I don't get this. First, any woman who dropped every life plan they had because they saw a show on HBO deserves whatever they got LOL. Second, these women don't exist any more than the women who decide at 30 weeks pregnant they want an abortion to get ready for bikini season. Please stop treating women like they are mouth breathing morons. Third, the show didn't exactly paint a glossy picture of NYC single life. I mean yea, it's TV so the apartments are nicer and it's fun to get drinks. But they also had a lot career disappointments, dating failures, straight up humiliations, and dealt with crap like aging inlaws with dementia, breast cancer, menopause complications, and infertility. |
My husband is an attorney and the firm’s roster is full of unmarried and/or childless late 30s and 40 something women. And the ones with children only have one because they started too late. |
“Millions?” Seriously? I don’t know anyone like this. |
Huge YES to both of these posts. That episode of AJLT was the first one that seemed like the regular show. I think I even said that on the AJLT thread. |
All the women I know who were suuuuuper into SATC viewed it not as a glamorization of single life but identified with it in terms of finding "the one." The show is actually pretty obsessed with serious relationships. It portrays a lot of bed hopping, yes, but largely in service of finding true love. Even its more cynical and independent characters wind up in long term, committed, live in relationships, one of them a marriage. Three of the four wind up married in stable relationships, two with kids. Two of the women ultimately wind up divorced, but one happily remarries and has kids and the other winds up exploring her sexuality. Maybe not traditionalism, but a fairly representative sample of how a lot of relationships go these days.
The central romance of the show involves Carrie's on again off again with Big, which ultimately ends with a happy ending and the two of them together. Even if I find this course of events laughably unrealistic and not even very romantic, it's hard to say this is an argument for sleeping around and not caring about relationships. The whole show is about being freaking obsessed with relationships. I watched it when it aired but have to admit I wasn't as into it as some of my friends because I simply had no interest in marriage at the time (mid 20s) and actually enjoyed being single, and the show was NOT about enjoying being single. It did celebrate the idea of women enjoying sex, which was refreshing. But otherwise I found it mildly regressive with the focus on love and marriage as the central feature of a professional woman's life, plus I felt the friendship between the women was deeply unrealistic (no way these four women would actually become a devoted group of friends, they were way too different). The clothes and shoes were always my favorite part, not because I was dumb enough to blow $400 on a pair of high heels, but because Patricia Field is a genius. I also enjoyed watching Emily in Paris (which Field works on) for the same reason even though I am not and will never be a semi-dumb 20-something running around Paris without bothering to learn French. |
Yes that's because BigLaw is incompatible with being pregnant or being a mom. It has absolutely nothing to do with the show SATC. Also, as someone who ALSO knows a lot of attorneys, most of them don't spend a lot of money on shoes or handbags. Vacations, maybe. But IME women who are extremely career oriented tend not to be super into clothes and accessories -- they are focused on their work. I'm not saying they are slobs or don't look nice (and many of them make very good money and have wardrobes that reflect their income), just that the SATC idea of wearing head to toe designers and flipping out over a pair of shoes is very much not their thing. |
Tens of millions. Look up the birth rate for American women 30 to 60 years old. The show helped (not solely) birth tens of millions of Big City-seeking, hook-up culture, carefree careerist consumers. So sophisticated in their Big City apartment, with a Big City job, and Big City boyfriends. Staying near family and settling down with a boy from your hometown or college was for rubes! Then millions of them hit their late 30s still single, painfully lonely, and/or childless. Conned by propaganda. |
This is so sad that you are this stupid. Look at global trends for falling birth rates - there are a lot of reasons birth rates are falling, but SATC is not one of them. Charlotte was desperate to have babies anyway so it's not even true that the show deglamorized having babies. |
Wow, you sound like a miserable person. - SATC loving, happily married mom with 2 kids. |
So you’re the person everyone calls Brunch Granny, right? |
Legend has it that if of you look into the mirror in a dimly lit room and chant “brunch granny” 3 times she will appear behind you and beg for grandchildren. Be cautioned! |
+1! Seriously-what's up with the vitriol? I'm married but don't have kids by choice and I don't understand why some married women with kids are so negative towards those without (particularly towards single women without kids). I can honestly say I feel zero judgement towards people with kids. We are all different and want different things. Not every woman wants to be married with children and that's okay. Also what's up with all of the PP's using the word "spinster?" Omg I thought as a society we were starting to move past this type of misogynistic crap. |
“Circling back” to the original post (to use an expression that is so this millennium and never was spoken in Carrie’s joyful years), SATC was so much of its time and place (I was there and remember it, though I was not quite as active as Carrie et al) that any sequel can never capture that spirit again. NYC is the most protean city on earth. Young women mature and change. Social mores change. We want to know how Carrie and friends fared and it turns out that they’re not the blithe spirits that they once were. I’m not either. Two of the guys I dated in my 20’s died in their 40’s. I’m glad the original SATC is still being broadcast to remind me of what it felt like to be so hopeful about our futures. |
Also "circling back" to the comment on Natasha. I thought Natasha had the best character development of anyone from the original series to the AJLT. I also think she's emblematic of a lot of women who grew up with the show. We have happy memories and battle scars from our 20s and early 30s, but are happy and well-adjusted in new roles. The things in our past that seemed so monumentally devastating actually needed to happen and we're better for it. |
No one was thinking about retirement at that age in NYC. He was the one that got away. That’s all. |