Note: This post contains spoilers for “Sex and the City” and “You,” among other shows.
Much of the United States has been embroiled – pun intended – in waves of oppressive heat.
Throughout the nation, scorching temperatures have tested infrastructures and further exposed inadequacies within our healthcare system. In New York City, where The Story Exchange is based, temperatures have been rising to record levels. Even for a summer lover such as myself, it’s all been a bit much.
During a particularly brutal stretch, I holed up indoors, pointed our living-room fan directly at my face, and turned on the TV to pass the time while my son finished his school year. I kicked things off with a classic: “Sex and the City,” the late-1990s HBO cultural juggernaut that followed the sometimes-lurid love lives of four Manhattanite women.
A few episodes into my binge, I was boiling anyway – because it’s difficult to revisit the show without contemplating the scorn aimed its way, from its initial airing to this very day.
It’s something actress Sarah Jessica Parker touched upon in a recent interview with HuffPost UK. The discussion, naturally, turned to her decades-long portrayal of Carrie Bradshaw, the iconic “it” girl who serves as the narrative focal point of both the hit TV show and the two films it inspired, as well as the ongoing HBO spin-off series, “And Just Like That.”
Carrie Bradshaw is a decidedly controversial character. She is, all at once, witty, selfish, fiercely loyal and deeply flawed. She’s terrible with money for much of the original series; she can be rather judgmental; she conducts an illicit affair with an ex while he’s married to another woman. But she also successfully navigates moments of failure that would have most of us hiding indoors for days; she forgoes fantasy nights out and more to support friends in need.
Despite her wholeness, much of the online discourse around the character focuses on her foibles. In addition to an entire website dedicated solely to detailing why she is “the worst,” there are tons of videos, listicles, op-eds and more that brand Carrie Bradshaw as a “villain,” a “monster” and – I’m not joking – a “menace to society.”
Parker sees no small amount of hypocrisy in the hatred. “It’s always interesting to me that [women characters are] so condemned, but a male lead on a show can be a murderer, and people love him,” she said, alluding to Joe Goldberg, the serial-killing main character of Netflix’s recently-wrapped series “You” – another show I pored over as I hid from the heat.
Parker added: “If a woman has an affair, or behaves poorly, or spends money foolishly … there’s a kind of punitive response to it” that characters like Joe Goldberg are spared from, despite their objectively worse transgressions.
It’s a double standard that “You” actually attempted to address throughout the entirety of its run, with the show using Joe Goldberg, at times, as an avatar of the very toxicity Parker noted. One example: In the first season, he assaults an overbearing woman who threatens his burgeoning relationship with her friend – as he flees, he excuses his behavior in a breathless voice-over, stating that his girlfriend should be grateful for his “protection.” And scores of fans agreed.
Indeed, despite the creators’ best efforts, Joe Goldberg’s charm and good looks (both courtesy of actor Penn Badgley) rendered him largely immune to internet scorn. In fact, publications showered praise upon him; and Etsy, an online store where small-batch makers sell their crafty wares, features pages upon pages of pro-Joe shirts, stickers, mugs and even candles.
Examples abound of this phenomenon – the one in which challenging, complicated women characters are raked over the metaphorical coals, while male antiheroes guilty of far worse offenses are given passes, or are even celebrated for their fullness because of their flaws.
Callie Torres of “Grey’s Anatomy” was reviled from the moment she was added to the Seattle Grace rotation for being an intensely assertive and outspoken love interest to core character George O’Malley – even when he cheated on her, fans found a way to make it her fault. Skyler White of “Breaking Bad” and Betty Draper of “Mad Men” failed to carry the burdens of loving selfish, infantile, unstable men with the grace and gravitas apparently expected of them – while the men themselves were defended, even lionized ad nauseum.
They and many other such fictional women were, and still are, castigated for embodying very human traits – for being annoying, violent, demanding, foolish, unfair or, God forbid, bitchy. Worse, the (entirely innocent) actresses who embody these roles are residually insulted by these online hate campaigns, if not directly targeted for harassment.
Parker mentioned this aspect of fan discourse as well, in another recent interview with “Call Her Daddy” podcast host Alex Cooper. Like several of the actresses playing the roles listed above, Parker was derided for years about her physical appearance – “stuff that I couldn’t change, I wouldn’t change, and had never considered changing.” Madeline Brewer, who played the also-hated Brontë on “You,” was similarly attacked and mocked for somehow not being beautiful enough in the eyes of viewers to win social permission to be challenging, contradictory and complex.
The underlying problem is multi-pronged – and it’s not just about sexism. One part of the calculus is that media literacy is on the decline, which makes it harder for viewers to process programming logically or objectively. Simultaneously, our capacity for caring overall is waning, in large part because the internet has given people a voice – one they feel increasingly comfortable using to say things one wouldn’t dream of uttering offline. In the time since the Covid lockdowns of 2020, that situation has only gotten worse.
And of course, regardless of context and throughout time, women have always been held to impossibly higher standards of behavior than men. (I mean, the problem is somewhat about sexism – if you want to watch something smart and sharp that tackles this theme directly, “Kevin Can F**k Himself,” also on Netflix, serves as a fantastic contemplation of the subject.)
We’re certainly not going to solve all or any of this with an early-summer binge watch, even if these shows do give us ample opportunity for self-reflection. But Parker did offer a potential path forward, by inviting online posters to ask themselves a series of rather simple questions: “Why is this [character] a problem? Why is this deserving of your time? And, why do you seem to delight in saying” mean, cutting things about them?
It’s valid food for thought – and hey, you don’t even have to turn your oven on to dig in. ◼️
