We love Sex And The City. It broke taboos, was genuinely warm and funny, and brought female concerns to the mainstream order. But this week marks 10 years since the last episode aired on British TV (and we watched it on boxsets in bed) after a six-year run – and the world’s a very different place. You only have to look at the furore surrounding SATC’s natural successor, Girls, to realise that SATC wouldn’t have been able to escape the internet scrutiny of the, er, internet, or feminist blogs imploding every time Carrie bought another pair of shoes to heal her heart. In fact, Carrie wouldn’t have been able to buy another pair of Manolos every month in these credit-crunch days (thanks bankers).
So, though our love is strong for the girls, we Couldn’t Help But Wonder (lol, sorry) which bits of Carrie and co wouldn’t work in today’s world…
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Slagging off scrunchies
Carrie would spontaneously combust at the sight of the army of girls in East London wearing £6 leather hair scrunchies from Urban Outfitters, considering that she commented on the '90s accessory that, 'No self-respecting New York City woman would be caught dead running around Manhattan in a scrunchie.'
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**Being just a little bit racist
Remember when Samantha tried to date a black man (radical!) and was told by his sister to back off (sample quote: ‘This is a black thing!’). It didn’t exactly dispel the myth that black women are feisty racists that won’t let anyone into their crew. If you think of how much criticism Lena Dunham got from her misrepresentation of ethnic minorities in *Girls *last series, imagine what SATC would have got for letting Samantha calling out her ‘big black ass’ in a club in downtown New York without getting her head kicked in.
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Using the word ‘frontier’ loosely
Lol at Carrie asking if ‘threesomes [are] the new sexual frontier?’ in season one. If you think that’s a frontier, I could blow your mind with the things I’ve seen.
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Being irresponsible about flashing
In ‘Games People Play’, Miranda does a peep show with her neighbour where she coquettishly flashes her tits to a complete stranger. Ah, the early noughties, back when you could just flash your tits at anyone without the fear of them then ending up on the internet.
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Not embracing technology
She takes pretty much ALL her calls on her house phone, even after season four (which was aired in 2002) when she finally gets a mobile. Yes, SATC was made before we got all technology obsessed, but Christ, Carrie needs a phone. And how ’bout a watch, while we’re at it, considering she’s always late for everything? If I was that bad at organising my life, my friends/editors/dates would tell me to eat shit and I’d deserve it.
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Making lesbians look like bitches
When Charlotte meets the Power Lesbian Elite, she is swiftly thrown out of the in-gang after they realise that she won’t eat from their lady tacos. Thus, perpetuating the myth that all lesbians are mean bitches who won’t let you sit with them.
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Mistaking reading for anorexia
'When I first moved to New York, I used to buy Vogue instead of dinner. I just felt it fed me more.' No babes, you were anorexic.
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Being religiously intolerant
Lol, religion. Whether it’s Samantha completely disregarding it when she tries to bang a celibate priest, Charlotte and her Jew-fetish (not just Harry Goldenblatt – remember when she sleeps with a Hasidic Jew in season one?), religion is pretty much included solely for the sake of lols.
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Puns
Here are some at a glance:
'I’m a trisexual, I’ll try anything once' – Samantha
And here’s one that is actually still pretty great. Carrie: 'If you’re tired you take a nap-a, you don’t move to Napa.'
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Terrible money management
There’s a quote at some point when Carrie says something like: 'Where’s all my money? I know that I made some', and then gets this moment of clarity when Miranda has to stoically inform her that she's spent it all on shoes and it’s like, babes, it’s a recession, if you tried to pull that shit in 2014 where we’re all doing food shopping at Aldi and learning about austerity, you’d get hit.
Which leads us quite nicely on to…
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Lying about pretty much every aspect of Carrie’s financial life
The biggest lie that underpins the whole series is that you can live on a writer’s wage, write one column a week and rent an apartment, live in couture and eat out all the time. This is bullshit.
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Trying to marry a banker
Even though Charlotte doesn’t explicitly utter the words, 'I want to marry a banker', it’s pretty much implied she’s all about finding a guy who has money, wears a suit to work and probably went to one of those universities where they make you spunk on a cracker for hazing purposes, or whatever. Anyway, she goes on loads of dates with investment bankers in the pre-Lehman Brothers episodes, back when bankers still had a kind-of OK reputation. Or, at least, it wasn’t widely accepted that they had next to no moral fibre.
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Terrible, terrible taglines
Like this: 'Are relationships the religions of the nineties?'
And this: 'Are all men freaks?'
And – oh Christ, this. 'Can we date outside our caste?'
Follow Kieran on Twitter @Kieran_yates
Credit: HBO
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.