What Carrie Bradshaw Teaches Us

Nora Geoghegan  

Staff Writer  

Carrie Bradshaw is one of the most iconic TV characters of all time, yet she irritates many  who come across her. I couldn’t help but wonder, why is Carrie Bradshaw so polarizing?  

Carrie Bradshaw, who’s played by Sarah Jessica Parker in the hit TV series, Sex and the  City. The show follows protagonist Carrie and her friends, Charlotte (Kristin Davis), Samantha  (Kim Cattrall), and Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) in their love lives as well as their personal lives. 

Carrie is more notably controversial and widely disliked. She is notorious for never taking  accountability for her wrong doings, instead she projects on her friends and finds an innocent  party to blame. She cheats on her boyfriend with her on again off again boyfriend who’s given the  nickname “Mr. Big” on her far more loving boyfriend Aidan Shaw (John Corbett). She also spent  her month’s rent on Manolo Blahnik shoes. 

At the same time, Carrie is also fiercely independent, is a great friend during her friends’ hardships and milestone moments; particularly when Miranda goes through her pregnancy, when  Samantha has breast cancer, and when Charlotte faces issues with her first marriage, a prolific  writer, and a fashion icon. We can’t help but admire Carrie for these qualities, but at the same  time shudder at her utter stupidity and selfishness. 

What makes Carrie such a polarizing character is her complexity. She’s violently human!  She cheats, she spends too much money on designer shoes, and she lacks accountability for her  actions. We hate Carrie because we are Carrie. We don’t like our mistakes to be called out  because it reveals how flawed we are. That’s why we gravitate towards characters like Charlotte,  Miranda, and Samantha because they represent some positive qualities, we want 24/7; kind,  smart, intelligent, and confident. But in the end, our human capacity for flaws takes over, and we  can’t be the romanticized unrealistic versions of ourselves. That is what Carrie serves to remind  us; we are imperfect. 

Carrie Bradshaw serves to remind us of our imperfections, to prove that we’re perfectly  imperfect. That we contain multitudes, and that we aren’t always the seamless version of  ourselves that we think we are.