Aidannaissance Must End
Nice guys don't finish last. They try and corner you into marriage in a park only to return and be deemed the love of your life.
Aidan Shaw was never meant to end up with Carrie. We no longer can collectively live in his Santal 33 haze of Virginia homesteading, raw denim and turquoise rings and I will not be gaslit into believing we ever were.
Men and the City
SATC has a legacy that’s best summarised in the phrase: “Women be shopping” as we associate it in our cultural imagination with cosmos, Manolos and heteros. However, the real fans know the show for the masterpiece, or The Great American Novel, that it is. Whilst created by two men, the show was overwhelmingly written by young women, exploring sexual politics and women’s friendships in bold and exciting ways (committing some hugely offensive faux pas at the same time but lest we forget all other 90s media).
Each season is tight and considered, with plenty of foreshadowing, masterful pacing and immaculate wit. And to title it anything but is likely underscored by a bit of misogyny.
The show had an intoxicating habit of presenting men as secondary to the lives of women. From the likes of Justin Theroux to Bon Jovi, men were the mirrors for our core four to project themselves onto and reach some sort of moment of self-actualisation. Men were malleable, uninteresting and most often, the ones represented as “crazy” or “weird” to the puritanical gaze of Miss Bradshaw. Put simply, it wasn’t their show.
If you longed for the stories of men, you could have tuned into HBO another night to see our other 90s starlet, Tony Soprano, experience the woes and wonders of mob life. I love to ponder the fact that in the same week of 1999 that Charlotte befriended the power lesbians, the world learnt the line “No fuckin’ ziti” as both worlds co-existed in supposedly the same very state.
Big’s Foil
When we first meet Aidan, Stanny describes him as the gorgeous furniture maker in Chelsea who him and Carrie go to ogle. Unlike Big, you existed mostly in the black leather of his limo or the grey hellscape of his apartment, Aidan was brought into Carrie’s world via her friends.
Aidan had long tussled hair, a cute dog and rubbed his leather chair in front of Carrie before smoothly asking her out. He was everything Big wasn’t. Where Big was an uptight metrosexual, living in the world’s ugliest apartment that would soon be joined by the world’s ugliest red wall, Aidan was the all-American boy. He loved the natural world with his wood worked wares and humping dog and more importantly, he loved Carrie a confusing amount.
The character of Aidan was clearly invented as Big’s foil. The two men sat at either end of masculinity to let us examine Carrie’s own sexuality. The distance between Big and Aidan helps understand Carrie’s distance from herself, as she pursues someone who’s the opposite of Big and assumedly, hopes for an opposite experience.
Beyond insight into Carrie’s character, Aidan let the writers play with the evolving world of urban masculinity of the late 90s. Aidan was rugged and warm, offering a representation of classic American masculinity as he laboured with his hands, built country homes and ate fried chicken buckets. He was emotional but also emotionally illiterate. He lived in New York for the art and crafts and not the hustle and bustle.
He was incompatible with Carrie who wanted to go out to gay clubs, stay childless and live in her studio apartment for life. Imagining a Carrie who ended up with Aidan is to assassinate this character and all she represents. Carrie is interesting because she didn’t long to be a mother in the suburbs and she broke the mould of main characters on TV along the way.
This character was brought into the world of Sex and the City to prove Carrie couldn’t just accept that prescribed life even when repackaged in the gentle allure of Aidan. She could love him but she couldn’t commit to a life with him. She wanted, for whatever reason, something else.