Carrie Bradshaw, You Imperfect Radical—They Could Never Make Me Hate You.

Photo via The Economist

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New York City, 1998. Four women strut down Fifth Avenue with designer heels and loud opinions—opinions that were previously too loud for mainstream TV. 

When the TV show Sex and the City first aired in 1998, it didn’t ask for permission, it just started talking:

Talking, very openly, about sex, ambition, friendship, purpose—the intimate concerns of real-life women—something that was, up until this point, unheard of on television. The series began not merely as a new binge-worthy show, but as a cultural intervention, centering around four unmarried women in their 30s, navigating identity and relationships in New York City. 

At the center of it all stood the leading lady, Carrie Bradshaw, “the closest thing television has come up with to a universal self.” She was the eclectic, fashion-obsessed (glitter) glue that kept her girl group so close, despite her terrible track record of mistakes, which she never seemed to learn from. Since the show’s inception, women of the 90s and early 2000s have debated over how to define this complicated character—feminist or male-centered, selfish or selfless, good or evil?

Now, two decades later, Gen-Z women have discovered the show for themselves, and again, strong opinions about Carrie are resurfacing in online discourse. Today, the trend seems to be mocking Carrie rather than rooting for her, compiling her worst moments to depict her as selfish, “cringe,” insensitive, and out-of-touch. 

But long before the “Carrie is toxic” TikTok memes, Sex and the City was radical. In its time, it turned the kind of “taboo” conversations women once only had over brunch into mainstream discussions. It created a space for women to be independent, while still acknowledging their struggles, missteps, and uncertainties in the evolving modern world. 

Young women today tend to judge the group, particularly Carrie, through contemporary frameworks. To be fair, most of these critiques are valid. Carrie’s world is overwhelmingly white, with little to no intersectionality. Certain aspects have aged poorly: making racially insensitive jokes, enforcing stereotypes, and, in one episode, Samantha’s (one of Carrie’s best friends) infamous feud with the trans sex workers outside her apartment.

Admittedly, the show glamorized a very specific version of New York—one only accessible to the privileged. The chaos of the city was depicted as chic, and the socio-economic struggles of its inhabitants were completely overlooked.

Despite this, the very reason the show is so radical, even to this day, was not because it was perfect, but because it was brutally honest. Sex and the City reflected Giuliani’s NYC, where wealthy white New York women lived glamorously exciting lives, casually brunching in trendy cafes while Giuliani’s heavy emphasis on “broken-window” policing led to rampant racial-profiling and disproportionately targeted Black and Hispanic New Yorkers, just blocks away.

Yes, the show’s lack of diversity is undeniable; however, its deficiencies do not necessarily render it entirely historically valueless. “Media that is ‘politically incorrect’ or ‘dated’ is media that is honest,” meaning that, even when Sex and the City reveals blind spots we would now recognize as problematic, it still offers an informative snapshot of the social and political norms of its time. 

Carrie and her friends were imperfect radicals. Their strategy towards feminism was that of many women during the seventies and eighties—to learn to be self-centered, to decide and choose their own desires wholly. Today, this looks brash and unnuanced. Charlotte’s declaration, “I choose my choice!” captures this exact movement. It also highlights underlying tensions in liberal feminism that still persist today, such as true autonomy, tradition, and learned roles.Meanwhile, Miranda fought for respect from her boss as a single female lawyer, and Samantha’s bold and unapologetically graphic sexual expression reflected many feminists of the 90s, who tried to express overt, unashamed sexuality, to “have sex like men,” in order to gain respect and equality in male-dominated spaces.

Evidently, Carrie is modernly judged through a harsh moral lens. Sarah Jessica Parker, the actress who has now played Carrie for 27 years, even said that it was “always interesting to (her) that (Carrie is) so condemned, but a male lead on a show can be a murderer, and people love him.” Several online critics have wondered the same, noting how Carrie is scrutinized far more intensely for her mistakes than male antiheroes like Tony Soprano. 

In many ways, this disparity mirrors societal and political dynamics today, where female figures and politicians are expected to embody moral perfection. In the 2024 election, Kamala Harris was held to an impossible standard of flawlessly representing her party, while her male counterpart, President Trump, was excused of his morally questionable behavior. Furthermore, in the same way Carrie’s cultural contributions are dismissed because she’s perceived as annoying, the qualifications of Kamala were often dismissed, with the public focusing instead on her “annoying” mannerisms or laugh, and ridiculing her harshly for them. 

And it wasn’t always Trump supporters who condemned her over trivial matters; sometimes, it was fellow Democrats themselves. In the end, Republicans did not hold Trump to the same unreasonable standards as Kamala in order for them to support him unconditionally, ultimately winning him the election. 

The public’s disapproval towards Carrie, and the dismissal of the radical conversations she and her friends sparked for women, reflects a broader issue that persists today—the left tends to “eat its own.” Online leftist spaces hold one another, especially women, to impossibly high standards of ideological and moral perfection. In both politics and pop culture, any woman that has the nerve to be an imperfect spokesperson for the cause is picked apart, rather than allowed humanity or complexity. 

Evidently, Carrie and her friends could not be seen as politically or socially progressive enough to earn their due respect for their forward strides.

Despite its flaws, Sex and City was revolutionary; it gave airtime to the first modern feminist voices—deeply complex, contradictory, and immeasurably valuable. It “bravely presented the trivial as serious” at a time when women’s nuanced worries, struggles, and thoughts were confined to private conversations. Above all, it stands as a sign of the times in which it was written, which should not be discounted. Carrie may not align perfectly into feminist ideals today, but she started much of the conversation—ultimately paving the way for future generations of women to push even further. To condemn Carrie and her friends simply because they depict the realities of their time is to demand of female characters, figures, and politicians a standard of morality rarely expected from men. Engaging with the complexity of women, just as Sex and the City did through the flawed Carrie Bradshaw, rather than flattening it, remains the most truly, radically feminist act.

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This article was edited by Vedha Gokul and Graciela Wray-Rivera.