Why Sex and the City still resonates after all these years.

SATC Cast; 1999 Promo, HBO

Photo via ft.com

Sex and the City (SATC): More Than Just Fashion and Friendship

It was May 2019, and I was a junior in college. At this time, the great migration to New York was bubbling. TikTok wasn’t yet the cultural force it is today, with its push for every under-30 college grad to move to the big city.

I got sucked headfirst into Carrie Bradshaw’s fabulous world: her fabulous friendships, her fabulous apartment. But I knew my obsession had just as much to do with New York itself. What drew me in wasn’t just the wardrobe or the witty banter, but the way New York felt like the fifth main character. I could feel the Staten Island Ferry scene, when Charlotte reminds herself that there’s hope outside of marriage. Or the storefront scenes, when Carrie inevitably falls in love with a pair of shoes.

There was the fashion, of course, thanks to the genius of Patricia Field (SATC's stylist), who so effortlessly personified each character. Their wardrobes felt true to their careers, their roots, their daily chaos and they were just so freaking cool.

But what else was it about Sex and the City that continues to captivate us 28+ years later? And more personally, why can I mark my life as pre and post-SATC?

Honest, Unfiltered, and Sometimes Messy

So much can be said about our four protagonists and their friendship and for the record, much has (see here, here, here and if in doubt, see its ever active Reddit page). If you’re branching into SATC lore for the first time, just remember that Carrie & Charlotte are the Romantics to the Cynicism we see in Miranda and Samantha. That’s the briefest of summaries, but it's a start.

he show presents these women as a balance to one another; in the moments when Carrie is spiralling about her relationship (or imprisonment tbh) with Mr. Big, Miranda does her best to pull her out of her misery. When Charlotte can’t seem to pull her head from the clouds with her teenage fantasies of Mr. Right, Samantha brings her back to Earth, not always gently, but always from a place of genuine care and concern. They want the best for their little circle, even if that meant breaking each other’s hearts for a few seconds.

Yes, this should be the bare minimum in friendship, but for the love of it, are we not starved of this level of honesty?

 In the early 90s-mid 2000s, the conversation about SATC centered on its honesty concerning sex (still very relevant because Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte were some of the first to do so on tv). But revisiting it now, I see something else; four vulnerable women who’ve nurtured a decade-long friendship with the understanding that they’re not going anywhere. Their home was in New York, yes- but it was also in each other.

And as corny as Charlotte’s brunch line may sound -“What if we’re each other’s soulmates?”- isn’t that what we all want? People who accept us unconditionally?

Pushing Boundaries, Then and Now

Staying true to its spirit of pushing culture, SATC keeps us hooked because it isn’t afraid of nuance. Like Emily Nussbaum from The New Yorker writes,

“Sex and the City’s real strength was its willingness not to stack the deck: it let every side make a case, so that complexity carried the day.”

I sincerely hope this isn’t a reach, but sitting with the discomfort of multiple perspectives is the essence of this TV show. Its characters were successful, sociable, progressive, single women. But they were also messy (literally, in Carrie’s case) and, at times, reckless. They left us feeling conflicted because we’re used to rooting for the main characters, but these ones? They didn’t always deserve it.

They were doing some very questionable, even downright shady things and we still rooted for them.

It helps to remember that SATC is based on a bestseller of the same name, which is based on its writer; Candice Bushnell’s real newspaper column chronicling her experiences in New York from 1990-1996. Carrie and her friends are as real as it gets. We just got to witness them up close and in sequence. 

After all these years, I still cannot bring myself to watch And Just Like That. Not only because Samantha is no longer a part of the crew, but also because I want to remember Sex and the City just as I left it. I want to remember myself just as I was when I first watched it.

That’s why, for me, Sex and the City isn’t just a show, it’s a marker in time.