I Think About This Often: Carrie Bradshaw Hate and the Mr. Big Paradox
The regurgitation of a several decade-long discourse that has occupied the minds of young women for generations-except this time its my turn.
On the first warm day of the semester, I opted to cut class and spend the afternoon at the patio table on my porch with a few of my housemates. At the time, I was drafting article pitches to present for publication at my next club meeting and had struck up a conversation with a more “distant friend” about what I was planning on writing about. Amid my brainstorming, she interjected with a comment that sparked my idea for not only an upcoming article but this piece as well.
The comment in question?: “Chloe, you are so Carrie Bradshaw-coded.”
To quote the great Britney Spears, my world shattered.
Unbeknownst to this friend I had spent the last several months binge-watching the cult-classic television series “Sex and the City,” and more recently had been trying to find a way to pirate the second movie from some sketchy website, considering its unfortunate and premature removal from HBO Max. Before I get in too deep, let me preface this commentary by saying that I know the show isn’t regarded as the most intellectual form of entertainment. But hey, some people have their Kardashians and I have four best friends in New York City, and in all honestly I think I could turn any film or TV show into an intellectual commentary piece. Or at least as intellectual as this is about to be. In summary, Sex and the City had become a comfort show for me, and even more so a window to what life can be like after college, for better or worse.
The show itself is six seasons long, and at the forefront of the plot is the illustrious, glamorous, and morally ambiguous, Carrie Bradshaw. As a sex columnist for The New York Star, Carrie Bradshaw is often recognized for her impeccable fashion sense and even more so for her complicated dating life, all published in print. Throughout each episode, Carrie navigates through a sex or relationship-based issue faced by herself or one of her three best friends: Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda, and then ultimately writes about it in her articles. By the end of the show, Carrie racks up a portfolio of pieces about younger men, relationships that last, love at first sight, and much, much more.
Based on this description, the average individual might assume the show to be another shallow, baseless, television program inspiring a generation of young women with the wrong ideas, or at least that is what I would expect total haters and undercover misogynists to say. But I would like to note that underneath the guise of racey conversations and sexual innuendos, Carrie and her crew also tackle a lot of more intimate and emotionally relatable issues; such as commitment, communication, aging, job problems, and most commonly, female friendships.
Before Sex and the City, women publicly talking about sex so comfortably was viewed as taboo and unladylike. The general public depicted it to be something to be embarrassed about and only reasonable to discuss in a medical sense or behind closed doors; even though publications such as Playboy were running rampant and highly glamorized in pop culture for male-dominated audiences. The running of Sex and the City revolutionized what was viewed as socially acceptable regarding behavior for women, and when I think about that flip in cultural normalities, I visualize the bold, blonde, and beautiful Carrie Bradshaw.
While this may be my opinion, the final sentence of the previous paragraph is somewhat of a taboo of its own amongst viewers of the program. Why you ask? Well, a lot of people really, really, really, hate Carrie Bradshaw. And I mean really hate her, if that wasn’t clear from the three previous reallys allow me to add in a fourth. For decades, in publication and conversation, critics have defined her to be whiny, self-centered, and immature, alongside a hefty stack of other buzzwords and insults. Often negatively comparing her to the more charming and classy Charlotte, the more determined and loyal Miranda, or the more witty and vocal Samantha.
As much as it pains me to say, the criticisms of her characterization are valid to a certain extent. Even being so deeply admirable in her profession, her sense of humor, and her sense of style, Carrie is a multi-dimensional character. What do I mean by this exactly?
*cue deep sigh*
In full transparency, throughout the show, Carrie tends to routinely prioritize these often awful relationships over the well-being of her friends, justifies continuous bad behavior with perhaps the worst victim complex I have ever seen, and values her own emotions and peace over people who she is potentially hurting.
Unlike Carrie Bradshaw, in other renditions of mass media, the ideal protagonist is often explicitly either “the hero” or “the villain.” There is very rarely any vagueness as to the kind of person the key character is as well as whether or not the audience is expected to root for or despise them. Further, when the main character is a female, the actresses’ physical appearances are also often reflective of the role they are playing; beautiful, well-dressed, and admirable actresses play heroines, romantic interests, and princesses while the opposite features reflect their counterparts. After decades after decades following this predictable pattern, I quite frankly find it to be boring.
