Hey, guys. of my favorite subjects
to ramble about, which are Sex and the City and
the negative impact it's had on our culture and finances. And I should be clear that
with all things pop culture guilty pleasures, I do believe
that you can enjoy these things in a thoughtful way. I have seen every episode
of Sex and the City at least four times, probably more
than that if I'm being honest. And although it
didn't directly impact why I wanted to personally
move to New York, in fact, I never did. I moved to New York
for a job by chance. I am cognizant of
the fact that it's infiltrated how I think about
so many things, particularly because I watched
that show at an age where, quite frankly I
was probably a little too young to have been
watching it, but also I was forming my ideas about
relationships, love, sex, money, culture. And looking back, it's
sometimes hard to disentangle what are thoughts I arrived
at independently on my own and what were things that
were shaped by the culture I was consuming, not the least of
which Carrie Bradshaw and Co. With news of the HBO
Max reboot and photos of shooting basically
all over the internet, I personally will
not be tuning in because it makes my heart
hurt, but you do you. Particularly with
Kim Cattrall who had the mental and
emotional wherewithal to say no, thank you, that
chapter of my life is closed. I'm not going to put on
another fluorescent blazer and talk about how
much I love blowjobs at this time in my life. Sex and the City is
back in the zeitgeist. Anyone who is
familiar with the show knows that there are many
overarching storylines and plot points that have
aged like milk over the years. I'm thinking about some
of Samantha's escapades dating men of color or the
show's portrayal of trans sex workers when Samantha
moved downtown to the meatpacking district. Or the show's treatment
of Samantha's brief quote, "lesbian interlude." Now that I'm thinking
of it basically all of these really, really
painful romantic storylines had to do with Samantha,
those scriptwriters really did Kim Cattrall dirty. But suffice it to say yes, a lot
of the sex in Sex and the City was quite problematic
looking back. And I'm sure at the time not
even the most progressive thing on television. But one theme that the show
gives to us over and over, which underpins and underscores
essentially everything else going on in the show. And leads to a number of
really real problems that are basically hand
waved away in a way that teaches women that they
shouldn't be taken seriously, is the show's
depiction of finances. Here are a few of the
ways that Sex and the City just torpedoed women's
relationship to money. Number 1, and this
one hurts as someone who long made her career
as a freelance writer, unrealistic expectations
about what one can expect to earn in a creative field. It is obviously no
secret at this point that the lifestyle that
Carrie Bradshaw was living spending tens of thousands
of dollars on shoes, having a gorgeous New
York City apartment, constantly sporting
designer dresses and spending essentially
every single night at expensive restaurants,
is not something that someone should
ever reasonably expect to have on a freelance
columnist salary. Particularly when the
US Department of Labor reported that in
1998 the year Sex and the City's first
season, premiered, female writers were earning
an average of $591 per week. Without taxes taken out
that is an annual salary in the low 30,000. And while salaries do and did
vary depending on publication, Carrie was pretty notable for
writing for a rather low tier New York City newspaper
and having literally only one writing gig until her books
came along in later seasons. It's particularly shocking
that a freelance writer-- Mona is here to join
in the complaining. It's also her favorite activity. And it's particularly baffling
that a freelance writer who at the time could not
have been earning anything more than a few hundred
dollars per column, would choose to have literally
only one source of income until her books in the
latter half of the series. For a show that was ostensibly
about dating and sex, it's pretty significant that
the unspoken fifth character in the show while often referred
to as being New York City was clearly money. And Carrie's
relationship to money, both the extent to which
she didn't feel compelled to earn it and the
extent to which she felt empowered spending it
in irresponsible ways, as she put it in one memorable
line, I like my money right where I can see
it, hanging in my closet. It's pretty shocking that
this was not considered more of a hindrance to the plot. Because even with the lower
cost of living at that time, a salary anywhere
in the 30s was not going to pay Carrie's
bills in New York City, let alone leave enough cash for
her fashion and food budget. In fact, it's the
very discrepancy between salary
and lifestyle that perpetuates most
of the money issues that actually take place on the
show and that we'll talk about. So let's dive into a day in
the life of Carrie Bradshaw. Because an article we
published back in 2016, examined some of
Carrie's monthly expenses based on the cost
of living that year. And for this exercise, her
estimated annual salary was $38,000. On any given month, she
grabbed brunch with the girls every weekend to discuss their
hottest dates, about $240. She had a daily smoking
habit for the first half of the season, $360. A couple of pairs of new shoes
