Aidannaissance Must End
Nice guys don't finish last. They corner you into marriage in a park and then return decades later to be deemed the love of your life.
Aidan Shaw was never meant to end up with Carrie—and we can no longer collectively live in his Santal 33 haze of Virginia homesteading, raw denim and turquoise rings and be gaslit into believing he ever was.
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 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 (plus, committing some hugely offensive faux pas at the same time).
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 on their quest for self-actualisation as post-feminist women. 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 starlets (Tony Soprano etc.) experience the woes and wonders of mob life. I love to ponder the fact that in the exact 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, embedded into the heart of Manhattan in broad daylight rather than the dark corners of Big’s world.
Aidan had long tussled hair, a cute dog and erotically 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. Not to mention, his character was always interwoven with the imagery of the natural world: his wood-worked wares, his cabin, his humping dog.
The character of Aidan was clearly invented as Big’s foil. She pursues someone who’s the opposite of Big in hope of an opposite outcome. The two men sat at either end of masculinity to let us examine Carrie’s own selfhood. The distance between Big and Aidan helps us understand Carrie’s distance from herself.
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. He laboured with his hands, built country homes and ate fried chicken buckets. He was emotional but still 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 longe to abandon the narcism of her twenties and thirties. In all her missteps and cringe interactions, her commitment to herself broke the mould of main characters on TV along the way.
Aidan was brought into the world of Sex and the City to prove Carrie couldn’t just accept the life she has been prescribed—even when repackaged in the gentle allure of Aidan. She wanted, for whatever reason, something else. And isn’t the suggestion that this something else isn’t enough just devastating?