Carrie Bradshaw. Arguably the main character in Sex and The City: witty, smart, sexy, and undeniably her. Running through the streets of 90s Manhattan in Manolo Blahniks led to her footprints inevitably being discovered by 2025's young adults. Discovered, and ultimately cut and copied endlessly. As of August 2025, I never want to see another "pinnable" photo of Carrie Bradshaw wearing vintage Dior followed by a 20-something-year-old replicating the outfit with Princess Polly. I am in Hell.
What drew our generation to Sex and the City? Was it simply the fact that it had more than eight episodes in a season? Was it the egregious amount of spliced audios from the show that reigned TikTok's for-you page? I'm starting to believe it's the generation's early signs of psychosis.
The most horrific thing I can recall from walking my intermediate school's halls is related to this, surprisingly. In the mandatory fifth grade past-present-future project, the amount of future dreams being famous or youtuber was absurd even for my ten-year-old, LDShadowlady-obsessed mind. Was the future bright? Was everyone from this small town in Alabama going to become mega-rich youtubers with a giant camera in people's faces?
Ten-year-old me was a prophet. And twenty(ish)-year-old-me is now a counselor:
You are not Carrie Bradshaw, You are just addicted to your phone.
The internet-wide infatuation with Carrie Bradshaw and her lifestyle can ultimately be boiled down to this: people crave authenticity. Col authenticity. They don't simply just want to be cool, they want to be noticed as cool. But what prompts me to roll my eyes at the "authentic-fishing" posts is the mere fact that everyone is so boring. Everyone has morphed Carrie's style- fashion and writing-into a formulaic tool to attempt virality. When watching certain videos, it ultimately feels as if the video I am watching is somehow ballooning into this giant bubble of nothingness because of this very calculated attempt at being "real". I often find myself staring into the lifeless eyes of these creators and wonder if they also understand how ultimately depressing this reality is.
The irony of me writing a blog post about this is not lost on me, btw. This is not me banishing the mere idea of dressing eccentrically and writing prophetically from all of you. Moreso, this is an attempt to understand why Carrie Bradshaw.
-A.K.
Edit: If you can't tell this was a scrapped newspaper piece.