would run her about $1,800. A stroll through Central Park
with Miranda for a therapy session did indeed
cost her zero dollars, but we'll pin that more to
Miranda's savvy than hers. Taking cabs all
around NYC probably set her back about 840,
and meeting Stanford for happy hour,
four cosmopolitans on a regular basis probably
ran her about $360. Just these
nonessential expenses, which don't count the rest of
her fashion or other spending habits and which were
seen consistently as part of Carrie's regimen
come to an astounding $3,600 per month. On a columnist salary,
this is essentially a recipe for crippling credit
card debt, which the show does somewhat address later. And lastly on this
point, although it is most easy and common to
refer to the discrepancy between what Carrie was earning
and what she was spending, it's also notable that
Charlotte was living just as luxurious a life on a
downtown gallery curators salary which would have been
nowhere near enough to finance the Upper East Side condo she
lived in alone at the beginning of the series. But while the unexplored
fifth character of finances was often the source
of just an extremely luxurious and
aspirational lifestyle, the show did at least gesture
in occasional episodes towards the realities that this
kind of financial lifestyle would probably lead to. However for the most
part, these realities were pretty much unexplored. And one of the strangest
facets of the show was the extent to which
the financial realities of living in a big
city were completely ignored by essentially
all parties, which brings us to our second point. It is not any sort
of mystery or news that pop culture
has long associated thriving in our young adulthood
with being in a big city. That could be New York,
like on sex in the city or another HBO
problematic fave, Girls. Or it could be dwelling in
downtown LA, like in New Girl. Essentially, we have
come to complete coming of age as
an adult with being in a bustling urban jungle. But while other
New York City best shows such as Gossip Girl take
extreme pains to demonstrate the extent to which that
glamorous New York lifestyle is in practice quite expensive
and necessitates an essentially generations of inherited wealth
in order to easily finance that, Sex and the City is
pretty notable for completely brushing off what any of these
big city realities might cost. For example, we
learn the Kerry is paying $700 for a
one bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side. She must have found a steal,
considering that the New York Times released a piece in 1994,
four years before the premiere, listing the average rent
for a one bedroom apartment to be about $1,550. Even at that time,
it is highly unlikely that even a studio
apartment would be available for that price
considering that, again at the time the
Upper East side was one of the most in demand
neighborhoods, not as much anymore. And it's not just the cost of
living for their actual living situations, it's the things
that their apartments are filled with such
as takeout boxes, because for several
of the cast members-- in fact now that
I'm thinking of it, I think all of the cast members
except occasionally Charlotte, the fact that these
women didn't cook was considered a key
part of their characters. I think at the
time in the '90s it was a very strange second
wave, cresting to third wave feminism moment, where
it was considered like an emboldened empowered
chic feminist thing for a woman to literally not know
how to boil an egg. Obviously, today in an era of
lifestyle bloggers and food influencers that's
probably not considered the height of aspirational. But at the time it
was a plot point that Carrie used
her oven for storage or that Samantha had
no food in her kitchen or that Miranda's Chinese
restaurant downstairs had her order memorized by heart
just by the sound of her voice. Anyone who follows TFD
knows that of course, this is one of the easiest and
most common ways to simply hemorrhage money. But it's worth
exploring in depth what that actually probably
looked like on any given month. Assuming Miranda
orders her to-go meal, which is chicken and broccoli
with brown sauce, brown rice and cold noodles for those
keeping track at home, four nights per week. She is already dishing out
an obscene amount of money due to the delivery fees alone. It's always hard to chicken or
egg these cultural phenomena, especially as they
pertain to spending. And yes, it's true that in
2021 with our smartphones, we can basically access delivery
meals at any time of day or night, and that
contributes heavily to the extent to
which millennials are coming to rely on
that food as a huge staple part of their diets. But it is undeniable that
shows like Sex and the City, specifically and
in a way targeted to women and their sense of
empowerment, framed not cooking and ordering food
from I guess what today would be
highly underpaid gig workers as a kind of
lifestyle aspiration. I have had a thought,
especially in my 20s when I was ordering
takeout and having a martini or a glass
of wine in my home with a girlfriend of wow this is
such a Sex and the City moment. And I know that I am not
alone in thinking that. Looking back, it's worth
unpacking what that actually tells us, not just
about ourselves but about what we think
our spending decisions mean about us. And another incredibly
wasteful spending habit that the show went out
of its way to normalize and never acknowledge
the cost of was the endless extent to
