Why Carrie Bradshaw Is The Worst

            I realize that I won’t win any points for timeliness with this one, but I feel compelled to unleash some pent-up feelings regarding a certain curly-haired protagonist from a certain late-90’s/early-2000’s hit TV series. You see, the deplorability of Carrie Bradshaw has caused me to have some conflicting thoughts on HBO’s sometimes excellent, sometimes dreadful, always giggle-worthy Sex and the City. While the show has been off the air for—wait for it—almost ten years, it still is and likely always will be a part of the collective subconscious of American women, including yours truly, partially due to the allegedly relatable main character. Unfortunately, said main character makes my skin crawl, and hence, the aforementioned conflicting thoughts about the show.

            We all have that one friend. The friend who grates on our nerves and frequently causes us to clench our teeth in unmitigated exasperation, but we keep around anyway for whatever perverse reason. For me, Carrie Bradshaw is that friend. Oh, sure, she doesn’t actually know me. She’s not even real, I get that. But, to the show writers’ credit, she has been written so organically that I feel perfectly justified in having genuine emotional reactions to her and her repugnant behavior. Such is the elaborate monstrosity of good fiction. 

             A little background, for the uninitiated. Sex and the City is an appealing, clever romp through the glamorous parts of Manhattan with four middle-aged single women who enjoy lunch, casual sex, and complaining about men. Is it sexist? Of course it is. But it doesn’t think it’s sexist, which almost-but-not-quite makes it somewhat okay. After all, the intention of the show is clearly to celebrate female sexuality and independence, at which it often fails miserably—but I give the show-runners credit for trying. They even try to avoid stereotypical female archetypes, which is…again, a failed effort. Miranda is a cheeky, caustic, miserable pessimist of a corporate lawyer. Samantha is a promiscuous, witty, femme fatale pseudo-male who literally lives to bone. Charlotte is an ultra-conservative, irritatingly idealistic, Disney princess wannabe. And Carrie is just the worst.

            To explain my basically irrational disgust with Carrie, I will take a page out of Miranda’s book and make an abridged list of reasons elucidating why this shrill-voiced moron is the absolute worst of the worst.

5. All she really cares about is herself.

            Fine, so Carrie is the main character and narrator of the series. She is entitled to have some degree of self-absorption, given that much of the show’s action takes place in her general vicinity. However, she takes egocentricity to a whole new level. In Season 4, after Miranda sprains her neck and hilariously has to wear an Aspen collar, Carrie comes over for a monologue about her boyfriend, disguised as breakfast and checking on her immobilized friend. Miranda, who is awesome, calls her out on her selfish nonsense, and I only wish that Miranda had also had the sense to chase Carrie out of her apartment, pelting her with bagels as she fled down Eighth Avenue in her absurdly high heels…but I digress. Earlier in Season 4, Carrie is asked to walk in a fashion show, and, although it is made explicitly clear that Carrie is participating in this event to serve as a juxtaposition to the real models, she still acts like a total bitchy diva and orders Stanford (her pocket gay) to bring her a glass of champagne while she smokes like a chimney and whines about basically everything. In the final season, Carrie dates Mikhail Barishnykov, and morphs into a teenage girl—you know, the kind who has no need for her friends anymore because she just “wuvs” spending all of her time with her boo. Also, does anyone else remember when Carrie called Miranda to whine about the eternal Aidan/Mr. Big dilemma while Miranda’s mother was dying in the hospital?

4. She has a flagrant disdain for physical and mental health.

            Aside from the fact that Carrie clearly believes that it is both chic and acceptable to have a smoking problem, she doesn’t even think about quitting until a cute, lovely man named Aidan inadvertently makes her feel all guilty about. Because why would someone so self-unaware as Carrie decide to give up a disgusting, fatal habit unless it was for the sake of impressing a guy? Similarly, Carrie (unlike her friends) seems to have no desire to seek any form of physical fitness. Miranda and Samantha both work out regularly. Even Charlotte, who makes me itch, is an avid runner. Carrie, on the other hand, makes a flippant remark about how a man dropping dead at the gym is a good reason why she doesn’t work out. Good for you, Carrie. You are naturally thin and somehow have the lean musculature of a prepubescent gymnast, even though you seem to subsist on alcohol and takeout. Here, have a medal. As if all that wasn’t bad enough, Carrie also turns her nose up at seeing a therapist when her friends finally join forces to point out how her absurd self-centeredness is pathological and worthy of professional attention. She claims to “not believe in” therapy. Carrie, therapy isn’t like the Tooth Fairy. No one cares if you believe in it or not. And by the way, you’re a narcissistic bitch.

