Sex and The Single Girl

Women the world over have been boo-hooing into their Birkin Bags since the demise of Sex And The City last month. At a time when much-loved shows like Friends and Frasier are also drawing to a close, to a relatively muted response, the reaction to Sex And The City’s final broadcast was little short of hysterical.

But then few TV shows have had such profound impact on fashion, gender discourse, perceptions of the single girl, and water-cooler conversations the world over as Sex And The City. In its main characters, the show provided four thoroughly engaging models of feminine – and arguably modern feminist – thought, breaking taboos and pushing the envelope in terms of what was considered acceptable in female discussion.
In the years prior to the show’s 1998 inception, the only other single girls of note in popular culture were Ally McBeal and Bridget Jones. Both of them were characters designed to inspire pity. They were, in their different ways, models of dis-empowerment.
Ally McBeal frequently suffered feverish workday hallucinations, presumably as a result of her spinsterhood. Bridget Jones was a man-obsessed, self-sorry irritant.
An anti-Bridget Jones was sorely needed, and Sex And The City duly emerged as a war cry for the single girl, giving a new cache to the fact of being single and free of the ties that really bind.
Sex And The City often portrayed situations where single girls were pitted against their smug married counterparts. But what was unusual when Carrie Bradshaw and her designer-clad friends appeared at weddings and baby showers all over New York was that, once the business was done, they turned gratefully on their heels to scarper back to ‘normality’ and the Manhattan nightlife.
In Sex And The City, marriage and motherhood, as life choices, were derided and exposed. In short, the themes of sex and the single girl were given a new spin, and both were seen in a completely new and much more flattering light.
Sex And The City also changed the way women behaved. Before it hit the screens, women, and especially women in Ireland, were generally very disinclined to even acknowledge the existence of sex toys. But the series had such an impact that come the final episode everyone and anyone was prepared to proclaim that they owned a dildo or three. By 2003, we could all discuss the intricate features of the Rampant Rabbit, and let each other know about the alternatives and where to get them. Without exaggeration, it’s fair to say that Sex And The City inspired some of the most profound changes in the sexual climate in which women, single and otherwise, operate. Which of course means that it affected men in a profound way too…
In truth the series was not really hostile to the male of the species. Outwardly the characters were cocksure, yet inwardly they were self-reflective – and sometimes overwrought. Carrie and friends openly derided men, consuming and discarding them as they did their designer wares. Yet they were all, to some extent, on the lookout for a man they might consider perfect.
Even Carrie herself, the show’s steadfastly single narrator, harboured a burning desire to be rescued by a prince charming. What critics failed to realise is that this is precisely the paradoxical bind that most women contend with when faced with the choices that 21st century citizenship brings.

One of the biggest paradoxes about Sex And The City is that it was the brainchild of two gay men, Michael Patrick King and Darren Star. This prompted critics to call it the biggest joke ever played on straight women in the history of television. Caitlin Moran went so far as to contend that Sex And The City was essentially about the lives of four gay men, though played by four women – because even HBO couldn’t get a series off the ground with four men discussing fellatio.
While there is evidence of a coded gay narrative in the show, the portrayal of gay men is, for the most part, stereotypically one-dimensional (Stanford Blatch is almost a comical caricature of a ‘hag fag’, while Charlotte’s oversexed designer friend Anthony Marentino is screamingly bitchy and snide). Lesbianism, curiously enough, is seen as a lifestyle choice that is hugely disposable, and throughout the six series of the show, the four main characters ‘try it on’, with varying degrees of success.
People have talked about how important the New York setting is to the series, but if there’s a fifth character in the show, it is fashion itself. The girls’ mouth-watering wardrobes became not only one of Sex And The City’s staple identity points, but also its indelible legacy. Our four characters may have found themselves in all manner of uncomfortable or improbable social and sexual situations, but they were always capable of looking damn good while they were at it.
Their clothes reflected at once their financial independence, their sense of adventure, and their self-aggrandisement. It is OK to indulge, they proclaimed, and women – so often carriers of the guilt virus – responded in kind. Haute couture became even more of a staple of mainstream culture than ever before, making household names out of Manolo Blahnik and Jimmy Choo (in fact, the cult of the designer shoe is largely attributable to the show). With the four characters consistently decked in pristine, and frequently awe-inspiring outfits, the show became as much about fashion as it was about sexual misadventure, effectively making a style icon out of Sarah Jessica Parker, who played Carrie Bradshaw.
Even high street retailers began to stock versions of the show’s more memorable outfits. Irish stores are overflowing with replicas of Carrie’s vintage odds and ends, Charlotte’s Hepburn-esque dresses, Miranda’s sharp tailoring and Samantha’s plunging neckline. Sales of designer shoes and handbags went through the roof, as women strove to capture a slice of the girls’ Manhattan magic. Not only were women appropriating the behaviour and sexual candour of the four women, they were shamelessly emulating their style.
Ultimately, the highly audacious writing of Sex And The City became the key to its success. Even the episode titles are fiendishly clever – we’ve been educated about the merits of ‘Frenemies’ and ‘The Fuck Buddy’, explored ‘A Woman’s Right To Shoes’, and observed that ‘Plus One Is The Loneliest Number’.
The characters, though caricatured on occasion, became warm and three-dimensional, often finding themselves in situations that the watching single woman found embarrassingly familiar. Not only did each character mirror different personality aspects that everyone can relate to – Samantha’s animalistic tendencies, Charlotte’s blinding idealism and innocence, Miranda’s neuroses and insecurities, Carrie’s introspection and wry observations – but the foursome seem to represent the dynamics of a typical group of well-to-do women in any country across the world.
Simply put, most of us wanted to be the fifth member of the gang, trading info on sex toys and dating disasters over brunch within the coolest chick-clique in the world.
In terms of fandom, fashion and dramatics, Sex And The City has certainly raised the bar for other drama series. And as far as life-changing television goes – I reckon we’ll be lucky if such a perfectly-packaged and timely show ever comes our way again.

Series six of Sex And The City is currently being shown on TV3 on Thursday nights at 10pm. There are unconfirmed reports that the full run of the show, from first episode to last, will be screened again on the station at a later date