which these women took cabs. Looking back, it's pretty
insane that in a six year run of a show set
primarily in Manhattan and occasionally
in Brooklyn, you see a character on the
subway like once or twice. I feel like I can remember once
when Carrie was running out of the subway to
the stock market, but only because the cab
was stuck in traffic. And I think that might be it. And that is insane. I have lived in New
York for almost a decade and not only is taking a
cab prohibitively expensive and we'll talk about that
shortly, it is also often the most inconvenient way to
get to wherever you're going. But the show did normalize,
and in some ways icona size the idea of an empowered
woman in her beautiful outfit and slick stilettos holding
her hand out to hail a cab. But what did that
cost in practice? Currently, New York City's
standard taxi fare is a $2.50 initial charge and then an
added $0.50 for every 1/2 mile. Plus, a million
other surcharges. Leading easily to 100, if not
sometimes in the four figures worth of cab rides
over the course of the month for these
ladies if they're not taking other modes of transportation. Whereas standard buses and
subway rides in the city are priced at 275
a ride, which means that taking public transit
to your final destination cost as much in the
initial charge of a taxi before any mileage is
even taken into account. So whether you're
living in 1998 or 2021, it is simply not worth it. Number 3 is probably
my personal favorite because it's so depressing. There's something so
interesting about the way Sex and the City juxtaposed
the idea of being an empowered single
woman while depending on a man for financial
or emotional security as being something, yes, I would
say borderline aspirational. There are many story arcs in the
show in which a man literally comes into deus ex mchin,
or one of the women's financial problems. And although some of the women
did technically in the show single when you factor
the movies into account, although I like to not because I
just don't consider them canon. Either way, for most of them
the end goal at some point was landing a rich and
well-connected man. I guess Steve would be
the exception to this, but I think it's worth
exploring perhaps in a separate video the
way that Miranda always sort of undermined
the otherwise very prevalent tropes of the show. But it's high time if we're
talking about the role that men play in
these women's lives to come to the
character of Charlotte, everyone's problematic fave. Yes, there are
several storylines on the show that do not
stand the test of time and are very yikes to
watch in retrospect. But Charlotte's
overall arc on the show in which her quest
for love was always underpinned by the
notion that it was also-- Don't let us
interrupt you, Mona. Her overall story arc, which
was searching for true love in a way that was underpinned
by the not even subtle notion that her true love was going
to be obscenely wealthy, is one of the most
embarrassing looking back. And it's worth considering what
her framing in the show, which was ultimately a
positive one taught us about what we should be
looking for in our own lives. Throughout the show, we
see her on a frankly a fervent and somewhat exhausting
search for her true love. She is the kind of girl to
think after a single date that she's found the
man she's going to marry and basically approaches
the prospect of dating the way one would approach
looking for a new job. When she finally finds the
man who is perfect on paper, Trey MacDougal, who
I honestly feel like got a bad shake in that show. Like he didn't want kids, he
didn't want that lifestyle. I feel like he was honest. I don't know. I feel like we really
judge Trey a little too harshly looking
back, but I digress. She finds Trey the
perfect man and is in such a rush to marry him
and his fabulous classic sex on the Upper East Side
that she doesn't even sleep with him before marrying
him, which fans of the show will led to all
kinds of problems. It became clear pretty
early on that they just weren't compatible and
a lot of very real ways, but it took her a long time
to finally end that marriage. And again, mostly because he
was otherwise perfect on paper. And when we see the kinds
of decisions that she makes in that relationship,
for example, quitting her job as a gallery curator
well before she was even pregnant, let alone had
a child to take care of, we see the extent to
which the show totally normalized the idea of making
a man your financial plan. It's also important
to note that even within the context
of the show, it's not exactly clear that this
is something, i.e leaving her job well before
she even has a child, but Charlotte
wanted at the time. And this very problematic
way of thinking can be summed up by something
Charlotte says in the very first episode of the show. Quote, most men are threatened
by successful women. If you want to get
these guys, you have to keep your mouth
shut and play by the rules. I think in the
context of the show we're supposed to believe that
this was like a naive and very childlike way of her
initially approaching dating that changed over the years. But when you look at
the way that Charlotte ended up and moved
throughout her two marriages, you see that she basically
kind of kept the same approach throughout. And yes, her marriage to
Trey did eventually dissolve, but he left her an extremely
expensive apartment as well as a ring worth
tens of thousands of dollars and all kinds of
