In Defence of Carrie Bradshaw
“I’m looking for love. Real love. Ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can’t-live-without-each-other love.” - Carrie Bradshaw, Season 6 Episode 20, 'An American Girl in Paris: Part Deux'
Carrie Bradshaw is a divisive topic if you’re a fan of Sex & The City. The people of the internet love to hate her. Initially, I was in that camp, opting to see myself more as Samantha Jones: a power woman with a self-made career and emotionally avoidant. Not Carrie, messy, self-centred, selfish Carrie. But it occurred to me: everyone who hates Carrie Bradshaw, has simply not been Carrie Bradshaw.
Yes, she’s a lot. We all cringed at her infamous greetings at Big’s door: first with a top hat and a whip; the beret and French fries; let’s not forget “Get it while it’s hot!”, which are all still memeable even 20 years later. But are we really that different? It's basically the same as posting incessantly on your Instagram story in the hopes that your crush pops up.
And her reaction when Big breaks the news that he’s engaged to Natasha? I’d crash out too. Her situationship that would never fully commit to her, who told her he'd never get married ever again comes back engaged to a woman ten years younger, after a six month stint in Paris that he specifically told Carrie he didn’t want her to join him on. That would truly send me into psychosis. Her reaction at their supposedly civil lunch is completely valid in my opinion. Matter of fact, I would’ve thrown my Cosmopolitan at him just for good measure.
The behaviours people call her out on are largely to do with how she is with when dating Big. But haven’t we all had that one situationship that truly sent you into the pits of hell? It’s just nowadays, we’d cope with it through posting thirst traps and sending crazy paragraphs at 3am. Thank goodness she clung onto having a landline for most of the show.
Without trying to armchair diagnose too much, Carrie seemed to be an anxiously attached person trying to pursue an avoidantly attached man who, refused to meet her where she was. I’ve chased avoidant men, men who were massively out of my league, and men who, like Big, simply did not respect me. Which has caused me to act embarrassingly irrational, just like many of her crash outs in the show. Her quirks, creativity and joie de vivre were wasted on Big, who was strait-laced and serious. He saw her as a fun-time gal, the wrong girl to have fun with whilst he looked for the right one.
And her treatment of Aidan, the good guy? I’ve torn holes in seemingly good relationships with men who were perfect on paper. Where Aidan was a stark contrast to hers and Big’s dynamic, giving her stability and being unashamedly open about his love for her, he also changed aspects of her that made her Carrie. Giving up smoking and cajoling her to weekends away in the countryside when Carrie is truly a city girl at heart - where people say it made her grow, all I can really see is someone who didn’t embrace her for who she truly is. She also continued the cycle of hers and Big’s push-pull dynamic, this time inflicting it onto Aidan: keeping him at arm’s length whilst also on the hook, and never really fully committing to him, even when he proposed. I think deep down, she always knew: he wasn’t right for her. We are masters of self-sabotage when we know things aren’t meant to be.
To the people who say she isn’t a good friend: all the girls have moments where they've come through, but also moments where they’ve been bad friends (after all, SATC is a drama). When Miranda’s mother passes away, Carrie is the one who drops everything and bands the girls together to show up for the funeral. She’s also the one who sets Samantha straight and convinces her to show up for Miranda when she’s in the pits of post-partum hell after having Brady.
About to walk down the aisle on her wedding day, Charlotte voices her concerns about hers and Trey’s sexual compatibility, Carrie listens and meets her with no judgement. If it was any of the other girls, Charlotte would’ve been met with an “I told you so”, but Carrie is the one to say it’s okay to back out and people will understand, but if she chooses to marry Trey, that’s okay too. She's there to pick up the pieces when it doesn't work out.
When Samantha comes down with an awful flu and not a single man in her endless rolodex will look after her, Carrie is the one to nurse her back to health, telling her “We have each other” when Samantha sobs that she’s all alone. In later seasons when Samantha receives her cancer diagnosis, all she wants to do is vent and talk it through. And Carrie allows her just that: no visceral reactions, no questions. She listens and is there for her. She meets all her friends with honesty and never judges them. Her open-mindedness and empathy is the reason why the girls often come to her with problems they’re not ready to share with the group.
She engages in morally dubious behaviours throughout the show: her affair with Big when he’s married to Natasha, ditching Miranda to have dinner with Big or the time she made a recovering alcoholic veer off his sobriety. She can be messy and selfish, and yes, in some cases chooses love over her friends. But we’ve all done things we’re not proud of, or knowingly engaged ourselves in situations that had no positive outcome for anyone involved. We’ve all inflicted hurt on people, whether we could help it or not. The important part is making sure we learn and hopefully not do it again.
Her monologue to Aleksandr in the finale is what really won me over (yes, it really took the entire show to understand her). After leaving her life in New York to move with Aleksandr to Paris (I too, have followed a man to another country and it didn’t end well), it turns out to not to be the dream she thought it would be. She’s living in one of the most romantic cities in the world, on the dime of her successful and wealthy older artist lover, wearing a 20-carat diamond necklace. But she is lonely and lost, with no support circle. Where I fear many women would’ve stayed because their material needs were met and they’re living an aspirational lifestyle, Carrie stays true to herself. What she wants, above all else, is love: real love, ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can’t-live-without-each-other-love. Being able to admit that she’s not where she wants to be despite uprooting her entire life, and isn’t being loved in the way she wants to be, takes real strength and courage.
So what do I really see? Carrie is a passionate woman who wears her heart on her sleeve, she embraces life and loves with all her heart. Yes, she’s flawed, dramatic and sometimes makes poor life choices. Her shortcomings are what makes her relatable. It’s what makes her human.
