Carrie Bradshaw—every millennial’s beloved New York stalagmite—is reaching new audiences this month, now that Sex and the City has Manolo clacked its way onto Netflix. (I feel like Lenny Kravitz saw a few eps, because working out in sunglasses, a mesh top, and leather pants is exceptionally Carrie coded.) And on Friday renowned driver’s license holder Olivia Rodrigo wore a “Carrie Bradshaw AF” shirt to her concert at Madison Square Garden. As these Bradshaw-adjacent events converge like the solar eclipse, I can’t help but wonder: Are we living through a Carrenaissance?
Look, I’m the first person to roll my eyes at Carrie “sometimes I would buy Vogue instead of dinner” Bradshaw, knowing that my (our) affection for her is reverent and unironic and yet tinged with latent annoyance. But in a ’90s TV landscape that called for more complex female characters, Carrie contained multitudes that served to both entice and appall us. Her essential Carrie Bradshaw AF–ness is a triptych of personality traits good and bad: She loves New York, she follows her heart, and her fashion sense is individual. These things are both enviable and annoying. I don’t make the rules.
Central to the show’s appeal was its focus on single women not in their 20s—a genuine revelation at the time—and their sexual frankness. Where former shows alluded to last night’s copulation over cappuccinos, our girls frequented hand-job classes. Miranda got a full butt in her face; Charlotte didn’t want to be the up-the-butt girl but knuckled down with Mr. Pussy; and Samantha drank funky spunk, all while Carrie—whose own liaisons felt less dangereuses—milked her friends’ sexual escapades for a national paper.
Via Netflix, a new faction of Gen Z will meet Carrie “maybe some women aren’t meant to be tamed—maybe they just need to run free until they find someone just as wild to run with them” Bradshaw and co. as they cosmo their way through turn-of-the-century Manhattan, past some utterly jealousy-inducing firsts: “No one’s fun anymore. Whatever happened to fun?”; Geri Halliwell’s Evian spritz; the piss politician; the cigar-wielding Mr. Big (I bet it smelled crazy in there when she went to his apartment with McDonald’s); the newspaper dress, the name necklace, the bouquet of collarbone corsages. Carrie farting in bed. Carrie falling in D&G. Carrie falling in Dior. “Dirty martini, dirty bastard.” Single and Fabulous. I’m sorry, I can’t, don’t hate me. Stanford Blatch. Bunny MacDougal. Harry Goldenblatt. (Who among us doesn’t want “ugly sex is hot” tattooed on their lower back?) Samantha Jones. Samantha Jones. Samantha Jones.
Yes, Carrie “Your girl is lovely, Hubbell” Bradshaw is flawed. She sleeps with married men and chips their wives’ teeth. She berates her mate for not offering her $30,000 (after personally spending $40K on shoes). She quits her fantastic job to mooch round Paris in Patricia Fields of tulle and has some frankly psychotic notes on bisexuality. But, like Miranda said, she’s living in a fantasy, and who doesn’t need a little fantasy? I don’t need financial realism. We needn’t revisit how she got that wardrobe and West Village apartment on the 4-bucks-a-word Vogue column; that’s the new “Jack and Rose could have both fit on the door, actually.” Like most of my favorite cultural pastimes, Carrie Bradshaw is hugely significant and daftly unserious; when she appears onscreen, half of me wants to complain while the other half wants to salute. Let the Carrenaissance commence!