Sex in the City: Can you relate?

Sex in the City is one of my all time favorite shows in the whole entire world! I am a die hard fan and am seriously trying to win tickets to the NY premier of the movie in May. The show really just resonated with me, which is odd because I really don’t like too many shows that aren’t diverse, yet I was all over this one. (As well as the Golden Girls, which to me was the original, albeit geriatric version, of 4 single women living life)

Perhaps it was due to the characters being so relatable. Not necessarily their lives (I’m no rich white woman in my mid thirties) but their experiences and emotions. I got where they were. And I think many women did. We got Charlotte’s frustration when she’d been dating for so long and didn’t get why she hadn’t found the one yet. Or to some respects Carrie’s addiction to shoes. Although I never quite said “Hello lover” to Manolos in the store window (more like Hell No when I saw the price). I have given a fond pat to my Bandolinos in my closet. And we’ve all met a Mr. Big type or the guy who got to us like he did Carrie. And maybe we weren’t broken up with on a post it note but we might have encountered the guy who “disappeared” or as I like to say “died”.

Okay, yes, the characters could be a bit exaggerated in their behaviors but at the base we could all identify with at least one of them. They all believed in love in their own ways.

Charlotte, willing to go the distance to reach love and her vision of what it should be.



Miranda and her walls and reluctance to rely on a guy but eventual submission to the idea of love.






Samantha and her “date like a guy” mentality but who, underneath it all, respected the idea of love for herself.



And Carrie, following unconventional paths in love but fiercely passionate, giving of herself and not afraid of her vulnerability.

I often wondered who I was most like. Ideally Carrie, simply because she was the lead of course. But a few reality checks later and suggestions from friends I came to realize, a bit to my horror, that I was Charlotte with a dash of Miranda. And while I have not taken to finding “Mr. Right” as a part time job, resume and all, and don’t think I can change religions for a guy, I do recognize the similarities. I want the fairy tale, but like Miranda, don’t believe the hype. Hard way to be I know but I think it’s a world many women are stuck in especially as we age. At 20 we want the proverbial knight in shinning armor coming to our rescue on a white horse. By 40 this knight might have turned into a dude with a running car and all his teeth. It’s real people!

If there was anything the show taught me is that no matter how you look or where you are love does not come easy or come in the package you thought it might. Further, bad things happen to good people in love and the key is not to take it personally. I liked this show not just because I could identify with the situations the characters were in but because the writers thought them up, perhaps based on reality. I wasn’t alone! This further came about in the related book ‘He’s Just Not That Into You’ brought about from a Sex in the City episode and soon to be a movie itself. It was amazing to me how many others had been through similar or worse experiences in the dating arena. It was a comfort to me because most of my friends at the time were already in relationships and I had no one to really talk to about the “trials and tribulations” of dating life. Most of my attached friends looked at my dating life as a cautionary tale “beware the single life and hold your man tight or else this might happen to you kiddies, muhaha!”.

It was only recently in my life that I encountered friends who I could swap “war stories” with and it made me realize how important a good base of friends was to talk to. One who contributed in your life, shared and offered advice and differing opinions. See Sex in the City wasn’t just a show about finding love in the big city but it was a great story of friendship. Not many people have that kind of close bond. And although it was simply fiction that was the real heart of the series. I sometimes need a little Miranda to reality check my Charlotte. Because if love is a battlefield (as Pat Benatar would say- love love love that song) then we shouldn’t go it alone.