Carrie Bradshaw is easily one of the most criticized women in television history — and for good reason. I used to say that if I ever went to a protest, the sign I would hold would read “Carrie Bradshaw deserved to die alone” no matter what the stated purpose of the demonstration was. She was self destructive, she could be annoying, and she made terrible choices time after time. But as Gen Z began watching the series and I saw the Tik Tok hot takes and reductionist reels roll in, I found their analysis overly simplistic and off base.
There were so many young women saying things like “be a Natasha, not a Carrie,” or “be a Charlotte, not a Carrie,” portraying Carrie as this desperate, chaotic, one-dimensional caricature while Charlotte or Natasha were supposed to be paragons of elegance and self respect.
It’s an easy argument to make but not a particularly enlightened one.
To me, it reveals that someone is glossing over the details and nuance in a sloppy effort to sort behavior into good vs bad and create an archetype.
I think Gen Z in particular has a bizarre insistence on categorizing everything. Every outfit must fall into some coined description like mob wife or coastal grandma, and it doesn’t stop with what they wear. Every habit must be attributed to some diagnosis, every interaction into some theory, and every character must be reduced to a trope. And while that generation certainly has its redeeming qualities, I think they’d be much happier and better adjusted if they stopped trying to classify themselves and everything around them.
We can start with Natasha, because she’s the one we know the least about.
She’s conventionally beautiful, statuesque, comes from family money, has a glamorous job, and if I’m remembering correctly, Big proposes to her in 6 months or so as opposed to taking her on the wild goose chase he took Carrie on. Every time we see her, she’s in some effortlessly chic ensemble and looks like she materialized from an ad in Vogue.
But when she catches Carrie in her kitchen and she’s running after her, she shouts that she knew they were having an affair, but not in her house.
Her husband didn’t have a moment of poor judgment on a late night, but had been cheating repeatedly and consistently with his most significant ex. And she was aware.
But she didn’t say anything to him. We don’t know why, but if you’re paying attention, you don’t get the impression that she was trying to collect evidence or had some cunning plan. It sounded like she was just ignoring her senses because she didn’t want to deal with what she knew was happening. She only left him after the overwhelming humiliation of her husband’s mistress rushing her to the hospital with a chipped tooth seemingly leaving her no other option.
That was not a woman with some unshakeable sense of self.
And then we have Charlotte, who in many ways seems like an older version of Natasha. Classic beauty. Family money. Generally composed. Higher standards than Carrie and more traditional style.
But while Carrie lost herself in Big, Charlotte lost herself in the pursuit of marriage.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a woman wanting to get married and have children, or even being strategic in trying to obtain them. I want both and if I never got them, emotionally I think I’d feel like I was cheated of what I was really meant for, even if I know logically that God doesn’t make mistakes. So I don’t say this from a place of condemnation, but compassion. I’ve been there myself. I understand what it’s like to feel like you’re running out of time, like you have to take your fate into your own hands, and like denial of your dreams is a death sentence. But Charlotte very clearly crossed the line from determination and desire to desperation, and I can say that confidently because I did too.
When she threw a party for people to bring their exes to, and decided to start intentionally hanging out with more married couples in the hopes of being fixed up, I thought it was smart. I don’t even necessarily think there’s anything wrong with marrying a man you’ve known for 2 months. But when she started leaving crazed voicemails to a friend begging for a blind date, coaxed Trey into proposing, started planning a wedding before her second husband had asked her to marry him and had a meltdown with him over setting a date, it was clear that marriage wasn’t just something she wanted, but a blinding, all-consuming obsession
Both Charlotte and Natasha forfeited their dignity to get or keep what they thought they couldn’t live without, but because they did so in sleeker outfits and with less theatrics, many viewers convinced themselves that they were the aspirational antithesis to Carrie as opposed to the same deficiencies in different fonts.
I don’t think either Charlotte or Natasha would have tolerated what Carrie did from Big, or gone back to him nearly as many times as she did — and that’s worth commending.
But I also think newer fans are too quick to shove these women into binaries they don’t really belong in, and that if they aren’t careful, they’ll ignore the same red flags in their own lives that they ignored on screen.
None of us are perfect, and none of us will always be proud of what we do, what we permit or what we repeat. Even those that seem to be inherently poised and self-possessed are no exception.
Of course, no one has to be perfect to be worthy of admiration, but we shouldn’t flatten people to fit a narrative out of touch with reality. Charlotte and Natasha are not role models, and Carrie is more than her (many) shortcomings.
While Carrie is easy enough to abhor on her own, I’m honestly starting to think that part of why people hate her so much is because she holds a mirror to us at our worst.
Romance has transformed the most composed and coherent people I know in real life to strangers neither they nor I could recognize, involuntarily abandoning the principles and personalities that once defined them.
I don’t fault anyone for it. I once saw a quote that said falling in love required some loss of dignity that being in love would eventually restore. And I think it’s true on some level. I think love and the quest for it makes most of us insane even if temporarily.
But if we can’t recognize our own absurdity, I don’t know that we can ever escape it.
what do you think?