What is a valid reason to hate a TV show character? Cheating? Being a bad friend? Or is the hatred of characters for making mistakes like these too normalized? People in real life have these same flaws, but as a society, we never collectively hate them for it. So why do we treat these characters, especially female ones, differently?
The iconic show “Sex and the City,” created by Candace Bushnell, focuses on four single women living in New York City, and their journeys looking for success in both love and their careers. As a new generation of women watches the show, the audience’s reaction to the complex main character, Carrie Bradshaw, has become increasingly less forgiving.
Carrie Bradshaw is not just a TV character. She is a role model for all kinds of women. Single women, women with careers, women looking for love, and women not looking for anything. Carrie exhibits all of these qualities at different stages in her life on the show, and as a human does, she makes mistakes. She can be mean to her friends at times, and at one of her lowest points, she has an affair with a married man, but this doesn’t make her a terrible person.
When “Sex and the City” first came out in the late 1990s, Carrie was a character loved by fans, yet she became one of the most hated characters on the show. In a wild turn of events, Charlotte York, another main character and Carrie’s best friend, has taken Carrie’s place as a fan favorite, but why?
Charlotte is drastically different from Carrie. She is cute and feminine, has traditional ideals, and longs for a deep romantic connection with the man of her dreams. Her character often struggles with finding her “soulmate,” and her romantic journey throughout the show is a lot more conservative than Carrie’s.
Dr. Kristin Huston, head of the Social Studies department at HBHA, has insights on why Carrie’s character has become less likable to “Sex and the City’s” fans. Huston states, “I think she can come off kind of flighty, and…as a messy character…I think that’s part of her complexity,… but I think to some people they want her to be a purely good character.”
The “messiness” often attributed to Carrie usually alludes to her tendency to fall back into contact with her infamous ex “Big” and treat much nicer men (the most famous one being Aidan Shaw) badly while she copes with her lingering feelings for Big.
While viewers should never take Carrie’s messiness as rules to live by, we should also know not to completely write off a character by simply being a realistic person.
The hatred of Carrie coinciding with the love of Charlotte is an interesting change, and it shows a lot about the turn in societal trends. Huston says, “I do think that it is part of that same issue of wanting your female characters to be a certain way. I think Charlotte much more fits that prototypical…she’s very preppy, she’s affluent.”
Both of these things, preppiness and affluence, or simply being wealthy in general, have definitely had a grasp on society recently, especially with younger girls, who also happen to be “Sex and the City’s” most common audience.
However, many fail to realize one of the most important points made in the show: when Charlotte got everything she wanted, a perfect wedding, a husband, and a Park Avenue apartment, she was the unhappiest she had ever been. It took a separation, a divorce, and even converting to Judaism for her to realize that tradition and perfection were not always good for her.
Even something that can appear harmless, like the recent obsession with pink and bows in women’s fashion, if looked at a little differently, is a direct sign that we as Americans and even international society are taking a step back, embracing tradition, and becoming more wary of more modern ideals.
Of course, Carrie Bradshaw represents modern ideals in everything she does. As a single, shopaholic writer who writes a sex column, Carrie is not an easy character for a conservative audience to digest. Huston states, “I feel like there’s just a general shift toward a little bit more conservatism in society…Charlotte is a much better reflection of that.”
So to anyone watching or about to start “Sex and the City,” keep in mind that even though Carrie is just a character on your TV screen, she is a person with real-life flaws and weaknesses. If we can embrace her imperfections, love her for her positive traits, and accept her shortcomings, we can do the same with people in our own lives.
