Sex and the City: The view 20 years later

Seen from a feminist perspective, the show that turns 20 this week now seems materialistic and provincial, but it did inspire female-led narratives
Here’s a fact: we’re all closer to our deaths, because it’s been 20 years since Sex and the City first aired. How can that be? The Manhattan adventures of Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte still feel very alive; people are still taking quizzes on what SATC character they are, there are Instagram accounts of Carrie’s fashion looks, a hilarious #WokeCharlotte meme, and of course, a very familiar Miranda just lost her bid for New York governor in real life.
Sex and the City, which premiered on June 6, 1998, was that rare thing, an independent female perspective — even if it was usually more feminine than feminist. It was unapologetically into stuff women find interesting, from sex and ambition to friendship and fashion, and it had all the pleasures of a great intimate gab session.
“Can women have sex like men?” or “I couldn’t help but wonder: can one be friends with an ex?” — these questions, in Carrie Bradshaw’s voiceover as she types her column, defined Sex and the City. It got pretty real sometimes, like why women cringe at the idea of “doing a number 2” in a new boyfriend’s apartment, why some women fake orgasms and some men fake futures. Even if your life looked nothing like theirs, you could relate to the feelings.
But put away the pink-tinted lenses, and you realise how distant the show is, in time, space and mood. If you first encountered it in your 20s, you’re in your 40s now, and that’s a whole revolution in perspective. But it truly was a different time too. In 1998, the outlook was sunny, and New York was all appetite. Finance and real estate were hot, 9/11 only darkened the horizon midway through the show. So Carrie and gang were always shopping, sampling, looking forward to better things round the corner in their Manhattan wonderland.
But the view from here isn’t pretty. The show now seems to drip with aspirational judgment and rich white privilege — sex with the doorman and sex with the hedge fund guy get entirely different treatments. Remember when the girls breezily discuss class differences (Carrie to Charlotte: “it’s the millennium, sweetheart, we don’t use words like working-class”), even as a bunch of women toil over their toenails. Or the casual racism of “ghetto gold”? Miranda is the only character who holds up over time.
These attitudes flowered horribly in the two movies — when Charlotte survives on packaged pudding because she can’t eat what Mexicans eat, and in practically every scene of the orientalist horror that was SATC 2, where the ‘girls’ are flinging condoms out of their bag in Abu Dhabi. Seen from an Indian woman’s perspective in 2018, Sex and the City is provincial and vulgar, it is Donald Trump’s America writ large. It’s no surprise that Mr Big is admiringly described as “the next Donald Trump”, or indeed that Trump had done a cameo. Carrie once wonders: “Was New York that different from New Delhi?” Oh, you poor thing, you have no idea, do you? When you think ‘cosmopolitan’, you think of a pink cocktail.
Maybe we should look at Sex and the City not in terms of what it is, but what it did, all the women-led movies and comedy and TV shows and themed self-help books it spawned. Those four women and their perspectives birthed a genre that’s only getting more real as time goes on. Bridesmaids, that demented comedy of female friendship and competition, owes something to it. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, with all its panache and goofy brilliance, is because SATC was. All the Amy Schumers and Ali Wongs, ribald and honest, talk of things that SATC first broached. Even Veere Di Wedding, all flash and foul-mouthed banter and female bonding, is a nod to Sex and the City, whether it knows it or not.
So thank you, Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte. You did your bit.