{"id":79147,"date":"2025-07-07T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-07T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thestoryexchange.org\/?p=79147"},"modified":"2025-08-11T10:07:32","modified_gmt":"2025-08-11T14:07:32","slug":"we-love-to-hate-complicated-women-characters-we-should-ask-ourselves-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thestoryexchange.org\/we-love-to-hate-complicated-women-characters-we-should-ask-ourselves-why\/","title":{"rendered":"We Love to Hate Complicated Women Characters. We Should Ask Ourselves Why"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Carrie Bradshaw of “Sex and the City” (played by Sarah Jessica Parker, pictured here) is a character people loved to hate – and we should examine why that is. (Credit: Georges Biard, Wikimedia Commons<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Note: This post contains spoilers for \u201cSex and the City\u201d and \u201cYou,\u201d among other shows.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much of the United States has been embroiled \u2013 pun intended \u2013 in waves of oppressive heat<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout the nation<\/a>, scorching temperatures have tested infrastructures and further exposed inadequacies within our healthcare<\/a> system. In New York City, where The Story Exchange is based, temperatures have been rising to record levels<\/a>. Even for a summer lover such as myself, it\u2019s all been a bit much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During a particularly brutal stretch, I holed up indoors, pointed our living-room fan directly at my face, and turned on the TV to pass the time while my son finished his school year. I kicked things off with a classic: \u201cSex and the City,\u201d the late-1990s HBO cultural juggernaut that followed the sometimes-lurid love lives of four Manhattanite women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few episodes into my binge, I was boiling anyway \u2013 because it\u2019s difficult to revisit the show without contemplating the scorn aimed its way, from its initial airing to this very day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s something actress Sarah Jessica Parker touched upon in a recent interview<\/a> with HuffPost UK. The discussion, naturally, turned to her decades-long portrayal of Carrie Bradshaw, the iconic \u201cit\u201d girl who serves as the narrative focal point of both the hit TV show<\/a> and the two films it inspired, as well as the ongoing HBO spin-off series, \u201cAnd Just Like That.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carrie Bradshaw is a decidedly controversial character. She is, all at once, witty, selfish, fiercely loyal and deeply flawed. She\u2019s terrible with money for much of the original series; she can be rather judgmental; she conducts an illicit affair with an ex while he\u2019s married to another woman. But she also successfully navigates moments of failure that would have most of us hiding indoors for days; she forgoes fantasy nights out and more to support friends in need.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Despite her wholeness, much of the online discourse<\/a> around the character focuses on her foibles. In addition to an entire website<\/a> dedicated solely to detailing why she is \u201cthe worst,\u201d there are tons of videos<\/a>, listicles<\/a>, op-eds<\/a> and more that brand Carrie Bradshaw as a \u201cvillain<\/a>,\u201d a \u201cmonster<\/a>\u201d and \u2013 I\u2019m not joking \u2013 a \u201cmenace to society<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Parker sees no small amount of hypocrisy in the hatred. \u201cIt\u2019s always interesting to me that [women characters are] so condemned, but a male lead on a show can be a murderer, and people love him,\u201d she said, alluding to Joe Goldberg, the serial-killing main character of Netflix\u2019s recently-wrapped series \u201cYou\u201d \u2013 another show I pored over as I hid from the heat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Parker added: \u201cIf a woman has an affair, or behaves poorly, or spends money foolishly \u2026 there\u2019s a kind of punitive response to it\u201d that characters like Joe Goldberg are spared from, despite their objectively worse transgressions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a double standard that \u201cYou\u201d actually attempted to address throughout the entirety of its run, with the show using Joe Goldberg, at times, as an avatar of the very toxicity Parker noted. One example: In the first season, he assaults an overbearing woman who threatens his burgeoning relationship with her friend \u2013 as he flees, he excuses his behavior in a breathless voice-over, stating that his girlfriend should be grateful for his \u201cprotection.\u201d And scores of fans agreed<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, despite the creators\u2019 best efforts, Joe Goldberg\u2019s charm and good looks (both courtesy of actor Penn Badgley) rendered him largely immune to internet scorn. In fact, publications showered praise<\/a> upon him; and Etsy, an online store where small-batch makers sell their crafty wares, features pages upon pages<\/a> of pro-Joe shirts, stickers, mugs and even candles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Examples abound of this phenomenon \u2013 the one in which challenging, complicated women characters are raked over the metaphorical coals, while male antiheroes guilty of far worse offenses are given passes, or are even celebrated for their fullness because of their flaws.