3. She is a drama queen.

            I generally try to ignore the existence of the Sex and the City movies, but I simply must cite the infamous wedding fiasco from the first (and marginally better) film adaptation. Carrie, after planning a ridiculously extravagant wedding to Mr. Big (a mistake on many levels), is publicly jilted, to nobody’s surprise but her own, and the stink that she raises is Biblical. Which isn’t to say that it’s not perfectly acceptable to raise a giant stink when stood up at the altar, but Carrie goes so far as to become mute for several days, ignore her friends to the point that they’re actually afraid of her, throw her cell phone in the ocean, and dye her hair brown. Also, as an aside, the only thing that makes her laugh weeks after being jilted is the sight of Charlotte shitting her pants, which shows you how odious Carrie really is.

            Years before the wedding and pants-shitting incidents, in Season 2 of the TV series, Carrie is flummoxed by then-boyfriend Mr. Big’s decision to move to Paris for seven months without consulting her first. Never mind the fact that Mr. Big has made it abundantly clear that he is averse to commitment and delights in stringing her along. She pitches an enormous fit in his apartment and flings a Big Mac at his head. Then she drunk dials him in the wee hours of the morning, ranting and spilling booze all over herself. Soon after that, she starts dating the lovely and adorable Aidan, who—oh, the horror!—engenders no drama whatsoever.  He is respectful, dedicated, loyal, romantic, and pleasant. Carrie is profoundly disturbed and demands to know what’s wrong with him. Without drama, Carrie is as out of place as Big Bird in a brothel.

2. She has no discernible talents (or, in the absence of talents, interests).

            Yes, Carrie is a “writer” by trade. She writes a wildly popular weekly column about sex and dating. She eventually does some freelance work for Vogue and, around that same time, publishes a compilation of her columns. I suppose one could argue that writing is her talent, but come on now. I can’t buy that writing is some all-consuming passion of hers, just because we know that she’s able to make a living out of it. We never even see her write a single thing aside from her inane column—no blogs or poetry or novels or anything. Just trite observations from her daily life of shallowness. And what does her life even consist of, either than sex, dating, and fashion? We hardly ever see her reading. Her definition of “hard news” is the Sunday Times wedding announcement section. We know her knowledge of local politics is pitiful, based on the events of the Season 3 episode “Politically Erect”, in which she dates a politician with a penchant for urolagnia. She has a documented aversion to cooking (she admits to using her oven for storage), and she hates dogs.

            We do know that she used to like Styx and occasionally does the crossword puzzle, but that’s all pretty dismal, as far as interests go.

1. She is a remorseless liar.

            As if sabotaging a relationship with a lovely man because he’s too sweet to satisfy her maudlin lust for drama wasn’t bad enough, Carrie takes it a step further and humiliates Aidan by having a full-blown affair with Mr. Big, who’s married to Tom Brady’s much hotter ex-wife. Let me paint you a picture. Aidan, in all his infinite loveliness, volunteers to do some home repairs for Carrie, free of charge. Instead of being grateful, Carrie whines about how noisy the project is and how it’s disrupting her “work” (excuse me while I laugh myself silly). In a huff, she goes off to a nearby hotel…where she runs into a very angsty Mr. Big, who is out of sorts and desirous of therapeutic boning in order to take his mind off his failing marriage. One thing leads to another, and soon we have your standard Carrie Bradshaw melodrama: Carrie thinks that she and Mr. Big are in twue wuv, Mr. Big is a giant ass hat, Carrie post-coitally pokes around Mr. Big’s marital home in just a bra and gets caught by his wife, Mr. Big’s wife falls down some stairs and cracks a tooth, Carrie screams and cries and finally…Carrie gets away with everything.

