Growing up with a single mom during the revolutionary time of DVR meant our television was a bottomless pit of pre-recorded Sex and the City episodes. My mother is one of those people that leaves the television on at all times, so the nostalgic sound of my childhood home is not the hum of a radiator nor the quiet whir of a ceiling fan, but instead, it is the voice of Carrie Bradshaw. It is her narration wafting into my bedroom late at night as my mother watched SATC on our living room couch; it is the comforting, rhythmic tapping of Carrie’s keyboard, and it is the sound of the theme song lulling me to sleep.
In a way, I’ve grown up alongside Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda, and Samantha. As I’ve outgrown the seasons of my past, SATC has always remained consistent, being there for me for my highest highs and my lowest lows, and I’ve perfected the art of finding a new version of myself in every rewatch.
So here’s what I’ve learned from Manhattan’s most famed icons:
Charlotte york
I have a special place in my heart for Charlotte York, or as Carrie would describe her: “the eternal optimist, who always believes in love.” Charlotte is traditional and conservative, educated and well-mannered. Profanity is not included in her vocabulary, and when Samantha mentions the word “sex,” she covers her pearl-studded ears with her perfectly polished nails. As an art dealer, Charlotte finds the beauty in everything; she is a hopeless romantic. She yearns for a classic fairytale romance and a handsome prince who shares the same rigid values as herself. Or at least that is who Charlotte was when the show began.
Over the course of six seasons, Charlotte finally begins to release herself from a restrictive existence governed by self-imposed expectations. With the guidance of her friends, Charlotte leans into chaos and dysfunction; she learns to accept the inherent messiness and imperfection of human existence.
Charlotte’s character arc reaches its crescendo when she chooses to divorce her first husband, Trey, something season one Charlotte would have sooner died than gone through with. When their marriage ended, Charlotte fell for her divorce lawyer, Harry. Despite his unconventional looks, open-mouth chewing and excessive back hair, the Jewish man who gave Charlotte the best sex of her life became her person. At first, she protested the relationship. She thought: “How can I be seen in public with a man like him?” But when she liberated herself from those chains, she was rewarded with a lifelong marriage filled with true love, laughter, and companionship.
Through her dramatic character growth, Charlotte York has taught me not to take life so seriously and shown me that sometimes the life you imagined for yourself is not the same as the life that is destined for you.
samantha jones
Samantha Jones is a confident, outspoken, independent, and sexually liberated woman. She runs her own public relations firm in New York City, and is the type of woman who knows exactly what she wants in the office… and in the bedroom. Samantha has no filter. She swears in front of children and talks in detail about sex over morning coffee. Samantha is different from the rest of the group. She doesn’t yearn for traditional things like marriage and children, and she avoids monogamous relationships in pursuit of an everlasting singlehood.
Being exposed to this type of character from a young age has changed the way I approach a lot of things. When I came to college, it was natural for me to ask my friends about their sex lives, and conversely, to discuss mine. When some of them pulled back, nervous or uncomfortable to divulge their personal experiences to me, I was confused. I asked myself: “Is it abnormal to be so comfortable talking about sex?”
Eventually, I traced this seemingly odd characteristic of mine to its origin: the first time I heard Samantha Jones speak, when she, unbeknownst to me, passed her taste for sexual discourse down to me. However, I don’t think this is an inherently negative thing. If men can sit around a TV screen with a football game playing, drinking Busch Lites and talking about their latest “conquests,” why can’t women talk about their sex lives? Why is there a stigma around sexuality? It’s real, it’s natural, and it’s something we, innately, all have in common. Samantha Jones is a revolutionary character acting as one of the first on-screen personalities to normalize sexual discourse, and for that I am forever grateful.
miranda hobbes
Miranda Hobbes: the pixie-cut-wearing, martini-drinking, Harvard Law alum. As a lawyer, Miranda values her career and her success, and she won’t let a man get in the way of that. However, unlike Samantha, her aspirations don’t lessen her longing for companionship. Her ability to simultaneously balance the quest for love with her high-stress job is the quintessential portrayal of the duality of a woman. Through this, Miranda taught me that choosing to be with a (good) man doesn’t delegitimize your goals. She has shown us that being a mother or a wife doesn’t mean you are no longer a woman of ambition.
Miranda is also often incorrectly perceived as judgmental because she is known for delivering hard truths to the ones she loves. When Carrie tells Miranda she is back with Mr. Big for what seems like the hundredth time, Miranda calls her out. Does she call Carrie a “pathetic, needy, insecure victim?” Yes. But was she being truthful? Also yes. Miranda has never withheld the truth from her friends when it was in their best interest to hear it. She has taught me that the best friendships aren’t always easy, and sometimes they require honesty, even when it’s uncomfortable.
Carrie bradshaw
Carrie Bradshaw is the single most person who inspired me to study journalism. Growing up in a desolate corner of Connecticut, no one advocated for, or even spoke of, careers in journalism. I knew about the traditional pursuits: law, education, medicine, but it never occurred to me that one day I could be, as Carrie would describe herself, “a sort of sexual anthropologist.”
As a Virgo, I overanalyze everything: from relationships to text message punctuation, everything seemingly meaningless has meaning to me. My entire life has been an endless stream of big thoughts and long philosophical conversations inside the bounds of my own mind. For a long time, I thought that was something unique to me, something no one wanted to hear about.
It was around the time I was thinking about what I would pursue in college, when I began my annual rewatch of SATC. It was then when I realized, for the first time in my life, that journalism is a career designed specifically for thought-daughters, for me. It wasn’t my English teacher or my advisor, but it was Carrie who showed me that there exists a productive outlet for me to release my existential thoughts, and on top of that, there is an audience with a raging appetite to read it.
In a lot of ways, Carrie has also taught me what not to do in life. Through her experiences, I know not to spend my life savings on designer shoes; I know not to cheat on my boyfriend with my married ex; and I know not to call my best friend judgmental when she is simply looking out for me.
Carrie is the classic chaotic protagonist. We’re meant to judge Carrie, to pick apart her flaws and criticize her choices. But she is also written in a way that encourages us to see those same flaws in ourselves. And if we can learn to identify them in her, perhaps we can begin to recognize them in ourselves too and, eventually, change. It would be hypocritical for me to judge Carrie’s situationship with Mr. Big, when I myself have made some of the same mistakes she has. But I think that’s the point of her character: to perceive her as a little pathetic, and to pity her enough that you don’t mirror her patterns of behavior.
But above all, SATC has taught me the unbreakable value of female friendships. I have learned that being a good friend is not one-dimensional. Sometimes it means making them their childhood cold remedy or taking out their diaphragm when it gets stuck. Sometimes it means holding their hand while they cry over a man, and sometimes it means being truthful even when you know they don’t want to hear it. They have taught me that platonic friendships can be the backbone to a life of love, and we don’t necessarily need to rely on romance for fulfillment. I often think about when Charlotte said, “Maybe we could be each other’s soulmates. And then we could let men be just these great, nice guys to have fun with.” And I’ve learned to live my life by that. Make with that what you will because, in all honesty, I’ve never had much luck with men, but when it comes to female friendships, I’ve struck gold.