Joe Goldberg, Jean Kirstein, Tom Hanson, Noah Calhoun, Conrad Fisher, just to name a few, are characters who hold love for someone who doesn’t reciprocate their feelings. These are all characters who get idolized and fawned over because they love “so deeply”, so “intensely”. They are committed lovers who are so entranced they can’t help their feelings. They express themselves with unique quirks, attitudes, and ideologies that carry them through life. Even if they overstep boundaries, somehow the audience feels awful for them.
She isn’t a murderer; she doesn’t build a house with her bare hands; she’s not a perfectly misunderstood guy with emotional processing issues. She’s a woman who likes fashion, girl time, strutting, and feeling free. Carrie Bradshaw’s ‘worst crime’ isn’t her flaws or her mistakes. It’s wanting love without apologizing for it, and that’s why she’s hated.
Carrie Bradshaw’s significance
There’s a lot of discourse about Carrie Bradshaw. If you aren’t familiar with her, she is a spunky 30-year-old journalist in NYC in the 90s who writes a popular newspaper column, Sex in the City. Carrie is a microcelebrity around New York, regularly getting recognized and invited to events and parties. She is a part of a friend group of four equally beautiful, socialite friends.
She smokes cigarettes, goes out with her friends, has a shopping addiction (heels, specifically), has no intention of having a traditional lifestyle, and is waiting for someone who fits her perfectly. Unapologetically herself, Carrie has spunk. What I love most about Carrie, and that nobody can deny, is that she is authentic. She’s chaotic, isn’t a good cook and doesn’t care to be, and loves the nightlife scene. And she doesn’t feel bad about it or apologize for it.
Throughout the show, we see her perspective through relationships, spicy flings, awkward dates, random hookups, situationships, and every other form of a relationship with a man that is possible. Through her experiences, we see her overreact, be sensitive, flirty, and overly picky when she probably shouldn’t be.
As much hate as she gets, there is a positive attribute to her raw story. People relate to her. People who have chosen the wrong partner or showed up to a party in which they feel out of place. Carrie never lets this break her down completely. One of my favorite Carrie quotes is, “I was starting to feel like myself again. And the rest of me would grow back, eventually”. I love how her character portrays a 30-year-old who restarts, which is more common than people realize.
Through all of the negative aspects of her character. She still lights up rooms, makes friends easily, shows up when it matters, is willing to be embarrassed with her friends, and she asks the hard questions people shy away from. Through it all, Carrie is still Carrie. She’s a versatile girlfriend who finds herself with loaded businessmen, underground artists, political figures, bar owners- you name it. She puts herself out there and tries different varieties.
What’s with the double standard?
In the world of media, there are countless options for “messy” women. Some characters are rebellious, sexually explorative, emotional, stunning, hotheaded, ditsy, cocky, ultra-focused, flirty, and the list goes on. What I’ve noticed about these characters is that they usually end up going through a 180 transformation by the end of the piece. Someone tames them; they settle down, cut their hair short into a “mature” hairstyle, and lose their personality completely. Have a child and get married to someone they would not even look at before the random personal development. As if it’s a consequence of who they are. Why are “messy” women punished in media?
For women, and especially women in media, people seem to think that they have control over their relationship choices, and that bashing characters because they aren’t real doesn’t mean anything. But are we forgetting what this all represents? Choice, freedom, and most importantly, preference.
Yes, she can be male-centered, but why are her positive qualities forgotten the moment her relationships are mentioned? Carrie makes a living calling out men and writing about navigating relationships with them as a single woman. She walks in fashion shows, writes for Vogue, publishes a best-selling book, yet all of that gets overlooked because of her relationships. On the other hand, male characters are applauded for being expressive, emotionally available, and thoughtful regarding their romances. Their lives and personalities don’t get obsessively dissected. Why is men yearning appreciated and women yearning pathetic?
It gets to a point where you are flat-out trying to control a character. You get blinded by bad decisions, the climax of the season, the person they seem to be in the past couple of episodes. I get it, she makes things messy. You want to see her succeed and blossom as much as she possibly can. But in the name of reality, she goes at her own pace and makes genuine mistakes. She looks for love like all of us, finds it, tries new types, loses it, gets lost in it. And yet she keeps going. Even after all of her fallouts and break-ups with Mr. Big, she reenters the dating world with the same spunk as before. This also opens a larger conversation: why is all of the relationship integrity placed onto her?
Are you advocating for Carrie? Or trying to control her?
I get it, Carrie can be frustrating. She loses focus, prioritizes her social life, develops bad spending habits, and lives life too close to the edge sometimes. She shows the most embarrassing, cringey parts of relationships. It’s ugly and humbling; she breaks hearts and ruins things. There is a reason so many people relate to her. Everyone wants complex characters until they are imperfect, sexually free, love-hungry, or familiar enough with shame that they move through life barely thinking of it.
Growth is something you have to push yourself through. If she did what everyone wanted, married Aiden, let him take care of her, quit smoking, settled down, learned to cook, and became the doting, fiery wife who finally calmed down, that wouldn’t be Carrie. Even if you’re someone who says, “I just want her to calm down and focus on herself; she cares about the wrong things.” That still wouldn’t be right. Carrie was never going to have that life. From the moment that lady fell out of the womb, she was not going to have a linear path to her perfect life. And it makes sense, which is why I give her grace.
She moves to New York City as a young adult, so that already knocks out reconnecting with any hometown flings. Then, she has to search for Mr. Right in one of the biggest cities in the world. And I want to give my girl credit; she’s beautiful and witty with a killer fashion sense. She pulled many types of men and was bound to meet her match with Mr. Big. If it wasn’t Mr. Big, it would have been someone else.
Women should be able to make mistakes, forgive themselves, and grow. Which is hard to do when you are constantly told how and when to do it. At the end of the day, growth is not a linear path, and for some, they need to make mistakes to learn. Carrie’s desire for love only followed her own terms. And while that might not make everyone happy, it’s a choice that was only up to her. Especially as you get older, dating only becomes more complicated. I love how her character follows her heart and uses it as a sense of direction. While not selecting the most pleasing choices, it is refreshing to see pieces of media where the tables turn, and women are the chaotic ones.
It’s a Women’s Choice
Though beautiful and usually perceived as sweet angels who will “be someone’s wife one day”, women, just like Carrie Bradshaw, are allowed to be imperfect. Your desires, choices, flaws, accomplishments, goals, and past are just that: yours. The next time you find yourself judging a woman for wanting love on her own terms, ask yourself: Who said her choices were crimes?