in defense of carrie bradshaw

why cant she just be?

As a Sex and the City fan and lover of complex female characters, Carrie Bradshaw was always interesting to me. She is the original female antihero on TV. As Tony Soprano was before her as one of the first male antiheroes. The thing with Tony Soprano is that he has gone down in history as one of the most popular male fictional characters — his complexity is analyzed, and the impact of the male antihero on TV became a turning point. Television and the complexity it reached paved the way for shows like Breaking Bad, Dexter, Mad Men, and many more.

The question that remains for me is: why doesn’t Carrie Bradshaw get more credit as a character that paved the way for complex female characters on television? Why are female characters still held up to a standard that male characters never are? Basically: why can’t female characters be complex? And I know many people now think they can — but can she only be complex if she is likeable? And the question then is: why does she have to be likeable at all? Can’t a female character just be, without having to fit into a certain box? Carrie Bradshaw paved the way for complex female characters, yet is denied cultural legitimacy due to enduring gendered expectations, classism, and a resurgence of conservative values in feminist discourse.

Women used to be written as wives or seductresses — one-dimensional. With the rise and progress of the feminist movement, women started performing other roles on television. We have seen women as heroes, women as scientists, women as doctors — women in every role a person can perform in society. The thing she rarely gets is being written as unlikeable.

The analysis of a character like Tony Soprano online is academic — dissecting him for what he was and how that impacted the present. Men pride themselves in characters like him. He is on profile pictures and a favorite of many. Tony Soprano’s significance is seen and legitimized. His flaws are artistic, symbolic, and a sign of a character with depth. His legacy is culturally significant and in the hall of fame of great characters that made a historical difference in media and television.

Carrie Bradshaw is the first female antihero. As the Difficult Women: How “Sex and the City” Lost Its Good Name article states:

“Before Sex and the City, the vast majority of iconic “single girl” characters on television — from That Girl to Mary Tyler Moore and Molly Dodd — had been you-go-girl types, which is to say, actual role models. (Ally McBeal was a notable and problematic exception.) They were pioneers who offered many single women the representation they craved, and they were also, crucially, adorable to men: vulnerable and plucky and warm.”

Premiering Carrie as a character meant a new layer to what women can be on screen. She was complicated, messy, smoking cigarettes, being a bad friend at times, the other woman, a woman who cheats, a woman that has sex for pleasure, a woman in her thirties and single. She broke the mold of traditional female characters. As contradictory and complex as she is, she deserves the same critical attention and tone as her male counterpart Tony Soprano, or a Walter White.

On the other hand, a character like Carrie Bradshaw is a character-made-woman. She cannot just be complex and interesting — complex as a woman means she is kind of a bitch. She cannot be this fictional character one engages with objectively. She is a woman with obvious flaws, and she is not allowed to just be. Carrie Bradshaw is not likeable, and she doesn’t have to be. A male character can be anything and still be worthy of respect and novelty. A female character has to be the all-perfect woman — a feminist and girls’ girl overall, a little complex but likeable. Always likeable.

We find ourselves in a feminist conundrum where we are afraid to present women as anything negative, scared it will be deemed non-feminist — as something girls and women cannot look up to. She has to be inspiring, progressive, empowered, morally sound, emotionally mature, always growing. And in doing so, we reduce her once again to a one-dimensional figure — just in a different costume.

The latest trend is comparing Carrie and Natasha. Natasha as this poised, quiet, reserved, and polished upper-class woman, and Carrie as tacky, chaotic, loud — a woman who takes up too much space, and when she does, it’s often not for something honorable. Traits coded as lower-class or messy. Natasha is praised for “knowing her worth.”

and many more!

With the rise of conservatism, this contrast isn’t just about personality — it’s about respectability politics. Women are expected to behave in a way that aligns with traditional conservative standards: pretty, clean, elegant, quiet, emotionally contained. “Knowing your worth” becomes punishing vulnerability and rewarding detachment — a feminized form of self-surveillance.

These dynamics show how, in the times we are living now, female empowerment and femininity are defined through a conservative lens. Even though Natasha isn’t the way TikTok “high-value women” present her — Natasha stayed with Big even though she knew he was having an affair with Carrie — this obviously shows that behind the façade, Natasha is also a complex female character. Not a one-dimensional doll to project high-value-woman fantasies onto, where Carrie is the pathetic cautionary tale desperate for love and Natasha is the acceptable, poised woman who calmly accepts her defeat.

Carrie is rarely analyzed as a fictional character — she doesn’t get the privilege a Tony Soprano gets. She is judged as a real woman in social circles. She is gossiped about in YouTube video essays. Carrie Bradshaw is tacky. Carrie Bradshaw is delusional. Carrie Bradshaw doesn’t know her worth. Carrie Bradshaw is a bad friend. Carrie Bradshaw cheats, is desperate, insecure, and utterly embarrassing. Tony Soprano is analyzed — Carrie is gossiped about.

She has to be held accountable like a real person, a real woman. Male flaws are interesting; female flaws are personal. Internalized misogyny shapes our relationship to fictional women, and her complexity becomes scandal. She is real and judged like a real woman. This reveals a lot about how women see each other too.

All I ask for is for Carrie Bradshaw to be seen as a vital part of television history — a female character with as many layers and contradictions as she deserves to be. This means confronting our biases about class and gender. Carrie Bradshaw maybe isn’t a girls’ girl — but neither are you.