Sex And The City is beloved for many reasons – the fashion, the friendships and yes, the f**king. Carrie Bradshaw and her pals’ open talk about sex was what made the show as legendary as it remains today, from Rabbit vibrator obsessions to sex swing mishaps. And yet, with the return of And Just Like That, we can’t help but wonder – when did Carrie become such a prude?
The second episode of the new season saw her tasked with reading – and later writing – an advert for her Sex and the City podcast centred around vaginal wellness. After not being able to make it through the initial read-through, and completely baulking at the hashtag #VagInTheCity, Carrie makes it clear she doesn’t want to talk about vaginas on her podcast.
Sure, we know that Sarah Jessica Parker has clauses in her contract that rules out nudity for her sex scenes, but there's no reason that her character can't talk about female anatomy. Especially as the discussions around funky tasting spunk, penis sizes, anal sex (to name a few) is what was so revolutionary about Sex and the City in the first place.
While the team behind And Just Like That has worked hard to shine a light on blind spots in terms of progressiveness and members of the LGBTQIA+ community, it feels odd that Carrie is being written as less sexually open than in the original series.
Highlights of Carrie’s best sexual chat from the OG series and the movies include her reference to Big ‘colouring outside the lines’, not to mention her hot take on the 69: ‘It's my belief that the last time anyone actually enjoyed the 69 position was in 1969.’
She also has some pretty great advice for Charlotte when her vagina is ‘depressed’ – both Carrie and Miranda suggest interrogating any feelings that her vagina might be ugly, causing Charlotte to take a closer look with a mirror and really embrace the beauty down below. Talk about being ahead of the body positivity movement.
Carrie also has no problems being open with her own vagina outside of a sexual situation when her diaphragm gets stuck, and she enlists Samantha to pull it out, ruining a perfectly good manicure in the process.
Let us not forget her legendary quote about a special part of a male’s anatomy, their testicles: ‘Balls are to men what purses are to women. It's just a little bag, but we'd feel naked in public without it.’
As a writer, Carrie has every right to query a ‘corny’ podcast advert script about vaginal wellness. With all the stigma around sex and the female body, talking about it right is important. But what seems completely out of character – is the refusal to talk about it at all. It starts to unravel all the good that Sex and the City did, and it’s just way less fun.
Come on Carrie, bring back the sexually liberated vibes. The world needs them.