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.
