How Sex And The City Miseducated Millennials on the You do You Podcast

Sex and The City miseducated millennials in many ways. On this week’s episode of You Do You, Kaley and I analyze the show that gave us distorted views of dating. Admittedly, Sex and The City also broke down barriers. Debuting in 1998, it was the first mainstream television series to feature women speaking openly about sex. Sadly, it was also a super white show and it was heteronormative AF.

You’ll have to listen to the podcast to absorb all our commentary. However, below are some highlights. Here are three major ways Sex and The City misrepresented the world of love and romance.

 

It Made Dating Look Easy

No, I don’t mean Sex and The City made relationships look carefree and easy. From Carrie’s conflicts with the commitment-shy Mr. Big to Charlotte’s divorce, the HBO series represented relationships as messy. However, it also made the act of dating (i.e meeting someone hot and agreeing to have dinner or drinks) look as simple as putting on a pair of impractical shoes. No matter where they went, those four ladies met eligible men. Said men subsequently asked them out after five minutes of perfunctory chitchat. Before they knew it, the gals were on outings to the opera or a film festival with their latest THOT.

In reality, it’s actual work to find someone you like enough to share a pitcher of sangria with them. It’s so hard, millennials invented dating apps for the purpose of identifying people who don’t suck. We’re the generation who sprained our thumbs swiping left on tinder and spent umpteenth hours deciding how to describe ourselves on Hinge. Dating is emphatically not easy. Sex and The City, you deceived me!

 

No One Wears Stilettos To Brunch 

Do you wear stilettos to brunch with friends? Unless you’re a monster, the answer is an emphatic no! When you’re getting together with pals to commiserate about your love lives, you obviously want to be comfortable! And yet Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda were constantly brunching in six-inch Manolo Blahniks. Praise be to whomever invented athleisure! Thanks to them, millennials don’t have to dress like we’re attending the Met gala to grab waffles with friends.

 

The World Is a Much More Diverse Place Than Sex and the City Made It Look…

The fictional world of Sex and The City was a place where all New Yorkers were inexplicably white, straight, and conventionally attractive. Queer folks were invisible, except when the occasional  one-dimensional gay man who befriended our heroines. Aside from Samantha’s short-lived affair with a woman, no one experimented with their sexuality or experienced moments of fluidity. And BIPOC people? It’s almost like the show didn’t realize racialized people live in NYC, one of the world’s most diverse cities.

By focusing only on the stories of wealthy white ladies, Sex and The City missed a golden opportunity to push sexual boundaries for all woman-identified people. No, you don’t have to be a white and skinny cisgender lady to be attractive. Sex and dating are for everybody! Maybe one day they’ll make an intersectional Sex and The City. HBO, call me! I’d love to tell you what I have in mind…

Sarah Sahagian

Sarah Sahagian

Sarah Sahagian is a feminist writer based in Toronto. Her byline has appeared in such publications as Elle Canada, Flare, Bitch Media, The Toronto Star, and The National Post. She is also the co-host of You Do You: A Dating Podcast. Sarah holds a master’s degree in Gender Studies from The London School of Economics. You can find her on Twitter, where she posts about politics and live-tweets The Bachelor