            Until much later, when she tells Aidan the truth (to alleviate her own guilt, not because of any sense of personal integrity), gets dumped, has a giant pity party, and never actually reflects on what a lying jerk she really is. But that’s not even the worst part. The worst part is this: a few years later, Carrie and Aidan get back together. Carrie should be thanking her lucky stars and sacrificing a virgin on the altar of good fortune. Instead, she whines and cries and repeats “You have to forgive me” over and over and over until Aidan, being the lovely man that he is, feels sorry for her and lets it all go. Just like that. You would think that, with all her good fortune, Carrie would have the sense to cease all communication with Mr. Big out of respect for Aidan. Nope! Mr. Big constantly calls Carrie at home when Aidan is literally sitting right there next to her, Carrie continues to have dinner with Mr. Big on the sly, and—get this—she even has the gall to invite Mr. Big to Aidan’s country home and demand that Aidan and Mr. Big make friends. Sure, Carrie. Aidan should totally get chummy with the guy who smashed his girlfriend.

            Carrie has zero remorse about her awful treatment of Aidan. I can deal with flawed characters. I like flawed characters. But, if we’re supposed to root for Carrie and Mr. Big’s ultimate “twue wuv”, shouldn’t Carrie try and win us over with a little remorse and compassion? It’s fine that she made a mistake, but rubbing Aidan’s face in it by continuing to hang with Mr. Big like there’s no Big Elephant in the room is just not right.

            The problem with Carrie isn’t really that she’s shrill, self-centered, shallow, and sneaky. The problem is, she’s yet another in a long list of unflattering female characters in TV, movies, and literature—and yet, she was perfectly positioned not to be. The premise of this show is the struggle of modern femininity, how Western society continues to evolve to evolve in order to allow women to approach equal footing with men in terms of sexual freedom, career opportunities, and flexibility of gender roles. While the show often fails to hit the correct notes, its most egregious failure is Carrie. She’s not just a representative of modern women, she’s a representative of modern, icky people. Rather than applauding her successes and empathizing with her failures, I find myself rolling my eyes at her idiocy and sense of entitlement. I can’t appreciate her as a strong, self-assured woman: I dismiss her as a hypocritical, lazy brat. While it’s refreshing that many of her flaws are gender neutral, it’s still a crime against feminism, because the show-runners had the perfect opportunity to make Carrie Bradshaw marvelous—which would have been huge at a time when prominent female role models in the media were rather scarce.

            Nowadays, our pantheon of exciting female characters in television is much more robust, although we are still afflicted with self-impressed Carrie-types (Jess from New Girl comes to mind). However, Sex and the City was always supposed to be a celebration of modern women, and they ruined the party with Carrie. Daenerys from HBO’s Game of Thrones would have been a much better protagonist. Once she realized that Mr. Big was a sleazy commitment-phobe, she would have flown off on her dragon and conquered a continent instead of wasting her time pining over him. (The problem is, she’s at least twenty years younger than all the other women on the show, which could have made for some awkward non-sequiturs at brunch, [i.e. DANY: OMG GUYS I JUST GOT MY PERIOD! WHAT’S HAPPENING???? SAMANTHA, MIRANDA, AND CHARLOTTE: … ]).

            Whatever. Literally anyone is better than Carrie Bradshaw.

In Defense of Grammar

As if I needed yet another reason to believe that the Internet is mostly a dangerous, destructive, terrible thing, recent perusing of the self-indulgent and slightly maudlin Thought Catalog has alerted me to the awful truth: literally Anyone and Everyone is now a bona fide writer, thanks to the Internet.

You no longer need to possess any particular command of the language in order to see your name in a byline. Interesting and novel ideas are not a prerequisite for unleashing your words on the populace. Generic, pointless rubbish is not only accepted by the likes of Thought Catalog, it appears to be the preference. And, possibly most offensive and repugnant of all, good grammar is not required.

