By Emma Weidmann | Editor-in-Chief
26 years after she first strutted around the streets of Manhattan, it’s cool to hate Carrie Bradshaw, the adorable, glamorous train wreck of “Sex and the City.” Next in line is Rory Gilmore, the boat-stealing, pun-making patron saint of female student-journalists.
I get why it’s fun to hate on them. They have flaws as obvious as a zit and as irresistible as craning your neck to get a better look at a steaming pile-up on the highway. Committing crimes against girlhood (and sometimes actual crimes) the Bradshaws and Gilmores of television leave something to be desired in the good role model department.
But why do we expect main characters, especially female ones, to always be morally instructive? Why can’t we handle a little gray area?
The truth is, it’s easy to point fingers. Calling out fictional characters for their shortcomings makes it easier to ignore our own. How many people in TikTok comment sections who accuse Carrie Bradshaw of being a terrible friend or an embarrassing “pick me” can probably say they’re much better? How many people who accuse Rory Gilmore of being an idiot for dropping out of Yale have ever felt defiant in the face of flaming, world-altering rejection? How many of us have never made the wrong decision when faced with a difficult choice?
We have to ask ourselves why these characters are still relevant more than two decades after their pilot episodes. Watching women like Carrie and Rory screw up Big time (pun intended) and come out okay on the other side has been a comfort to young women for decades. In their imperfection, they tell us that it’s okay if we aren’t perfect, either.
What makes a character step out of the television set and into your living room — into your life, even — isn’t that they show you all the things that you should’ve done better. They feel real, as real as your best friend losing it a little after a breakup, as real as procrastinating all night and feeling terrible in the morning and as real as learning to go through life as you are shaped by your mistakes and the things that sting you.
Whether or not you always like them, you always want to watch them. You know the old saying, “well-behaved women seldom make history.” Well, they seldom make the Golden Globes, either.
The best characters on television aren’t ethically aspirational, they’re interesting. They reflect something in ourselves that makes us feel seen — and sometimes they make us feel exposed. It’s time we embraced the parts of ourselves that we don’t like — the messy, the dramatic, the frequently petty and sometimes immature. Often, on-screen anti-heroes make the same mistakes we do.
Maybe Carrie’s only sin is doing it in fabulous heels.
