When I first saw Sex and the City (SATC) in my early twenties, I was an Indian woman negotiating my way through a society that measured female worth by marriage proposals and family duty. As a single woman living in London, I remember waiting eagerly to watch every episode as it aired, awestruck by its bold and refreshing take on life through a female gaze.
Four New York women walked, worked, and wandered through life, speaking freely about ambition. They were not coy. They were not apologetic. They did not whisper but laughed, declared, narrated, and owned their desires. This was more than entertainment; it was a window into another possible way of being a woman.
Now, a quarter of a century later, I watched the end of And Just Like That (AJLT), where fashion becomes a new kind of semiotic rebellion — a lifelong dialogue between who we are and how we present ourselves.
Just like Carrie and her friends, I too am older and more seasoned, marked by both heartbreaks and triumphs. And it is striking how much this story still resonates — perhaps differently, but no less urgently. Why do SATC and its sequel feel so iconic, even groundbreaking? The answer lies not just in the clothes or cocktails, but in how the series reoriented the gaze.
Laura Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze (1975) showed how cinema often reduces women to objects of male desire. SATC was revolutionary because it flipped the gaze: women narrated, desired, and defined the terms of pleasure. Here, women were the narrators of desire. They spoke about men not as prizes or saviours but as episodes—sometimes delightful, sometimes disastrous—in an otherwise complex life. AJLT continued this subversion by showing older women—wrinkled, grieving, experimenting, sometimes fumbling—yet still at the centre of their own stories.
For an Indian viewer, this was doubly radical. Our pop culture—Bollywood, soaps, and serials—have rarely centred women’s friendships as the emotional anchor of life. Female bonds are usually secondary to family or romance. But Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte (and once, Samantha) made friendship itself the spine of the narrative.
Female friendships as the emotional spine
This idea that friendship is not a distraction from the ‘real’ story but the real story itself was revolutionary. SATC showed that the great love story of a woman’s life could be with her friends — an idea still rare in mainstream narratives.
Since then, other series have built on this foundation, becoming global hits for the same reason. Desperate Housewives captivated audiences by presenting not just suburban scandal but the solidarity and rivalry of women living side by side. Viewers tuned in week after week not only for the mysteries on Wisteria Lane but also because these women’s interactions—confidences, betrayals, and reconciliations—felt authentic and addictive.
A still from Emily in Paris (Image credit: IMDB)
Emily in Paris continues this thread in a different register: frothy, fashionable, and globalised. While Emily’s romances fuel gossip, her friendships with Mindy and Camille give the series heart. Similarly, Big Little Lies mesmerised audiences not just because of its star-studded cast but because it revealed how women, when pushed to extremes, shield each other against patriarchal violence.
Even Fleabag, though ostensibly a solo story, struck audiences precisely because of its raw portrayal of sisterhood. Fleabag and Claire’s jagged, tender bond became the series’ unexpected emotional anchor.
Why do these shows become hits? Because they tap into the recognition that women’s friendships are not decorative — they are essential, sustaining, and dramatic in their own right.
Fashion as self-expression, not ornament
Of course, SATC was as much about fashion as friendship. And fashion, in these shows, is never mere decoration. Roland Barthes, in Mythologies (1957), argued that clothing is a system of signs — a cultural code. Carrie’s tutu in the opening sequence, Miranda’s lawyerly suits, Charlotte’s prim dresses, and Samantha’s bold colours were not just wardrobe choices but manifestos. They spoke of risk, rebellion, and aspiration.
Now, in AJLT, fashion becomes a new kind of rebellion: bold colours on ageing bodies, grey hair undyed, flats embraced alongside heels. It reminds us that style is not youth’s monopoly but a lifelong dialogue between who we are and how we present ourselves.
But perhaps what strikes me most is how the show treats time itself. Cultural memory studies (such as Jan Assmann, 2011) argue that media shape how we remember our own lives. Watching AJLT is not just about Carrie’s journey; it’s about ours — ageing alongside them, carrying nostalgia into the present.
A long-running series with central characters and their arcs mostly unchanged makes us reflect on our own lives — how they have changed or remain the same. It is not just about Carrie’s life; it is about me. It is about all of us who once watched them navigate dating apps and break-ups when we too, were single and searching, and who now watch them deal with menopause, adult children, and career shifts as we confront midlife’s reinventions.
Ageing women are rarely shown in popular culture with such glamour and depth. Especially in India, once a woman crosses fifty, she is often relegated to secondary roles — the mother, the aunt, the background figure. Here, she remains the protagonist, still capable of desire, reinvention, mistakes, and sparkle.
Why it remains legendary
Yes, there are flaws. The privilege and whiteness of SATC were glaring; AJLT’s diversity can feel tokenistic. Critics argue that post-feminism, as Angela McRobbie describes it, turns liberation into consumerism — your power measured by the height of your heels or the price of your handbag.
Yet even with these contradictions, the franchise did something legendary: it proved that women’s stories, told through women’s gaze, could be both commercially viable and culturally iconic.
For me, as an Indian woman, that mattered deeply. While Carrie typed into her laptop in a Manhattan apartment, I too typed into mine, dreaming of a life where women could write their desires without apologising. When Miranda fought sexism at her firm, I too fought it at mine. When Charlotte clung to belief in love, I did too. And when Samantha unapologetically refused shame, I learnt to refuse it too.
What is striking now is how India has begun telling its own versions of these stories. Shows like Four More Shots Please! and Made in Heaven clearly borrow from the SATC template — urban women navigating love and ambition, with friendship as the emotional spine. They, too, have been hits, not only because of their glossy styling and glamour but also because they articulate desires, conflicts, and solidarities that Indian women have long felt but rarely seen on screen.
Of course, they adapt the formula to local realities — family expectations, caste and class tensions, and the weight of tradition. Still, the heartbeat is the same: women in conversation with women, shaping their identities together.
That is why they resonate.
They prove that what was once aspirationally ‘New York’ in SATC is no longer foreign but deeply local: Indian women, too, now want to be the protagonists of their own stories — not just side characters in someone else’s.
-Vineeta Dwivedi, associate professor of organisation and leadership studies, SP Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR)