What does the Internet have against commas? Why on Earth does no one seem to regard the distinction between “your” and “you’re” as being worthy of consideration? Can I truly be the only person in existence who grinds her teeth in ill-concealed fury when writers fail to use “who” and “whom” correctly? Has simple, honest proofreading gone the way of the VHS and become extinct?

Even worse than the affronts to grammar and syntax is the vitriol that we unfortunate proponents of the English language encounter when pointing out said affronts—from being labeled as “Grammar Nazis” to being outright ridiculed for daring to draw attention to what some consider to be “trivial”. With regard to the former, calling anyone a “Nazi” (in the year 2014, no less) for being mindful of grammatical errors is distasteful, lazy, and indicative of a philistine understanding of history. With regard to the latter, it’s easy enough to fall back on the notion that the content supersedes form in terms of the relative impact of a written piece, but this attitude is woefully ignorant of the fundamentals of literature itself. One cannot hope to communicate one’s ideas, however brilliant and revolutionary they may be, if the basic structure in which they are presented is weakened by faulty machinery. And grammar is, indeed, the machinery that powers all writing. Why, then, do Internet users vociferously dismiss its importance, even to the point of chastising those who draw attention to flaws in the machinery?

I’d love to know why we seem to accept grammatical errors so easily. Is this a product of the millennial generation, the inherent belief that their words are the super special words of super special snowflakes who simply must express themselves immediately lest all their Facebook friends and Twitter followers are left to wonder in agony what infinite wisdom awaits? Is the urge to say something—anything­—so powerful that we simply accept that whatever is said is going to be at least a little bit sloppy and flawed, as millennials have all but cornered the market on being sloppy and flawed? Is our generation so uncomfortable with silence that we will connect, must connect, using the Internet’s version of the written word in order to ensure that we can never fade into anonymity?

Writing is not easy. It’s not supposed to be easy. Sort of like transplant surgery, if writing were easy, then everyone would do it, and they would do it well. In those days of yore when the distinction of having one’s writing published was reserved for those with actual talent, authors were praised for their skillful prose, their exciting notions, their memorable characters, their startling use of symbolism, their sensitive tackling of difficult issues.  They were not praised for their grammar—because correct grammar was a given. Transplant surgeons are never praised for tying a knot correctly, because knot tying is a fundamental skill in surgery that everyone who calls himself a surgeon is expected to be able to do. Good quality writing is indeed about far more than good grammar. But bad grammar negates good writing.

So this is my wish for all of us who aspire to call ourselves writers: take grammar seriously. We cannot expect to command the written word in any meaningful way if we fail to grasp the underlying machinery, those fussy little semi-colons and prepositions and verb tenses that are so easy to dismiss in our eagerness to indulge ourselves and stroke our egos by publishing our own special, precious little words with the click of a blogging button. The Internet can just as easily transform us into mindless, hash-tagging, self-impressed automatons who artlessly express ourselves in 140 nearly incoherent characters as it can educate, inspire, and motivate us to share our thoughts and ideas with the global community. I can only hope that social media, blogs, and the Thought Catalogs of the world don’t succeed in their endeavor to slowly wear down the machinery of good writing and render grammar obsolete. Call me old-fashioned, but I’m a believer in syntax over hash-tags. 

The Difficulty of Female Characters

            My dear friend John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, a British WWI veteran born in the late nineteenth century, has been thoroughly criticized decade after decade for his depiction of women in his magnum opus, The Lord of the Rings. The epic fantasy trilogy is the ultimate boys’ club; every major character is not only male, but (with a few obvious exceptions) the uber-masculine archetypal warrior flavor of whatever species they represent. Sure, female characters crop up here and there: notably, we have the pristine elves Arwen and her golden-haired grandmother Galadriel, the feisty shield-maiden Eowyn, and Shelob, a gigantic, horrifying spider demon thing. That lineup says a mouthful (and a dismal mouthful at that) and gives credence to Professor Tolkien’s critics: women, when they do incidentally appear in the story, are either virtuous pedestal prizes like the elves, a jilted lover like Eowyn, or a treacherous beast like Shelob.

