they get back together,
Carrie tries again to adjust to a traditional, relatively stable relationship
--
but it’s like she’s physically allergic to it.
"My body is literally rejecting the idea of marriage."
At this point it’s clear that Carrie is a kind of love junkie --
which is really more of a drama junkie --
she’s someone who’s always looking for her next hit of romantic struggle.
And we wonder if that “love” she says she’s looking for
is really the pain of unrequited or dysfunctional love.
“Did I ever really love Big or was I addicted to the pain?
The exquisite pain of wanting someone so unattainable.”
Emily Nussbaum at the New Yorker has called Carrie, quote,
“the unacknowledged first female anti-hero on television.”
Nussbaum argues that before Sex and the City,
the single female protagonists we saw on TV
were what she calls “you-go-girl types”
who both empowered women and appealed to men.
But Carrie didn’t necessarily fit this mold.
Her unique fashion showed she was dressing for herself,
not for the opposite sex.
“My relationship is at a standstill, so instead, I'm evolving my look.”
Meanwhile, she inspires mixed feelings in female viewers.
In the popular game of deciding which Sex and the City character you'd be,
many viewers at the time would have said Carrie --
"It's like I'm you.
Or I will be when I turn thirty."
That’s because the other three were all clear, rigid types.
It’s easy to point to others in your life as Mirandas, Samanthas and Charlottes,
but Carrie was more multi-dimensional
and most of us perceive ourselves to be likewise, complex.
"Carrie Bradshow is the individual.
She's the person who's following her own path."
But at the same time, as Nussbaum points out,
many female viewers didn’t want to think of themselves as being a Carrie
when she was making bad decisions.
In our Miranda video,
we talked about how Miranda Hobbes has gone from
being the most disliked main character on the show
to becoming an aspirational figure today.
Meanwhile the public perception of Carrie herself
has arguably gone in the reverse direction.
Carrie’s surface qualities made her a delight to be around,
"You broke up with James because he was too small.
This guy's too big...
Who are you, Goldicocks?"
but they also masked deeper problems in her mindset.
It’s easy to laugh off Miranda eating cake out of the garbage,
but it's more unsettling to see Carrie chase after an emotionally immature man for
years
and spend her money irresponsibly.
“I spent $40,000 on shoes and I have no place to live?
I will literally be the old woman who lived in her shoes.”
Since Sex and the City we’ve seen plenty of
complex female antiheroes,
but often these are women who act immorally,
yet are exceptionally powerful or accomplished.
But Carrie’s shortcomings and vices are closer to our own.
"This floor is non-smoking."
"I have an addiction, sir!"
It’s actually pretty rare nowadays to see a female character on TV like her
who’s as openly needy, neurotic, and self-absorbed yet still likeable
as Carrie could be.
So you could say that Carrie was revolutionary
in that she provoked uncomfortable feelings of identification in viewers
who could relate to what she was going through,
even when they didn’t want to.
"Maybe I've dated men who were wrong for me.
But who hasn't?"
Like its heroine, Sex and the City contains some interesting contradictions --
the women spend most of their time talking and thinking about men.
"How does it happen that four such smart woman
have nothing to talk about but boyfriends?"
But their female friends are the ones
they share and analyze these sexual adventures with --
"Our Saturday morning ritual: coffee, eggs,
and a very private dish session."
and these ladies are the platonic loves of each other’s lives.
“Maybe we could be each other's soul mates.
And then we could let men be just these great, nice guys to have fun with.”
So while they do spend such an extended period fixating on romance,
along the way these women prove themselves
to be very independent, career-focused, friend-first people.
“The most exciting, challenging, and significant relationship of all...
is the one you have with yourself.”
All of these contradictions of the show are embodied in Carrie,
and that’s what makes her so maddening, inspiring and fascinating.
"Maybe some women aren't meant to be tamed."
And so it’s only fitting that 20 years later
we should raise a cosmo to this trailblazing TV antihero
who opened up a whole new world of possibilities.
“I wanted to let you know that I'm getting married.
To myself.
And I'm registered at Manolo Blahnik.
So thanks!
Bye!”
This is Jillian Richardson.
Jillian is a successful freelance writer who's published on Salon and Marie Claire.
And she teaches a class on Skillshare on how to make it as a freelance writer.
"I want to create this class because I want to show
that you can be a professional full-time freelancer,
and it's not a pipe dream.
She can set you on the path to affording a closet full of Manolo Blahniks
on a writer's salary.
The classes are taught by amazing, accomplished working professionals
in design, photography, social media, business, entrepreneurship and more.
In fact, Skillshare has actually helped us at ScreenPrism
learn more about animation and design.
They offer 20,000 classes about any skill you might want to learn,
all for less than $10 a month.
Right now you can get 2 months' access to all their classes for free.
But that's only if you're one of the first 500 people
who click the link in our description below.
It's a great deal -- so hurry up and don't miss out.