Every week I see a new article popping up on my timeline from places like Cosmopolitan, Refinery29, Marie Claire and other lifestyle magazines and blogs with headlines like “Everything Carrie Bradshaw Taught You Was a Lie” and “Sex and the City Lied to You.” Can we just stop for a second? I get it; it’s totally unrealistic for a freelance sex columnist to have a closet full of Manolo Blahnik, Jimmy Choo and years and years worth of designer apparel. Yes, it’s totally unrealistic for Carrie to be able to afford a Manhattan apartment like the one depicted in the show. But, maybe it wasn’t those things that made the show such an icon and made thousands of young girls look to Carrie Bradshaw as a role model. Sure, I watch Carrie, Charlotte, Samantha and Miranda strut down Manhattan avenues from the futon my small childhood bedroom in Ohio and dream of the day it’s my turn to throw on Manolo’s and make New York my own. But, maybe at the core of Sex and the City, there’s a much more important message.
📷MLXLS 📷
Sex and the City is a show that tells the story of a young woman who is living a life dictated only by herself. She has her own job, money, apartment and can make her own choices about her life. She isn’t tied down by a man and she has a loyal group of friends who share her same values. Isn’t this what every woman should want? And yes, spoiler alert: in the end, Carrie and the other girls finds their man, but not without many years of first finding themselves. In my opinion, Carrie Bradshaw and the rest of the girls are undercover feminists. No, they’re not out there burning their bras but they set a different standard for women today. They taught us that women can talk about sex openly, to grab life by the horns and don’t worry about getting old, when to walk away from toxic relationships, and that being yourself is the only true you that you can be. Those thousands of young girls who dreamed of being Carrie Bradshaw were looking up to a woman who changed the conversation of what women had to be. Yes, Carrie spent entire episodes reeling over Aiden and Big, but the lesson she taught us through it all was that man or not, we have our independence and it isn’t until we love ourselves that we’ll truly find love.
So the moral of my story is, you can stop telling me and everyone else that Carrie Bradshaw is a bad role model, because even if I’m only inspired by her Manolo Blahnik shoes and luxurious wardrobe – at least I’m inspired. While you write your discouraging articles, I’ll be over here, living my inspired, successful life, reaching for my Sex and the City DVDs in my New York City apartment.
📷MLXLS 📷