other assets in order to help her stay on her feet. So I guess the lesson
we're supposed to draw is women watching that show is
even if you marry a man you're totally incompatible
with and give up any semblance of an
independent life to please him and it still doesn't
work out, you can at least get everything you
want in the divorce settlement. But Carrie on the
other hand, has a different and honestly chaotic
relationship to men and money. Obviously, throughout the show
one of her biggest story arcs is that money is just not
something she even remotely knows how to deal with. And various rash relationship
decisions throughout the show leave her basically on
the brink of homelessness at certain points. For example, when she lets her
bearly woodworking and honestly kind of pathetic boyfriend,
Aiden by her apartment as well as the one next door for
both of them to live in, and I assume from the context
of the show she's not even on the title. They very shortly break up
afterwards because they never should have gotten back
together and she was not interested in being
with him long term, and she has essentially
no way of buying back her part of the apartment. This is the borderline
homeless part. We also find out
in this storyline that she has spent tens of
thousands of dollars on shoes, has essentially nothing
in her checking account and doesn't even
know the first thing about how to get a mortgage. She initially approaches
another ex-boyfriend to just write her a check for
the entire down payment, which is beyond a psychotic storyline. But then eventually
her deus ex machina in this particular situation is
the aforementioned Charlotte. And I must stress the extent
to which this storyline is probably one of the most
bananas and offensive when it comes to finances in
all of the show's history. She essentially
approaches Charlotte, who has no financial
problems because of her lucrative recent divorce
and corners her into giving her the money for the down payment. Initially Charlotte is
very rightfully resistant and has a bit of a
standoff in her apartment where she tells Carrie your
financial irresponsibility is not my problem. But eventually she
caves and gives Carrie her Tiffany engagement ring
for Carrie to pawn and pay for her down payment. And this is framed
in the context of the show like Charlotte
doing the right thing and being a good friend
rather than perpetuating an enabling Carrie's serious
financial and emotional problems. But when you take the
lens out a tiny bit further and realize that the
only reason Charlotte was even in a position to give
that kind of money despite being someone who
was completely functionally unemployed at the time was
because of another rich man leaving her money. You start to wonder if any of
them are really in a position to be getting on their
high horse about finances. Suffice to say, although it
was not even really addressed during the show if you are ever
considering lending a friend or family member
this kind of money, this is something that should
be quite structured and well planned out. We actually did in 2015. An article on TFE laying
out the five commandments of lending money
between loved ones that would be good to follow. It's unclear whether
or not Carrie ever paid Charlotte back. I think she probably did with
all the money she ended up earning from her books
and her Vogue column. But suffice to say, the
way this was gone about was just a recipe for disaster. And taught women ultimately the
lesson that we should be just giving our friends
money if they need it, no matter what led them
to finding themselves in tough financial
circumstances. Now the next one is
quite frustrating to me as someone who does a lot
of work and helping people create better relationships
with the use of credit cards. Because Sex and
the City normalized and even to an extent
idealized an extremely unhealthy relationship
to credit card use. I will be the first to say
that using credit cards responsibly can be a great part
of any healthy financial plan. I do it myself. It's how I pay for a lot of
my airline tickets and hotel stays. Credit card turning can be
an absolutely amazing thing to do when you master it. But the most important rule of
it is you never put a single dollar on your credit card that
you cannot afford to pay off in full before the end of the
period so that you don't accrue a dollar of interest. Suffice to say, that is
not how Sex and the City portrayed credit card use. Now we've definitely
been hardest on Carrie in this video and
not without reason. She is after all the protagonist
main character and narrator of the show. And also the one through whom
a lot of these decisions, which are being framed as
aspirational, are portrayed. And perhaps the most
dangerous lesson that this show taught to women
through Carrie's on behavior was reckless use
of credit cards. When Carrie goes to
the bank to try and get a loan for her
apartment that survey says she was in a bind to buy
because of a bad relationship choice, she is told
that she is, quote, an undesirable candidate. With just $700 in her checking
account a $900 in savings, she decides that a
change is needed. So she does take the bus
home for the first time ever. I have to stand corrected guys. I thought we only saw these
ladies on public transport once, it appears that
Carrie took it twice. We stand a budget
friendly queen. So with this insanely low and
dangerous amount, don't even think about an
