Have you ever envision the perfect girl group? You guys do everything together from traveling, to having picnics, shopping and more. The show Sex and the City has given us a fictional display of perfect friendships. In the show, there are four distinctive personalities in the girl group. From Samatha, the most promiscuous and liberated one, to Charlotte, the prim and proper one. You also have the workaholic Miranda and the star of the show, Carrie. After watching the show again, it made me realize how many unrealistic ideals it sets in for female friendship, and group dynamics for that matter.
First off, the show always makes it apparent that the girl group always stays close for its entire six seasons. Sure, they may have fights and disagreements here and there, but they always work it out by the end of the episode. Unfortunately, the depiction of girls having three very close friends that all get along, is usually false. Based on what I have witnessed with groups of four, it ultimately rarely lasts. When you have a group of four, usually two of the people in the group become closer to one another and eventually hang out with that person more. This can cause many outbreaks and fights due to others being left out. In nature, it takes a lot of time for some people to even find one friend they are really close with and consider them their best friend. In Sex and the City, despite there various personalities, they all are each others best friend and they rarely have issues. In reality, a friendship will naturally have issues and possibly break up the group for good.
Another way Sex and the City represents friendships fictionally, is that the women are always eachothers beckoning call. They always have time to meet up for lunch and talk about their problems. I know the show displays each of the characters in her outside life, but it seems like they don’t really do much aside from be with each other. It’s as if they really don’t have anything else going on in their life. In reality, you have to make time to spend with your friends, but sometimes you have way too much going on with your own life. I wish the series would have shown times where the four girls could not be there for each other for once, because of their jobs or family problems.
Also, the show displayed how all three of the girls were fine with some of the things Carie would do to them throughout the series. Carrie unfortunately was one of the friends in the group who did various things throughout the show that would break up a friendship in real life. For example, take the episode when Miranda had a huge cramp in her neck and fell from the shower, and she called Carrie for help. Carrie sent her boyfriend to help Miranda instead. Now this would definitely be a big issue in any friendship. Carrie also ditched her friends constantly each season for her big love predicament, Mr. Big.
For my last point, I want to shed some light on the revolving issue that reinforces unrealistic ideals in friendships. The issue is what happened behind the scenes of the show. According to numerous sources, Kim Catrall (Samatha) and Sarah Jessica Parker (Carrie) had a huge feud on the show. This feud caused Kim Catrall to ultimately cut ties with the Sex and the City movie franchise and reboot. There was rumoured to be a third Sex and the City movie, but it never happened possibly because of Catrall not wanting to be on the show anymore. Learning this information was truly saddening for me, and it made me look at their BFF relationship on-screen differently.
Looking at the unrealistic traits of Sex and the City makes me understand that these are sometimes not things we can expect in a female relationship, and that is ok. It is ok to not have the perfect girl group like Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte.