I Don’t Want To Be Carrie Bradshaw

Dude, she’s crazy.

And I don’t mean normal, run-of-the-mill, that time of the month crazy; I mean really fucking batshit. It probably has something to do with the fact that the show is about her, so structurally she’s always the one tying the episodes together, but I’m just going to set that little fact aside and push onwards.

Like, if I knew that woman in real life, I’d be kind of scared and maintain a safe but still involved social distance, the kind where I see her at parties, we talk and drink at glossy social gatherings, rarely in the sunlight and she’s much more useful as a conversation topic than a close confidante. I love her but I don’t Love her.

I would give a mini-girl-shriek of excitement just about every single time I approached a party and saw her outside smoking, my Pavlovian response to seeing her (nose) face, and she would shriek back and tell me if there are cute guys at the party.

My friends would look at each other in slight confusion, because right before we ran into her, I had been saying, “You know, Ben, works with Akashi…yeah, so they go out like twice, and then he catches her trashing his place, trying to break the lock on a private box… you know why? Because she wanted to ‘find the freak’ in him, like seriously–isthather?—howcrazycanyougetamirightoramiright?… Omgah Carrie, hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!”

How about the time she actually yells at Charlotte for not offering to loan her money to buy her apartment from Aiden? I know, I know, it’s got to be frustrating when you really only have three friends, so it’s a big deal when two of them do something and one does not, but come on. It is just Such a Non-Issue. The rant she gives Charlotte is ridiculous, most of which is some self-righteous bullshit about how she’s been such a great listener.

I’d be so, so annoyed if someone—nay, my best friend—did that to me. I’d stand there, jaw dropped, eyebrows arched, wait for them to calm down and say, “…Seriously? This is happening right now? So, we’re in… high school…” Which is something, if I were Carrie Bradshaw, I would be saying all the fucking time.

For example, she needs to rip apart a very loose-looking wedding dress to avoid a panic attack. If I were she, I’d be gravely concerned over the fact that, apparently, I was not even slightly aware that I did not want to be married. Panic attacks are scary, very true, but come on. If you’re getting them this severely after the age of thirty, it’s time to get real, see a therapist and talk about some issues.

She stalks Natasha and then invites herself to sit down at Natasha’s lunch, just so she could say what she had to say about, not ending, but really helping to end Natasha’s and Big’s marriage. Even as a teen watching this episode, I was thinking, “what the fuck, Natasha doesn’t give a flying shit about Carrie’s search for closure!” When this shit would happen in high school, it usually resulted in a swift punch to the face. Moreover, not only could this have been done over e-mail, it could have waited, oh, I don’t know, another few years.

She actually confronts people based on looks they give her, instead of just forgetting it happened, like the rest of us. Case in point: Aiden’s more recent ex, a total stranger, who she runs into twice and both times the girl does that raised eyebrow, “Oh… You” look. Annoying. But that’s it; it’s just annoying. No need, Carrie, to pull her aside when you see her at the flea market and go into a ‘you don’ know me!’ tirade, before she’s even said anything.

Honorable mentions of inappropriate behavior: She attacks Big after their first dinner date about hiding her from his friends. She tracks down and meets his ex-wife. She spies on Big and his mom, after, I don’t know, a month of dating.

This woman is a champion of wasted time and energy.

Look, I get it; Carrie’s craziness is relatable. We all have moments of insanity and it’s why we like her so much, why we write articles and have conversations on ‘who gets to be Carrie Bradshaw’. But fact of the matter is, here is a character that is not unlike her more openly stereotypical peers—Rachel from Friends, Grace from Will & Grace, et cetera—in that her self-absorption and obsession with men consumes her entirely, the only difference being that she talks openly about it.

Honestly, it just sounds exhausting. Like Miranda said, either they’re out dating men or they’re out talking about them. And when Carrie’s not doing either of those, she’s writing about them or thinking about them while shoe shopping. She’s like a sixteen-year-old who just got PMS for the first time, totally thinks she saw Sandee Hendricks holding her crush’s hand, got into a fight with her parents about curfew and has decided to give John Beekman an HJ in the locker room because she got a detention for skipping and is feeling rebellious… All. The. Time.

When it comes to relationships (ha), she’s the one who decides to run through the other person’s field of intimacy landmines just to see if they go off, instead of, you know, taking that other pretty dangerous road of mutual growth over to the left. That’s her biggest problem, that despite her ‘modern’ frankness about relationships, she’s a whiny, inconsiderate child, who never seems to get it through her head that other people, besides herself, come with baggage and issues and pain and sadness. She’s petulant, impatient and controlling; she has to drag out all issues immediately and explosively to make sure Mr. X is perfect and if not, gets the fuck out.

So, so immature. Is it really possible that there are so many women who want to be like Carrie, who can’t lay back and enjoy the moment, because they have to, they need to lock down a man?

And it got me thinking… maybe I do want to be Carrie?

Hahahaha, just kidding.