I’m Rewatching “Sex and the City” And Have Serious Beef With Carrie Bradshaw

Like the basic millennial woman that I am, I have a love-hate relationship with Sex And The City.

I watched it for the first time during my senior year of college, and it’s safe to say I quickly became obsessed. While I related to Charlotte the most (and still do), I enjoyed the protagonist, Carrie Bradshaw, because she was a writer with a glamorous lifestyle in New York City, something my younger self aspired to. While I found her attitude towards hookup culture to be concerning, I was still rooting for her happy ending.

A few weeks ago, I began a full rewatch of SATC, and it’s safe to say that it hits differently with a fully developed frontal lobe. One would think that a 30-year-old woman like myself would relate to Carrie (who is 32 in the first season), but I don’t. In fact, I find her insufferable.

Some argue that Carrie is a great character because she is deeply flawed and relatable, but characters like Charlotte and Miranda (before she was ruined in the reboot) are flawed and relatable while not making me want to claw my eyes out. Instead, they are self-aware and actually learn from their mistakes (imagine that). I’m the furthest thing from a Samantha fan, but even she shows some personal growth throughout the series.

In short, I think it’s safe to say that I have serious beef with Carrie Bradshaw. Here’s why.

Carrie Isn’t A Girls Girl

I don’t say this lightly, for I firmly believe that telling a woman she’s not a girls girl is the ultimate insult. If someone I respected said this to me, I’d book an emergency appointment with my therapist and reevaluate all of my life decisions. But, the fact remains: Carrie is the furthest thing from a girls girl. Perhaps she’s simply a bad friend (which she is), but let’s not forget how she consistently puts the men in her life over the women who support her.

Sure, it’s perfectly normal to put your relationship first if you’re in a serious relationship, engaged, or married, but there has to be a healthy balance between your romantic relationship and your friendships, and Carrie couldn’t figure out how to balance the two if her life depended on it. She constantly bails on her friends when whichever man she’s seeing at the time (most notably Mr. Big or the Russian) swoops in. If any of these guys cared about Carrie, they’d understand if she had to take a rain check because she already had plans with friends for that night, but we never see that happen.

The worst example is when Big cheats on his second wife, Natasha, with Carrie (while she’s dating Aidan, of course), and she struggles to understand why Natasha refuses to forgive her. To make things worse, Natasha is nothing but nice to Carrie and handles the situation with class and grace because she knows her worth and refuses to let Carrie and Big ruin her life. 

In the reboot, Carrie discovers that Big left Natasha a million dollars in his will. Instead of being a normal person and letting the lawyers deal with it, she stalks Natasha on Instagram and confronts her about it, proving that some habits never die. One of the most interesting parts of this scene is how after all of these years, Natasha still handles herself with class and Carrie is still insecure, even though she ended up with Big. It goes to show that she still doesn’t care about Natasha’s feelings and refuses to see herself as the villain in Natasha’s story. Carrie could learn a thing or two from Natasha, but her lack of self-awareness makes this impossible.

Big Might Be The Worst, But Carrie Isn’t Much Better

When I first watched SATC, I related to the early stages of Carrie’s relationship with Big. I knew the pain of desperately seeking the affection of an elusive and emotionally unavailable man and letting him treat me like garbage. Unlike Carrie, I grew up and realized that I deserved better. Carrie not only gets back with him but has an affair with him while she’s dating Aidan (her nicest boyfriend, whom she doesn’t deserve), despite knowing that Big is married to Natasha.

Even after the affair ends and Aidan forgives her, she’s still friends with Big and brings him around, and it doesn’t take long for Carrie to treat Aidan the same way Big treats her. She knows deep down that she doesn’t want to marry him, but strings him along because she enjoys his company. If she really cared about him, she’d be honest and end the relationship, but like Big, she likes to keep him around to boost her ego. In the end, she proves that she and Big are indeed perfect for each other because they’re both manipulative and selfish.

Where's The Empowerment?

It could have been because I was a naïve college student, but I remember feeling somewhat empowered when I first watched SATC. I aspired to Carrie's lifestyle of constantly going out with her friends and affording designer shoes on a writer's salary (maturing means realizing this was never realistic), but “empowering” is the last word my 30-year-old self would use to describe her lifestyle now. 

Carrie lives a carefree life reminiscent of how many young women live their college years, the only difference is that she has more money. This could be why my friends and I all loved this show in college, but when I look at us now, I only see Charlottes and Mirandas. Even my friends who were Carries or Samanthas in our early twenties have evolved into seeking healthier relationships, commitment, and stability. In real life, we learn and grow throughout our twenties and don’t make those same mistakes in our thirties. Carrie is essentially a college girl trapped in a 30-something woman’s body. How was she ever considered "empowering"?

When the show first aired, Carrie was held to this high regard because she lived life for herself and no one else. There’s nothing inherently wrong with aspiring to be an independent career woman, but it’s possible to achieve this goal without being completely selfish and cruel to those who care about you.

SATC is all about embracing female friendship, but Carrie is horrible to her friends. While Carrie is capable of being a good friend, this almost always happens after she messes up. While she congratulates Charlotte on her engagement to Harry, she does it after she tries to one-up Charlotte by sharing how Berger dumped her via a Post-It note. She brings Miranda bagels after she hurts her neck, but only after she puts her in a super awkward situation by sending Aidan to pick her up when she falls in the shower.

When it comes to sex and romantic relationships, she’s even worse. She claims to be liberated and happy in her sex life, yet she always seems miserable. She’s also selfish in pursuing men and sexual pleasure. The perfect example is from the first episode of the series, where she takes Samantha’s advice to “have sex like a man.” She hooks up with a guy who has hurt her in the past and gets her revenge by leaving him right afterward and claims to feel empowered by her decision but ends the night walking the streets of New York City wondering why she’s single.

While SATC may have been considered empowering in the 90s and 2000s, Gen Z disagrees. In an article for The Independent, Gen Z writer Brittany Miller calls the show “outdated and cringey.” She writes, “The bottom line is I can’t enjoy a show that’s supposed to be about female friendships when I have zero sympathy for characters who aren’t just terrible friends, but terrible people.”

Nothing says empowerment quite like unlikable characters, proving that the pseudo-feminist narrative of “do whatever you want and don’t care about hurting anyone” is officially out of vogue.

SATC was revolutionary for its time by centering a show around single women. Shows like The Bold Type have tried to recreate the magic of SATC, but ultimately they've failed because Hollywood hasn't yet learned from the mistakes SATC made by hyper-focusing on casual sex and unlikable characters. Future shows should take note and create more complex and likable characters (more Charlottes and Mirandas, less Carries and Samanthas) who desire careers and motherhood, not just bedding the married man or delivery guy.