What I love so much about Carrie is the fact that she isn’t perfect, and she actually pisses me off quite often. She spends the entire show navigating the complexities of life and routinely making quite drastic decisions and mistakes. She can be a bad friend at times, tone deaf, or even desperate for attention and male validation. And despite this, she is still on the surface regarded as popular, desirable, and successful, by her friends, colleagues, and peers, and as time passes she proves to be less awful and more or less a more accurate portrayal of a real, authentic, person.
In all reality, I know no one who is exempt from bad behavior or the occasional self-motivated decision, especially in young adulthood. Inherently human beings are selfish creatures, and especially as a woman, in the media industry, living in a big city, I imagine that it can be hard and honestly boring to consistently be the messiah of every social occasion. In the real world sometimes it is necessary to put yourself first or make a mistake for the sake of learning from it. And while I would appreciate a little more accountability from Miss Bradshaw, as a young woman myself, I kind of appreciate her imperfections and would argue that a lot of this excessive hatred is misguided resentment for traditionally male behaviors in both entertainment and real life.
BOOM. Yeah, I said it. I think something that everyone hates so much about Carrie Bradshaw is that in her most annoying, obnoxious, or awful moments, she is acting like a stereotypical douchey man. And what is the one thing men and women have in common? Their hatred for women. It has become so common in media to portray the damsel in distress or the woman as the victim at the hands of the “nonchalant” “noncommittal” and “womanizer.” In this unconventional case, Carrie Bradshaw often acts as a shitty male figure would, by breaking a few hearts, occasionally lacking emotional empathy, and behaving boldly. For men of the early 2000s, a television show about women being sexual and confident in relationships is already their worst nightmare, and for women, Carrie Bradshaw is a distasteful reflection of a few things…
The awful men in their own lives are portrayed as an attempt to be relatable through the guise of being a woman
A reminder of their moments of bad behavior, or perhaps a time when their friend didn’t treat them the best.
An unachievable means of comparison (who has the budget to upkeep Carrie's wardrobe and live in a studio NYC apartment on a journalist budget???)
Something to do with men: hate women.
I want to note the fact that this analysis is by no means a justification for every bad thing that Carrie did throughout the six seasons, rather there are a lot of things that she did that I found to be quite unforgivable. Such as when she sent her boyfriend at the time to help her friend Miranda after she slipped and injured her back while getting out of the shower, despite Miranda being vulnerable and naked, insisting that she had no grounds to be mad at her for not showing up herself. Or when she hunted down Natasha at lunch to force an unwanted apology onto her for ruining her marriage after spending months blaming and dissing Natasha for her husband's issues. However, I think that it is easy to cast stones at people who are portraying everyday people’s worst behavior, especially when the person you are frustrated with is a woman.
This analysis leads me to the second point of my piece, which is preceded by Carrie’s most morally retched moment (if you think that's even possible following the things that I have just listed). This of course being the Mr. Big affair, a subplot that I argue reflects a larger issue of Carrie’s and women at large.
******************************************************************************
Despite a very dynamic plotline and a truckload worth of relationships over six years, no one occupies Carrie’s mind and undivided attention quite like the elusive Mr. Big. Beginning with a seemingly “fateful” first meet on the streets of the city, followed by a series of recurring encounters at social gatherings, Carrie and Mr. Big begin a relationship back in season one that spans the duration of the original series, both movies and the recent spin-off “Just Like That.” In light of all of the passion and romance, their road is notoriously quite rocky, and in the minds of multiple generations, Carrie and Big are the blueprints for the classic on-again-off-again relationship.
When people criticize Carrie’s behavior, her relationship with Mr. Big is a common talking point. Mostly because when all is said and done, Carrie routinely justifies her infatuation with Mr. Big by calling herself a hopeless romantic. Despite his inability to commit, consistent invalidation of her maturity, and inability to be the vulnerable and sympathetic partner that everyone deserves, Carrie is always ready to let him back in. Even worse despite what that means for herself or those she loves. This mindset inspires a collection of bad decisions on Carrie’s part throughout the franchise. Including but not limited to: withholding information from her friends out of hops of evading judgment, jeopardizing her own self-respect and morals, ruining a marriage, and of course the worst move of Carrie Bradshaw entirely: her unfaithfulness towards long-term partner, Aidan Shaw.