emergency fund, how does Carrie fund this
lavish lifestyle? Well, she admits
in that very scene that her funds are low
because she recently paid off her credit card. That upwards of $40,000 she
claims to have spent on shoes was almost certainly entirely
spent via credit cards. And when we consider that
Carrie's income must have been negligible and she had almost
literally no money in her bank account at any given
time, it is undeniable that a huge part of how she
was funding this lifestyle was in carrying a credit card
balance month over month. She does mention credit card
debt a few times on the show, but it's important to underscore
the extent to which that show just normalized the idea
of whipping out your Amex and buying whatever
your heart desires. There's even a scene
in the earlier episodes where a salesperson
in a store physically cuts her credit card in half at
the request of her credit card company because she was
so far over her limit. How does the show
deal with this? Well, by having another
rich frivolous woman who is having her life
floated by a man, historians might remember,
Amelita, coming over to her and simply handing her credit
card over to pay for the shoes. Real academics on
the matter will remember that later
in the episode Carrie spends a night with a
handsome French architect who leaves her $1,000
on the nightstand because he thought
she was an escort and she uses the money
to I assume pay back that overdue credit card bill. The lessons this show was giving
us, chef's kiss, 10 out of 10, no notes. And when we cut to
2021 and our obsession with fast fashion
halls and designer bags being so popular that people
literally resell those shopping bags on eBay, we
understand the extent to which shows like Sex and
the City normalized shopping for luxury items
and fashion goods well beyond your means to pay
for them as just something a chic city woman does. Lastly and perhaps
most pervasively, we have the extent to which the
show provided free advertising for completely financially
unattainable brands. As I mentioned earlier, chicken
and egging various cultural norms around money
can be very difficult. And it's not always
easy to parse out what was Sex and the City versus
other cultural touchstones. But when it comes specifically
to the normalization of aspiring to and owning
designer goods that are out of the budget of the vast
majority of Americans, Sex and the City has got
to be the biggest culprit. Last year here on TFD,
we published a video in collaboration
with Lindsay Ellis around why Carrie Bradshaw
was the original influencer. Because before places
like Instagram or TikTok, consuming brands
and finding them aspirational through
their use by others was primarily the domain
of magazines and shows like Sex and the City where
Carrie was the ultimate avatar for these designer goods. I highly encourage you
to watch this video, link in the description. But when we talk about
product placement, we often have a tendency to
think of things like sitcoms where a specific brand of cereal
is very conspicuously placed on the breakfast table. But with Sex and
the City, such heavy handed product placement
was unnecessary because her obsession
with naming and sporting designer goods was such an
integral part of her character. Her love of designer brands
landed her jobs at places like Vogue led to a book deal
filled her walk in closet and generally defined
her as a character. To even have an ounce
of Carrie's glamor or Samantha Miranda and
Charllotte for that matter, you will need to look glamorous. So if you're a fan watching
the show in the late 90s to early 2000s, you
might be tempted to pull out your credit
card and treat yourself to a $4,000 Birkin. The bag that for those
keeping score at home, Samantha once tried to
pry away from her client Lucy Liu after discovering that
it had a five year wait list. And in that episode,
she says it best aka worst, buying a bag like
this isn't even for its style. Quote, it's what
carrying it means. It means that you've made it. And all six seasons are
Chock full of luxury brands from Tiffany's to Versace
to Jimmy Choo to Gucci. And the brand call
outs were so ubiquitous that according to Forbes,
Manolo Blahnik, who had long been in the low shoe
business became essentially an overnight household
name after Carrie gushed over a pair
of Blahnik stilettos. Paula Correri, an editor at Tobe
Report, a retail consultancy, admitted that the
brand's success skyrocketed due to the show. Her direct quote was
that prices keep rising but, quote, "women
will starve themselves to score a pair of his shoes." Yikes. Ultimately, the
idea that women are going to be tempted into buying
incredibly expensive fashion and accessories in order to
project a lifestyle that they may not be able to
afford didn't start and won't end with
Sex and the City. But the extent to
which Sex and the City made it ubiquitous and
insinuated that this would be possible on a low income
through the irresponsible use of credit cards, has
probably done more damage to women's relationships
with their own finances than basically any other
pop culture touchstone. Ultimately like any
other problematic media, we can consume it and enjoy it. But the more we can do
so with a critical eye, the more we can be sure not
to be subtly indoctrinated by the very pernicious
messages that this media And don't forget to hit
the Subscribe button and to come back every
Monday, Tuesday and Thursday for new and awesome videos. Goodbye.