However, one must remember that The Lord of the Rings, written between 1939 and 1947, was in many ways a reflection of Tolkien’s world. He sought to create a mythical history of England and to critique the weapons of mass destruction that were entering the United Kingdom’s consciousness during WWII, not to comment on gender roles. Perhaps Tolkien never identified a clear purpose for women beyond being a nurturer, romantic interest, or gluttonous villain. Regardless, he chose mostly to disregard women in The Lord of the Rings. Thorough character development was restricted to male characters.

And as much as I have found myself craving a strong female heroine in the story that I’ve loved all my life, I have to give Professor Tolkien credit for refusing to attempt and spectacularly fail at writing a female main character. There are as many pitfalls to creating female characters in literature and film as there are unflattering stereotypes about women. From downright hatred to condescending oversimplification, authors (both male and female) seem to struggle with injecting their own attitudes about women into their writing, and the result is often predictable and disturbing.

Take Professor Tolkien’s close friend and colleague, C.S. Lewis, who all but cornered the market on the classic Disney-esque villainess: the formerly beautiful Empress Jadis, who later devolves into the diabolical “Witch” of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe fame. The story goes something like this: Jadis has a fight with her sister, and, in a jealous rage, speaks “The Deplorable Word”, which ends her world and kills all the people in it. All that to spite her sister. She then gets stuck in a different world, which, as it happens, is the eponymous world of The Chronicles of Narnia, and gradually takes over, crafts a 100-year winter just to be nasty, scares all the nice talking animals into hiding, and then kills the Jesus Lion Aslan. What a bitch! The thing is, Lewis takes great pains to make sure that we understand just how gorgeous and sexy Jadis is before she becomes all witchy and evil (and she’s still a hottie when she’s in witch mode, albeit in a more sinister way), which implies that her sex appeal is intertwined with her villainy. This is in direct contrast with Tolkien’s Shelob, whose villainy is externalized as hideous gluttony.

Lewis seems to have differed from his friend in that his misogyny manifests in the form of aversion to female sexuality. Take his much-maligned banishment of Susan Pevensie from Narnia on account of her interest in lipstick and nylons. Susan is barred from entering Jesus Lion Aslan’s kingdom of Heaven not because she “grew up”, as some have suggested, but because she became a “woman”—or rather, Lewis’s idea of a modern woman: sexualized and powerful as a result, like Jadis. This ties in to the classic Disney villainess, the Maleficents and Wicked Snow White Queens of literature: women who are so driven by their own desire for sexual dominion over men that they literally turn evil. These women don’t care about military strategy or omniscience or power for power’s sake. They just want to be eternally beautiful and sexy—and they must be punished as a result. How patronizing. How simplistic. How misogynistic.

Is the solution, then, to express femininity in a non-sexual and therefore non-threatening way? The well-intentioned writers of “badass chicks” seem to think so. Many fantasy writers in particular give their female characters special powers or stereotypical “toughness” that sets these characters apart from the damsels in distress. Katniss Everdeen is handy with a bow and wears flaming couture in The Hunger Games. Arya Stark is an adorable serial killer in A Song of Ice and Fire. Hermione Granger, Harry Potter’s brilliant and STRICTY PLATONIC OMG SO PLATONIC sidekick, vanquishes bad guys with knowledge and logic. While this depiction of female characters is less offensive than most, it’s still inherently reductionist and a bit condescending. Katniss and Hermione, after all their toughness and badassery, require marriage to cement their happy(ish) endings. We don’t know yet what’s in store for Arya, but I cynically suspect that she’ll end up married to Gendry. Eowyn kicks ass and kills the Witch King in The Return of the King not just because she wants to prove how much of an amazing warrior she really could be—she essentially goes on a suicide mission because Aragorn tacitly rejects her. The life of a powerful, independent woman who could be and do so much more, reduced to nothing because of a man. Which makes me wonder: is there an authentic, relatable way of writing a female character who has admirable skills and attributes? Must we feel compelled to express a female character’s inherent femininity by reminding our readers that, underneath all the toughness and competence and awesomeness, she is still just a woman and therefore ultimately an object of desire, driven by desire?

