As one of the most defining pieces of media of the late ‘90s and 2000s, Sex and the City details the life of columnist Carrie Bradshaw and her three friends, Samantha Jones, Miranda Hobbes and Charlotte York as they navigate the dating scene in Manhattan as 30-something women. The unabashed depiction of messy and relatable women made it so successful during its run, and it has only continued to grow its audience on the streaming service HBO Max. Personally, I think that the flawed nature of its protagonists make the show enjoyable to watch. But recently, due to Netflix adding the show to its catalog, and with more people discovering and watching the show for the first time, criticism has been heightened. I find most of the criticisms reflect how difficult it is for audience’s to stomach flawed characters, specifically flawed women.
Most complaints about Sex and the City deal with its main character, Carrie Bradshaw. Played by Sarah Jessica Parker, Carrie is, for better or worse, a hopeless romantic. Her existence for most of the show centers around her on-and -off relationship with Mr. Big, who doesn’t seem to care about her nearly as much as she does him. Carrie is self-absorbed, and her devotion to Big is embarrassing to watch as a viewer, but that’s what makes her such a good protagonist. People have said that because Carrie is unlikeable and watchers can’t root for her, she isn’t a good main character. But I think that the need to empathize and root for a character is what has made modern television so bland. Every new TV show that comes out is scared to make their characters messy, even antagonists have to have some sad backstory to explain their actions. In contrast, Carrie feels like a real person. She makes terrible decisions because she’s selfish and impulsive, she reflects the bad parts everybody has which makes people uncomfortable to see on screen. Whether you like it or not, there is some sort of relatability to Carrie’s character, no matter how extreme she might be. A distinction should be made between a terrible person and a terrible character, and Carrie is far from the latter.
There also seems to be a double standard when it comes to Carrie and other characters. While Walter White and Tony Soprano get put in lists talking about the greatest characters of all time, Carrie gets hailed as one of the worst. Why aren’t female characters given the same grace as their male counterparts to be bad people? There is a higher moral expectation that women are held to. It’s not out of the ordinary to think that a man like Walter White would become a drug lord, but Carrie having an affair with a married man is terrible because why would she do that to another woman? I’m not justifying any of her actions, but I think it’s unfair to hold female characters to higher standards simply because they are women. I feel this way about other “unlikeable” female characters like Ginny from Ginny and Georgia, Betty Draper from Mad Men, Peyton Sawyer from One Tree Hill, and Slylar White from Breaking Bad who are just some of the many characters that get referred to as “obnoxious” or “annoying” for their morally dubious actions while their male counterparts who do much worse don’t get nearly as much flack. But I think the thing about Carrie specifically that aggravates people so much is how shameless she is. Her interactions with Big in particular are desperate and embarrassing to watch, but she doesn’t care. She’s not insecure in the typical sense, and she never says sorry for her actions, but that’s what irks people so bad because there is nothing worse than an unapologetic woman.
Carrie Bradshaw is not a likable character. She’s a male obsessed self-centered instigator, but she feels like an actual person. She’s not my favorite out of the four main girls, but I acknowledge that she is the perfect protagonist because her poor choices serve as an ideal vessel for entertainment. I like to watch her, even if I’m not necessarily rooting for her, and I know that if she were a real life person I would probably hate her. So while I don’t really like her, I like to watch her, which is all that really matters. I would love to see more characters like her, more specifically I would love to see more female protagonists just being terrible people who make the worst decisions possible because I think it’s entertaining.
I encourage people to watch the first episode because it is a perfect encapsulation of the rest of the show, and if you don’t like the first episode you probably won’t like the show. But don’t go in expecting some great commentary on female friendships and feminism because truthfully, every female characters’ life is centered around men, and much of the content and jokes have aged quite poorly. But personally, I really enjoy the show because I don’t think there’s really anything like it. There really aren’t that many shows about adult women just being messy in their day to day lives, and despite some of the jokes being in poor taste, I do think that it’s really funny and well written. In my opinion, I find it to be one of the most influential shows of all time. I don’t think shows like Gossip Girl, Insecure, Entourage (which is basically a male Sex and the City), or Girls would exist if it weren’t for Sex and the City paving the way.
