Adored by women as a fashion icon, dating guru and, in many ways, an example of success, Carrie Bradshaw is the quintessence of everything that is wrong and embarrassing about women: complete financial incompetence, lack of long-term outlook, weak character and complete lack of perspective.
Throughout the series (which I regret every second spent watching), her equally unimpressive, but much less annoying friends go through challenges and life changing situations, they grow and evolve in dramatic ways, but Carrie remains tormented by her past and cannot overcome her obsession with one of the greatest douchebags cable TV ever brought to life.
Mr. Big wasn’t charming or mysterious, or even interesting. He was a rich white guy. With a driver. That is all we know about this person that is presented to us as the embodiment of “love”.
There are so many references I could try to dig in order to show how worthless this woman is in essence, but we don’t want to spend too much time, so I’ll narrow it down to a few major categories:
Financial illiteracy
Carrie found herself forced to buy the apartment she was living in when she decided to turn her back on the only decent man she ever dated. She has no saving but a closet with an estimated $40,000 worth of shoes, she has a big Manhattan apartment and it doesn’t look like she ever takes the subway.
This reveals not only the lack of basic arithmetic skills ($400 times 100 equals $4000?), but the fact that she was living way beyond her means and out of touch with her reality. More importantly, it somehow put in the minds of women around the world that it’s ok to pay $400 for a pair of shoes.
Some referred to the “Carrie Bradshaw Effect” as that tendency to spend on luxury items in times of crisis, this article is dated, but still relevant and extremely enjoyable.
Fashion victim
More than having her own style, Carrie was a follower of ridiculous trends, often looking like a high-end prostitute, because of course, she had to wear Roberto Cavalli and Manolo Blahnik. Spending all of her money on brand name clothes and shoes led to things like these:
Sources: Ugly shit from Sex & the City, BuzzFeed and Flavorwire.
Awful friend
No matter what kind of problem her friends were going through, Carrie’s dating life and poor choices were the center of attention. Of course, the show is presented from her point of view, but they could have at least suggested that she actually cared about something other than herself. Cancer, infertility, divorce, abortion; none of her much more relevant friend’s problems was more important than Carrie’s love life. I acknowledge the possibility of this being simply poor acting.
Defined by her men
Carrie didn’t truly seem to have any other interests than the man she was obsessing about at the time, because she didn’t just meet or date men, she OBSESSED about them, leading the world’s male population forever to believe that is a woman’s natural approach to relationships, and even worse, leading women to believe that was a natural approach to relationships. Yes, her job, a newspaper column about sex, was heavily based on her personal life, but did she care about anything else in the world? What gave Carrie self-worth? What did she believe in? What were her long term career plans and life goals? Did she have any hobbies? Did she read any books? Did she ever travel to some exotic destination, just for pleasure?
One of the most dangerous features that, in my opinion, this character helped reinforce greatly was the idea that “you only want it because you can’t have it”, a sick and pathetic tendency to harass and feel victimized by men that are emotionally unavailable, or simply “not in to you”, as if that was the ultimate sign of womanhood (yes, I detest that word too). There is some primitive human psychology in that statement, but if you are over 15, you should understand your reality and face the facts as they reveal in your face that you are simply not important to him. Big didn’t only show explicitly his lack of interest in Carrie multiple times, but he married someone else, moved away and left her cold on their wedding day. Don’t blame me if I think this is one of the sweetest moments in bad movies of all time:
From a storytelling perspective, it’s not that the character lacked construction: her motivations were pretty clear, they were just unimpressive, to say the least. And the people and circumstances surrounding her didn’t seem to fit the character’s behavior: she was a terrible friend but had at least 3 very loyal girlfriends, she dressed and acted like a prostitute and still managed to find decent men that wanted to date her, she seemed to have no life outlook and yet she becomes a successful “author”. She even ended up marrying the man that rejected her for years even when there never seemed to be a real strong relationship between them.
As if the character’s bad habits and life strategy weren’t bad enough, this video shows how the show, in general, was another way to promote irrational consumer habits, white stereotypes and reckless reason abandonment.
My hope is to bring some reason to the female stereotypes discussion. This character was unrealistic, self-absorbed and quite frankly, very stupid. No woman in her right mind should want to be like her at all, not unless you want to throw away all your maturity, rationality and intelligence. Not only because she never accomplished anything that impressive, but because men and shoes are seriously fucking lame hobbies.
Last updated: 10/03/14 at 12:49 PST.