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Callie Torres of \u201cGrey\u2019s Anatomy\u201d was reviled from the moment she was added to the Seattle Grace rotation for being an intensely assertive and outspoken love interest to core character George O\u2019Malley \u2013 even when he cheated on her, fans found a way<\/a> to make it her fault. Skyler White<\/a> of \u201cBreaking Bad\u201d and Betty Draper<\/a> of \u201cMad Men\u201d failed to carry the burdens of loving selfish, infantile, unstable men with the grace and gravitas apparently expected of them \u2013 while the men themselves were defended<\/a>, even lionized ad nauseum. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They and many other such fictional women were, and still are, castigated for embodying very human traits \u2013 for being annoying, violent, demanding, foolish, unfair or, God forbid, bitchy. Worse, the (entirely innocent) actresses who embody these roles are residually insulted by these online hate campaigns, if not directly targeted for harassment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Parker mentioned this aspect of fan discourse as well, in another recent interview<\/a> with \u201cCall Her Daddy\u201d podcast host Alex Cooper. Like several of the actresses playing the roles listed above, Parker was derided for years about her physical appearance \u2013 “stuff that I couldn\u2019t change, I wouldn\u2019t change, and had never considered changing.\u201d Madeline Brewer, who played the also-hated Bront\u00eb on \u201cYou,\u201d was similarly attacked and mocked<\/a> for somehow not being beautiful enough in the eyes of viewers to win social permission to be challenging, contradictory and complex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The underlying problem is multi-pronged \u2013 and it\u2019s not just about sexism. One part of the calculus is that media literacy is on the decline<\/a>, which makes it harder for viewers to process programming logically or objectively. Simultaneously, our capacity for caring overall is waning, in large part because the internet has given people a voice \u2013 one they feel increasingly comfortable<\/a> using to say things one wouldn\u2019t dream of uttering offline. In the time since the Covid lockdowns of 2020, that situation has only gotten worse<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And of course, regardless of context and throughout time, women have always been held to impossibly higher standards<\/a> of behavior than men. (I mean, the problem is somewhat<\/em> about sexism \u2013 if you want to watch something smart and sharp that tackles this theme directly, \u201cKevin Can F**k Himself,\u201d also on Netflix, serves as a fantastic contemplation of the subject.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re certainly not going to solve all or any of this with an early-summer binge watch, even if these shows do give us ample opportunity for self-reflection. But Parker did offer a potential path forward, by inviting online posters to ask themselves a series of rather simple questions: \u201cWhy is this [character] a problem? Why is this deserving of your time? And, why do you seem to delight in saying\u201d mean, cutting things about them? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s valid food for thought \u2013 and hey, you don\u2019t even have to turn your oven on to dig in. ◼️<\/p>\n\n\n

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Our writer Candice Helfand-Rogers, on a heat-wave TV binge, found herself fuming over fan hatred of fictional women who commit the crime of being imperfect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":79177,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"autoblue_enabled":true,"autoblue_custom_message":"There are numerous women characters that people seem to downright enjoy criticizing - and we should examine why that is.","autoblue_shares":[{"did":"did:plc:l2n6ydtigm3gtra4vb4rfl7f","date":"2025-07-07T12:00:22+00:00","uri":"at:\/\/did:plc:l2n6ydtigm3gtra4vb4rfl7f\/app.bsky.feed.post\/3lteqfdix7v2h","response":"{\"uri\":\"at:\/\/did:plc:l2n6ydtigm3gtra4vb4rfl7f\/app.bsky.feed.post\/3lteqfdix7v2h\",\"cid\":\"bafyreihnzgecjjppytsrdynqstrojezl6ko74gmfd6whmnao4n6gcfnmui\",\"commit\":{\"cid\":\"bafyreibkbyjqgzly3fm7z5ns2txoqvud5njtwntxi2p2oejawdj7vdwogm\",\"rev\":\"3lteqfdj7z52h\"},\"validationStatus\":\"valid\"}"}],"autoblue_post_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19648],"tags":[21404,19859,19748,19645],"class_list":["post-79147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-cultural-critique","tag-gender-bias","tag-media-representation","tag-opinion"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWomen Characters from \u2018You,\u2019 \u2018SATC\u2019 Who Got Hate<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I tried to beat the heat by staying inside to watch TV. 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Please contact candice@thestoryexchange.org with questions or pitches.","sameAs":["https:\/\/thestoryexchange.org\/author\/candice-leigh-helfand\/"],"url":"https:\/\/thestoryexchange.org\/author\/candice-leigh-helfand\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thestoryexchange.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thestoryexchange.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thestoryexchange.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thestoryexchange.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thestoryexchange.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79147"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/thestoryexchange.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79178,"href":"https:\/\/thestoryexchange.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79147\/revisions\/79178"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thestoryexchange.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thestoryexchange.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thestoryexchange.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thestoryexchange.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}