Your girl is lovely, Hubbell.

a SATC rewatch, this time with a fully developed frontal lobe

suggested listening pairing:

I watched Sex and the City for the first time as a teenager - I couldn’t tell you the exact age, and it wasn’t all in a consecutive binge-watched row, but those four, fashionable, slightly unhinged women were my first foray into HBO programming.

At the time, I was romanticizing the idea of attending NYU and spending all of my money on shoes and cosmopolitans… Which dream has honestly only slightly shifted now that I have two diplomas on my wall.

Now, at the big age of 30, it feels next to impossible that I’ve been watching (and rewatching) this dang show for half of my life. HALF OF IT!

I’ve done casual rewatches throughout the years - I guess you could say it’s a bit of what the kids are calling a “comfort show” for me. But the biggest and most pivotal rewatches are ones I’ve intentionally done during some of the biggest and most pivotal seasons of my life.

Like the time I bought all 6 seasons on DVD at Target and watched beginning to end in my college dorm at 18. Or when I did it again at 21, somewhere in the midst of heartbreak, graduating college, and trying to decide where I was going to live (and what I was going to do) when it was time to join “the real world.” Or again at 25, living in an apartment of my own in a new, big city, and an incredibly freshly developed frontal lobe I wasn’t quite sure what to do with just yet.

Millennials love to joke about pop culture that “raised us” but in so many ways, those four women really have raised me. At the very least, they’ve solidified life lessons and served as a measuring stick against which I can track my growth as a woman, and how my life experiences shaped me, in the way that I’ve reacted to watching their storylines unfold on screen, time and again.

All of that to say, I’ve been doing a regularly scheduled rewatch to celebrate this new decade. It started as a normal “milestone” rewatch, but it didn’t take long for it to hit me I’m in (or at least close to) that same “age box” as Carrie, Miranda, and Charlotte… even if I still have some time to catch up to Samantha.

And I couldn’t help but wonder…

Just kidding, I didn’t wonder anything, but baby, I have thoughts.

First and foremost, I owe Miranda an apology. And a big one, at that. I spent so many years so unbelievably annoyed by her character. Looking back, and I’m a big enough person to admit this, it was all on me. My young, naive brain simply wasn’t prepared to comprehend what that flavor of good friend looks like.

I have some friends who remind me a bit of Miranda, and in hindsight, there were days I got irritated with them for the very same reasons Miranda grated on me… And the same kind of reasons that Carrie would get frustrated with her as well. Now that I’m old enough to (most days) know better, and even more so to appreciate better, I pray we all are lucky enough to have a Miranda.

Because you know what? It WAS insane for Carrie to stand Miranda up to hang out with Big that night they were supposed to be getting dinner. And did she have her fair share of “wtf” moments with Steve… and Carrie… and the other girls? Sure, but she was doing her best. Seeing her working to find her footing as an ambitious and successful career woman, while also playing the dating game and seeing her best friend be hurt over and over again by a complete shithead - well, that all just hits a little differently for me at 30 than it did at 18.

As for Charlotte and Samantha - I didn’t think I could love either of them more, in their own ways, than I did. But I could just kiss both of their foreheads for being so unapologetically themselves and different from each other, giving us the juxtaposition of two incredibly contrasting women, on wildly divergent paths, as a reminder that womanhood isn’t one-size-fits-all.

These two women, different as night and day, continually show up for each other and, in turn, show us what it means to be an intentional friend. I could talk for hours about the ways I see myself (and my friends) in each of these two, but they are the two characters in this show I’ve truly only learned to love more with each passing year. At thirty, I’d love to bring them off the screen and make them my friends in real life.

Now. I would say John James “Mr. Big” Preston will pay for his crimes, but I’ve seen the first season of Just Like That and I’m not entirely sure if I can say that anymore.

BUT WHAT I WILL SAY! Is that by 30 either you’ve dated a Mr. Big, or you’ve stood by your friend as she did. Hell, maybe both. Or multiple.

I used to be so firmly Team Big! and looking back I can’t decide if I want to laugh maniacally or throw up.

Yes, Carrie will pay for her crimes too (like the beret and McDonalds episode, or cheating on Aiden, or a whole laundry list of things that have left me steaming this time around), but she never deserved Mr. Big.

No woman who has been in a relationship with a narcissist, a man who feeds off playing with a woman’s most fragile emotions, deserves that. It’s so easy to ask “why did she keep going back!” and yes, it’s Hollywood and it was simply to fuel the fire of the plot line, but this feels like the perfect time to remind you that it’s not so easy to detach from that kind of personality, especially if it’s a big love like the one Carrie had for Big.

If you need a specific example of that that type of love, look no further than the season 2 finale “Ex and the City” (also the namesake of this post). The way Carrie crashes out - in the middle of a crowded restaurant - when Big tells her he and Natasha are engaged could have been like looking in a mirror for those of us who have been there.

With that said, there are a lot of things about Carrie that I didn’t hate - maybe even so far as to say I admired - at 18 and 21 and even at 25 to an extent, that have had me so wildly, (ir)rationally angry at 30. But I just don’t have enough time or energy to begin to list those and all the reasons why she pisses me off so often throughout these 6 seasons.

So, I’ll leave you with the scene that, quite literally, changed my brain chemistry the first time I saw it, and that has stopped me in my tracks every time I’ve watched it since.

In a moment of absolute brilliance in her insane actions surrounding her relationship with Big, also in that season 2 finale episode, she runs into him outside of The Plaza as he’s leaving his engagement party with Natasha. There’s a moment where maybe she will run from him, but instead we see them share a brief (but wholly incredible) conversation.

Earlier in the episode, the girls were discussing the final line of “The Way We Were” when Katie (Barbara Streisand) tells Hubbell (Robert Redford), “Your girl is lovely, Hubbell” and how he left her for a simpler woman because he couldn’t handle or appreciate Katie’s more intricate nature (or her curly hair).

So, when Carrie runs into Big, we get one of the absolute best scenes (at least in my mind) of the entire series:

“Your girl is lovely, Hubbell.”

“I don’t get it.”

“And you never did.”

She quickly loses her mind over the male species again, but there’s something so special about that one glimmering moment where Carrie realizes she wasn’t born for the purpose of being understood by this man, nor was she meant to shrink herself into a person he could love.

And I can say with full confidence that, until this time around, I really thought I understood what she says next… But I don’t think I ever really got it until now. That measuring stick of life experience and all, you know.

She says, “Maybe some women aren't meant to be tamed. Maybe they need to run free until they find someone just as wild to run with.”

Carrie may have some questionable things to answer for (especially as I’m now firmly Team Aiden forever), but I’ve been so thankful for those reminders in this season of life.

To be able to remember that it’s okay to say, “And you never did” and walk away. Just don’t take it from Carrie and turn back around 700 times or I’ll be ready to fist fight you, too.