Are We All Becoming Charlotte?
I have this stunning friend with silky blonde hair, emerald eyes, and, what is conventionally considered by society, quite a serious degree. She is twenty-three. She could twist any boy she wanted around her ring finger, yet she never chose to do so. She loves existential witty conversations from timeless movies so much to the point where you weren’t sure if her character was shaped by them or if she was the inspiration for those characters. She was one of those people with whom you’d be jealous of their alone time because you want to know what more they are adding to their brain. You would wish you were a bobby pin in their bedroom just watching what they’re feeding their mind with. She was the first one of the friend group brave enough to start going out all alone when she had to buy some apples from the market. Unapologetically individualistic, she is now anxious over when she is going to get the ring.
Kristin Davis in "Sex and the City" / Getty Images
Perhaps you could call her a Carrie due to the strong inadvertent main character aura. Her brains, strongly opinionated tongue, and stubborn will, remind you of Miranda. You could even call her Samantha with all her connections and self-assurance. But you could never call her a Charlotte.
Until the day she called me with a dismal voice and the story of the latest outtake from her love life. That high-pitched confident voice was different now, suffused with anxiety. She was now rather subdued, still chased by dozens but where was the one? Suddenly, that romanticized individualistic walking protagonist started showing her cracks on the surface, showing a true Charlotte - one that hoped for love and was dreaming of it more than anything.
I still couldn’t comprehend how a woman at that age can have such worries about marriage. Perhaps the context of our society made me biased. In today’s world, expressing traditional femininity comes with its stereotypes and having love as your highest priority is controversial. Not to take away from all the feministically imposed narratives on self-focus that finally make it fair in comparison to the male way of life. All the girl bosses, that’s genuinely cool. What stopped being cool, though, is personas like Charlotte.
While today we are slowly getting back on the celibacy wave, in the 90s anything outside of that was still taboo. "Sex and the City" brought a kind of its own sexual revolution as the first show portraying female experiences so openly without a drop of judgment. Perhaps, this is exactly what made Charlotte so unlikable. It is not as if she isn’t relatable. People just didn’t want to relate to her. With the freedom of owning yourself and your sexual experiences, people preferred hopping on the new wave of the rite of sexual conversations over brunch. And these stories wouldn’t just appear unless you were open to experiencing them.
Was it my dream-like relationship, my honest annoyance with meaningless encounters, or my age being stereotypically fit for looking out for a ring, that finally helped me understand that friend of mine? I was no longer neglecting Charlotte as a character. Just like her, I was pouring my heart into my work, giving honest love advice to my disoriented friends that they didn’t want to hear, and fighting for that cosmic endless love. And I am not even ashamed to admit it - I am starting to get excited over the thought of being a wife.
Suddenly, everyone around me was falling for Charlotte. Relatable and real, it’s like there comes a point where we are tired of pretending like she isn’t just like us. A point where people finally get to the right glasses that help them look beyond the surface of her character as a WASP, modest, traditional, and prejudiced. Instead, they start seeing her for who she is - rational, goal-oriented, navigating life even beyond her boundaries, yet always staying true to herself.
Is Charlotte really that unrelatable, or do we just unlock her later in life? When you mature your standards and no longer opt for the boy who cancels just when you’ve finished with your makeup. When you desire to be swept off your feet for more than three nights. We are not romanticizing male gazing. Nor are we judging your relationship choices. Yet, we have to admit, Charlotte York is a model for many women, and a reminder that there is nothing bolder than wanting a serious partner and prioritizing finding it - even in your early twenties.
My friend and I are far from talking about gowns, yet I do hear her better when she is expressing concern over finding the right one soon. It’s not like we are glancing back reminiscing about the traditional female role. We are simply tired of overglorifying our sexual freedom and the honest loneliness it can bring sometimes. No wonder we started relating to Charlotte - she is the best example from the series that a happy ending exists.
