Sex? In My City?
Carrie’s inner-city brownstone becomes a two-room inner west studio, and her rent increases so rapidly she must sell out to Newscorp to keep up
Image: HBO
After many months of experimentation, I have discovered that Sex and the City (SatC) is best consumed late at night after either an unbearably long shift at one’s hospitality job or two generous pours of red wine over dinner with friends. I submit to this ritual at least three times a week, carefully propping my 13-inch laptop on the edge of my bed in pitch-black darkness. As the gentle HBO whoosh sounds, I am instantly transported to the New York City of 1998. And yet the countless half-hours I have spent with Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha are as much about their escapades as they are about mine — my bedroom, my body, and my boyfriends.
I found SatC at a time of heartache and transition, at the end of my first relationship. The love I had lost, that I could no longer keep safe but still wanted so desperately to hold, was channelled into on-screen romances with Mr Big, Aidan, Steve, and Trey. I assessed how I would react to a partner falling asleep during sex, if I could forgive infidelity, and what I would do if I saw my ex’s wedding photos in a Vogue editorial. I saw my frustrations towards men represented without overshadowing the benedictions of female friendship and I tested relationships I’d never had. Despite the writers’ attempts to convince me otherwise, I learned that the life of career success and designer clothes I want is not synonymous with the loneliness into which I am terrified of falling.
But perhaps this is where SatC most ardently reveals that it is a product of its time and place. I may be constantly reminded of my Carrie-Charlotte hybridity, now enhanced by the skill of chatting up bartenders and handling guys with funky spunk. Yet the simple fact remains that these characters will never know what it means to live and love in 21st century Sydney. Within these contested spaces, we may freeze-frame and pin-drop new meanings.
It is unsurprising that SatC’s timelessness is undermined by its outdatedness. The pilot episode opened with Carrie’s friend making ‘art’ from non-consensual sex tapes. Samantha’s respective African-American and lesbian love interests were consistently fetishised and criticised by the other women. On the whole, slurs like “tranny” and “Gaytown” were dropped so frequently that Sarah Jessica Parker apologised for “failing the LGBTQ+ community.” These examples hint at the white, heteronormative, and male gaze that allowed Carrie to attack Big’s fiancée and Miranda to degrade ‘sexed-up’ women in LA.
But time has been distorted on a far more personal level. Watching six seasons in quick succession at my desk, dinner table, and damask armchair disrupted SatC’s pacing and impact. As well as being displaced by 30 years and 30,000 kilometres, I feel disconnected from the four protagonists because I lack their age and assurance. For everything Candace Bushnell has taught me, the gaps she left behind provide new opportunities for reimagined vignettes of a modern Australian SatC.
The four women are as much New York as New York is them. Carrie’s Manhattan, coloured by mild neurosis and irreverent style, brings the urban landscape to life. Of course, the American and Australian east coasts share spectacular harbour views and an affinity for liberal feminism. But if New York is only defined by its concrete canopies and cosmopolitan cribs, then Sydney’s coolness is no different from the Hamptons’ relaxed elegance or the sunny shores of California.
The real difference lies in the romances Sydney and New York produce — and the types of lovers they are. With a change in host city comes a host of plot changes: Carrie’s inner-city brownstone becomes a two-room inner west studio, her rent increases so rapidly she must sell out to Newscorp to keep up, and she never meets Big because the arts do not mix with STEM. Miranda might be taken out to a pub, but she quickly learns that two dates do not a boyfriend make. Charlotte’s dreams of a French-minimalist holiday home in Byron Bay are rattled by the trials of a lacking ‘pick-up culture’, and even Samantha may be shocked to hear otherwise tabooed language like “cunt” thrown around the bedroom as casually as a sex toy.
Like Chanel handbags and Manolo strappy sandals, work and play also mix differently on Sydneysiders. I have not believed in saviour by male lovers, Anglo family traditions, and nuclear households since I lost my religion at age 12. The average Australian woman — who will only have one child, who is more likely than ever to never marry, and who enjoys a long history of contraceptive freedom — has certainly pushed the boundaries laid by SatC’s protagonists. Despite all my Sunday morning brunches and midnight taxis, my cultural core remains different. Out of New York in 1998 and Sydney in 2022, I know which city I’d rather have sex in.