Sex And The City made me who I am – and I make no apology for that

I’m so glad I got to grow up alongside a show that depicted single life in the city as something fabulous and female-centric, not tragic and male-obsessed

No TV show has meant more to me than Sex And The City, which this month celebrated its 20th anniversary, and the honest to God truth is no show ever will. Partly this is a matter of timing. The first time Carrie was splashed by a bus, I had just celebrated my 20th birthday; by the time it finished six years later, I was working as a columnist, in a job not a million miles away from Carrie’s. My dad, born 40 years before me, had his early adulthood soundtracked by the Beatles. Mine played out to the HBO logo and the opening notes of Sex And The City, and it is now impossible for me to imagine those years without the shadow of that show, like taking the brandy out of the fruitcake, the stiletto off the shoe.

SATC came along just when I was looking for guidance about how to be a grownup in the modern world. Claims like this generally prompt sneering today, now that there is next to no credibility in being a SATC fan: too basic! Too white! Too materialistic! And I understand the criticisms, I really do, and, oy vay, don’t even get me started on the films, which are genuine crimes against women. But I’m so glad I got to grow up alongside a TV show that celebrated difficult, prickly, independent women, and that depicted single life in the city as something fabulous and female-centric, not tragic and male-obsessed. And I’ll tell you something else, I have a reliable rule of thumb when it comes to art made for women and largely by women: if men sneer at it, the problem isn’t with the art but with the men. Nothing scares a certain type of man more than art that isn’t for him, and Sex And The City was always, unapologetically, for women. This, too, is a good thing.

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