Carrie Bradshaw, the star of the HBO original series Sex and the City, lives a life in New York City that I’m sure many of you would like to achieve one day. A life where your only work is writing about your opinions on sex and dating. A life where you have a closet full of designer shoes and an even larger wardrobe of men to choose from. Sounds just peachy, right? Doing what you love and loving what you do is the ideal dream for most young women, and Carrie seems to embody this frivolous lifestyle. But in reality, life is not as sweet and pink as a cosmopolitan. One of Carrie’s best friends on the show, Miranda Hobbes, is an attorney, a mother and eventually a wife. She works long hard hours, dates crappy guys that make her lose her faith in love and grows cynical over how laboring life can truly be. So yeah, I’d rather worry about which Louboutin pumps to buy, but let’s face it, my future is looking a lot more like 16-hour work days and a questionable love life.
She has a fun, easy-going job and can somehow still afford to live in the heart of Manhattan without any roommates.
But seriously, has anyone ever stopped to question how in the world Carrie affords her apartment with her salary from the newspaper that can’t be more than $40,000 a year? Not to mention the added amenities like her giant closet, her expensive clothing and shoes and her persistent cigarette habit. It is in fact pretty expensive to keep up such a smelly and deadly habit, and I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have the extra hundreds of dollars to spend on guacamole at Chipotle. Miranda, on the other hand, works very hard as a lawyer at her firm and continuously tries to move up in the ranks to afford her lifestyle and general welfare. It is far less lavish, but far more realistic. She puts in the time and effort to be able to afford drinks when she goes out on weekends with friends. Let me reiterate: pink cosmos do not grow on trees.
Tall, dark and handsome men sound a lot better than short and geeky bartenders.
Carrie surrounds herself with the elite of New York and dates men who buy her roses, fly her to Paris and shower her with affection and pricey gifts. Meanwhile, Miranda is forever getting set up with and meeting guys who are, for lack of a better word, subpar. Based on my past dating experience — or should I say unfortunate encounters with the male species — Miranda’s bad luck streak of always wining and dining with schmucks seems like it will probably take place at some point in my young professional life. I mean, they do say you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince.
She can go out to the hottest clubs in town, regardless of what day of the week it is.
Freshmen year of college is probably the closest I’ll ever get to this lavish lifestyle, granted it was sticky Grog floors instead of shiny marbles ones, but the two definitely parallel. Either way, past the age of 19 it is seriously unrealistic to be able to just drop what you’re doing and decide that the club is going up on a Tuesday. Miranda spends her weeknights wearing comfy linen pants, eating a Betty Crocker chocolate-frosted cake out of the pan and watching soap operas. Maybe that sounds like a sad existence to some, but it sounds like a comfy one to me.
Carrie may embody the true “sex” in the city, but Miranda is definitely the force that keeps the “city that never sleeps” awake. Without hard work, she probably wouldn’t be able to afford rent, chocolate cake or a cable subscription. So perhaps my future won’t be as lavish and filled with loads of beautiful men, Manolo Blahniks or endless mimosas. But that’s okay. Miranda leads a far more plausible life, and probably a more lucrative one. Bring on the stacks of court cases, early mornings and endless espressos.
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