There are television shows, and then there are television tectonic plates—shifts so profound that they jolt the entire cultural landscape, sending aftershocks through brunch menus, shoe departments, and the vocabulary of women’s magazines for decades. Sex and the City was one of those quakes. If you’ve ever ordered a cosmopolitan unironically, blamed a man’s commitment issues on his “Mr. Big” wiring, or tried to turn your walk of shame into a strut, you are standing in its rubble.
And yet—God bless it—we thank it. Because without Carrie’s column-length monologues typed on a glowing MacBook screen like scripture in Helvetica, we might still be pretending that New York City rents were survivable, that shoes could be investments, and that brunch was a rare treat rather than a weekly rite.
The Gospel of Carrie (Or, The Cult of Self-Narration)
Carrie Bradshaw did not just break the fourth wall—she smudged her cigarette against it and blew smoke through the crack. Before social media made oversharing a blood sport, Carrie was standing in front of her PowerBook asking, “I couldn’t help but wonder…” in a tone so pensive you could almost miss the fact that she was a professional narcissist with a shoe budget exceeding the GDP of some nations.
But in Carrie’s self-indulgence, we found our own. She made our worst impulses—overanalyzing text messages, naming our heartbreaks like hurricanes, turning every ex into a case study—feel literary. Without her, perhaps we’d never have had the courage to romanticize our own bad decisions with such conviction. For that, Carrie, we thank you.
Miranda, Patron Saint of Realism
While Carrie floated through Manhattan on a cloud of delusion and tulle, Miranda was the lawyer with a side-eye sharp enough to cut diamonds. She was proof that cynicism could be aspirational. Miranda didn’t need Mr. Big; she needed a functioning subway system and an obstetrician who wouldn’t infantilize her.
Thank you, Miranda, for being the first to remind us that feminism looks less like a Manolo Blahnik and more like filing your own taxes correctly.
Charlotte, Ambassador of Hope (and Denial)
Charlotte believed in love the way televangelists believe in tithes: loudly, relentlessly, and against all available evidence. She wore pastel twinsets into battle with cynicism and never once questioned why her Mr. Right had to be found at Barney’s.
Thank you, Charlotte, for showing us that hope is not a strategy, but it is a personality trait—and sometimes that’s enough to carry an entire friendship group when the rest of us are smoking Marlboro Lights in couture despair.
Samantha, Secretary of State for the Department of Doing Whatever She Wanted
And then there was Samantha. The woman who weaponized sex like the Pentagon weaponizes drones. She never apologized for wanting, never begged forgiveness for aging, and never ceded power to a man who couldn’t keep up.
Thank you, Samantha, for proving that shame is a tax we don’t have to pay. Thank you for showing us that a woman could be both a PR executive and a one-woman revolution against sexual hypocrisy. Thank you for the silk kimonos, the quotable zingers, and the reminder that desire is not only political but also spectacularly fun.
A Zeitgeist in Heels
We thank Sex and the City not because it was flawless—it wasn’t. It was racially barren, economically absurd, and occasionally tone-deaf enough to make a Bravo reunion special look like a graduate seminar. But it was ours. It showed up at the turn of the millennium like a glittery Trojan horse, carrying inside it the themes that would later dominate our lives: consumerism as therapy, friendship as marriage, and the eternal question of whether men are trash or just recyclable.
It gave us language where there was once silence. It made us feel that our heartbreaks were worth column inches, that our friends were worth champagne toasts, and that our closets were worth maxing out credit cards. It sold us a dream, and even when the dream went bankrupt, it left us with reruns and catchphrases to cling to.
Why We Still Toast
In 2025, thanking Sex and the City is like thanking your problematic aunt who once let you skip school and drive her car: you know she was reckless, sometimes infuriating, occasionally offensive, but she also taught you freedom before she taught you regret.
We thank it because it let queer men, single women, divorced people, and dreamers of every stripe slip into its cosmopolitan-scented narrative and see that imperfection could still be glamorous. We thank it because, even in its flaws, it gave us permission to narrate our own chaos.
So here’s to Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha. To tutus in traffic, brunches that were sacraments, and nights that ended not with answers but with better questions. To a show that was both a mirror and a funhouse reflection of ourselves.
And to the bee in all of us—that sting of cynicism, that flutter of hope, that buzz of desire—that Sex and the City helped bring into the open.