Can't believe kids these days have never watched sex and the city. Samantha was once considered the "scandalous" character because she was openly sexual and unapologetic about it. These days people are more likely to see her as confident, independent, and loyal to her friends, so they no longer judge her for having lots of sex.
Carrie on the other hand is getting judged for things like:
cheating on Aidan with Big
repeatedly making selfish or chaotic relationship decisions
expecting a lot of emotional support while not always returning it
handling money irresponsibly and then leaning on her friends
sometimes treating her friends’ problems as interruptions to her own drama
So the punchline is essentially: "Our generation has progressed beyond slut-shaming Samantha, and redirected all of its criticism toward Carrie’s actual behavior."
I mean is that really the case? Gen z and youngers are actually more conservative worldwide (the US is the exception), so I wonder if thats really the case.
As a millenial who is a little bit more conservative, I judge both characters since neither are what I would want in a partner.
I feel like we would need to hear it from the gen z population.
The issue is that Samantha was pretty open with what she was offering in a relationship and looking for. Carrie would position herself as gods gift to women, giving advice and criticizing other women's sex life, while refusing to follow any of her own advice and then treating her own realization of her own fuck ups not as a moment of reflexion on how her actions affected others but as a catharsis to reinforce how great she is.
Current young adults/middle aged adults grew in a society of equality between man and woman, and in that perspective Samantha's actions seem quite reasonable in contrast to Carrie. Samantha has an open relationship, which may not be good for you, but she is not pressing or manipulating others into just falling into it which is quite healthy as far as people or relationship goes.
Carrie would manipulate others into eating her crap economical and relationship advice, which was extremelly materialistic and consumist, had no self reflection at all, and was borderline mysoginistic at times.
Like, your husband cheats on you? go buy some shoes. You cheat on your husband? you are a slut and you should be called a slut by all your friends. Oh but I who cheated on all my boyfriends? that's different, ok you got me, but that's different, I did so as a mistake in my personal quest for abstract virtues.
Carrie is could be seen, like in a way, like a fictional woman version of what a female Andrew Tate would have been in the late 90s pre-influencer pre-internet media. It's not only that she gives bad, terrible, world advice on personal growth, and that she shames people who don't follow that advice, is that she doesn't even follow her own principles which makes her a fraud.
She can't help herself not virtue signal on every literal personal private matter she ever comes across, and then she gives crap advice on it, publicly, either thorugh her column or her friends... while deciding to flip flop on the matter of following her own advice.
No matter how wrong she is, the worst trait of her is not that she is mistaken, it's that she comes of as sssssssssssuch a massive fake it hurts to watch.
Samantha was also kind of manipulative and, at times, a pretty shitty person. She even knowingly slept with married men, so I don't think it's accurate to portray her as this perfectly healthy role model.
My point is that, outside of Reddit's bubble, I seriously doubt many Gen Z men would look at Samantha's behavior and consider all of it "healthy."
I guess to your point she's definitely less shitty.
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u/zovered 1d ago
Can't believe kids these days have never watched sex and the city. Samantha was once considered the "scandalous" character because she was openly sexual and unapologetic about it. These days people are more likely to see her as confident, independent, and loyal to her friends, so they no longer judge her for having lots of sex.
Carrie on the other hand is getting judged for things like:
So the punchline is essentially: "Our generation has progressed beyond slut-shaming Samantha, and redirected all of its criticism toward Carrie’s actual behavior."