The fundamental danger of writing a competent, admirable, relatable female character is that she inevitably gets branded with the unflattering designation of being a “Mary Sue”. For those unfamiliar with the term, it refers to a female character who more often than not serves as a self-insert for the author: a disgustingly perfect character who fits the author’s ideal of what he or she aspires to be and allows the author to live vicariously through that character. The most revolting example that I can think of is Bella Swan from the Twilight series, whose biggest “character flaw” is that she’s sort of clumsy in a cute and appealing way. Everything good happens to a Mary Sue: she charms the hero, is applauded for being classically “feminine”, gets to have oh-so-special powers and qualities, is inexplicably good at sports (I’m looking at you, Ginny Weasley), often displays tolerably plucky and sassy behavior, and always manages to save the day with her innate feminine goodness. That’s right: “bad” female characters are bad because they want to be, whereas “good” female characters, including Mary Sues, are good because they have to be. Take all the autonomy out of your female character and she becomes good by default. Readers tend to despise Mary Sues; we cannot relate to them and the self-indulgence on the author’s part is woefully transparent.

Therein lies the difficulty of writing female characters, which falls somewhere between the realms of author failure and reader resistance. Authors struggle with writing well-rounded female heroines who are not driven by stereotypically “female” motives, while readers resist well-rounded female heroines who somehow fail to fit into their mold of what constitutes an acceptable female character. It’s a vicious cycle of sorts, reinforced by those problematic archetypes that define the fantasy genre in particular, but inevitably invade other genres as well. The result is often a travesty of femininity: sexually manipulative villainesses, tough chicks with hard exteriors but soft hearts secretly longing for male attention, or Mary Sues who lose us entirely with their perfection and ridiculous amounts of good fortune. 

We also harbor subconscious expectations that a female in any narrative must serve as a harbinger of romance; even when the romance does not explicitly manifest within the main narrative, we know it’s coming. Arwen and Aragorn never interact in the text of The Lord of the Rings, but we always know that her purpose—her sole purpose--is to be his queen. Ginny Weasley is Harry Potter’s prize for saving the world: not a partner or an ally, but a reward. In the context of the real world, which has real issues with gender roles and the subjugation of women, this reduction of women is intensely problematic. Defining a woman’s purpose as it relates to the men in her life is the foundation of sexism and misogyny. Widows in India are made to light themselves on fire on their husband’s funeral pyres because they are thought to no longer serve any purpose without a husband. Female children in China are abandoned and murdered because impoverished families can’t afford the prohibitively expensive wedding customs that accompany a daughter. These are the dangers of defining women in men’s terms. When women are thought to exist solely as support for men, whether in literature, real life, or both, it becomes all to easy to dismiss the value of women not as women, but as people who happen to be female. We tend to have less trouble viewing male characters as simply people who happen to be male. Is this a product of our heteronormative, male-revering global philosophy? Is this the effect of generations of religious shaming of femininity, the original sin of Eve?

My attitude on this matter does not stem from any animosity towards men. Female and male authors alike seem to struggle with creating honest, compelling, realistic depictions of female characters. I have the utmost respect for Professor Tolkien for throwing up his hands and deciding to refrain from even attempting to write female characters, as he clearly did not possess enough insight into the female condition of his own era or of his fictional setting to write something honest about womanhood. It just wasn’t a part of his narrative. Is that the solution, then? To turn a blind eye to the difficulty of gender roles? Of course not. Nor can we hope to subvert traditional gender roles in literature by continuing to write stereotypical bitchy queens, badass lonely chicks, and Mary Sues—or by turning our noses up at any depiction of a female character that doesn’t stroke our egos or comply with our own personal status quo as a reader. Literature is and always will be a two-way street.  I don’t doubt that the difficulty of writing female characters is a symptom of the difficulty of accepting women in modern society for all our conflicting attitudes, goals, and self-perceptions. If you think depicting women in literature is tough, try being a woman in real life. If you think it’s hard to write about a woman’s success without being patronizing, try earning success as a woman without being patronized. If none of us are actual damsels in distress, evil vixens, ass-kicking cool chicks, or flawless Mary Sues, then what are we? Something even more difficult, complex, and interesting. Hard to write…but even harder to be.