Introduced in season three as a furniture curator, Aidan Shaw embodies everything that Mr. Big is not. He is characterized as being attainable, vulnerable, empathetic, and all-around enamored by Carrie.
He is the “All American Boy” in contradiction to Mr. Big’s “Hot Shot, White Collar, Tycoon.”
He is the perfect partner, the easy choice, the man that Carrie deserves. Or at least according to everyone on their high horse.
While I do think that Aidan was a refreshing alternative to Mr. Big’s solemn and mysterious disposition, he was never, by any means “perfect.” He can be messy, inconsiderate of Carrie’s time and expectations, and judgmental. The main point of this is that no character of the franchise is without flaw, and while Carrie’s decision to have an affair with Mr. Big amid her relationship with Aidan is unjustifiable, I do think he ultimately was not the right man for Carrie; regardless of how their separation was bound to play out. Rather I believe that Carrie’s mistakes with Big and the corresponding relationship arc are reflections of the kind of energy she sought out after: passion, drama, and glamour, for better or for worse. A self-sabotaging set of behaviors that I think are more relatable than a lot of us care to admit, this brings me to the Mr. Big Paradox.
The Mr. Big Paradox is what I refer to as the unspoken desire for “the chase” in relationships. It is the overemphasis on passion in romance, the willingness to excuse the bad behavior of potential partners, and the illusion behind the ability to “change” a man. It may sound like a negative behavior, but in all honesty, it's neutral and more common than most people care to admit. Shamefully, both my friends and I have fallen victim to this from time to time. Justifying men being emotionally unavailable or even worse just flat-out uninterested in “maybes” “what ifs” and unwarranted forgiveness. It's almost like a guilty pleasure, to find the easy, convenient, and emotional love unattractive and to instead spend time chasing the unattainable fantasy.
While her approach was full of imperfections and the general plot was dramatized, Carrie Bradshaw was just doing what a lot of young girls are guilty of doing. So while the collateral of her mistakes is horrendous, I don’t think it's fair to crucify Carrie for finding the unattainable desirable, rather we should be better spending this time criticizing Mr. Bigs in our lives.
What I mean by this is, that while Carrie is to blame for cheating on Aidan and hurting Big’s wife by having the affair, she is not the antagonist during the “in between.” Although the decision to chase after an emotionally unavailable man is not conventional or reasonable, it is also not morally incorrect. It's something that a lot of women universally have experienced and understand, sometimes reaching a place of peace and sometimes never understanding why it never worked out. Especially in cases such as Big and Carrie, it is unfair to scold Carrie for wanting better for herself from a man whom she feels a connection with, especially when the man routinely gives her false hope and reappears during peaceful eras of her life.
Often we are quick to call women such as Carrie naive and unrealistic in situations such as these, but in all honesty, the inconsistency of Carrie and Big’s relationship with one another is due to how unreliable he is. Instead of expecting to understand why Carrie is so willing to never give up on Big and criticizing her for it, we as a society should better be allocating this energy towards anger against noncommittal men who still pursue relationships such women such as Carrie. Men who, despite struggling with being an emotionally available partner, decide to string along women for the sake of sex or entertainment or whatever messed up reason someone like Big could come up with.
In all honesty, I could go on and on sympathizing with Carrie Bradshaw. I think that at large there are a lot of complex female characters in film and media who receive a lot undeserving of criticism and hate. Sometimes simply for the fact that they are a female lead, sometimes because they deviate from the traditional damsel in distress stereotype, or sometimes because they act as a mirror to the more dramatic version of our bad behaviors. No one is without a fatal flaw or two, and while Carrie could take more accountability, better prioritize her friends, and make better relationship choices, I think that by the end of the franchise she also came a long way in terms of maturity, and this is a feat that often goes unnoted.
So, while pop culture critics may consider being compared to Carrie Bradshaw a backhanded compliment, I am quite smitten with it. While she has her moments, Carrie is a bold woman with impeccable taste in fashion, an amazing apartment, a group of close friends who love her unconditionally, and a lot of stories that I enjoyed hearing about. Even if that meant there were times when I had to take her off my pedestal.