New light on things done is always exciting. There it was, with large letters in the American magazine Rolling Stone: “Charlotte York is the coolest and most recognizable character of Sex and the City. ”
The hit series of 94 episodes, originally broadcast between 1998 and 2004, has four main characters: Carrie Bradshaw, Miranda Hobbes, Samantha Jones and Charlotte York. Charlotte, played by Kristin Davis, was never the public favorite. Now. Gen Z’er Alaina Demopoulos wrote The Guardian That the “underrated mainstay” of the group is the wisest of the whole couple. According to fashion magazine Glamor is 2025 the year of the Charlotte hairstyle.
Since the original series had a second life on the streaming services – together with the sequel And just like that … (2021) – ‘girl girl’ Charlotte on social media channels is praised for her positive look and femininity. “She’s exactly like me,” Echooted it on Tiktok. Or: “Charlotte lives her life like a romcom. What an icon!” “I’m in my Charlotte York phase,” writes the Danish influencer Freya Bryndorf on Instagram. Some videos harvest half a million likes. Surving at all that new interest, actress Kristin Davis decided the podcast in January Are you a Charlotte? starting.
Misfit
Then the HBO series Sex and the City Saw the light in 1998, the modest character Charlotte was an outsider. The New York Times put her way like a “traditional woman, who is terrified that she can’t find a man and then stay old and alone”. Just like with a child, fairy -tale, but often unrealistic ideas about the future the world of Charlotte. She knows only one goal: marriage. Tirelessly she searches cocktail bars, house parties and country clubs in search of the perfect husband.
Cynthia Nixon, Kristin Davis, Kim Cattrall and Sarah Jessica Parker in 1999, second season of Sex and the City, 1999.
Photo Paramount Pictures
As a first-generation view, you certainly did not want to be Charlotte. Her prudish, status -oriented character did not match postfeminism that brought the show so much success at the time: it was all about the sexual escapades and the wardrobes of the four cheerful, free New York women.
At Gen Z (born between 1997 and 2012) it seems different. These younger viewers identify with Charlotte, her classical worldview and her floating passion.
Why? The dream that chases Charlotte seems much more unreachable for this generation. Her ‘long and happy’ is an anachronism. For years the number of people without a partner has been increasing in the West, it is the population group that rises the fastest. Scandinavian countries like Sweden are at the top of the ‘solo countries‘, but also in the Netherlands, love is increasingly a secondary issue.
This ‘single -fication’ ensures that the demand for suitable homes is increasing. Only there are hardly any, partly because society is still designed for the classical family. And the houses that are there are often priceless. More than 10 percent of young people in the European Union spend 40 percent of their income on their homes. The wealth of late meals, cosmopolitans and upper East side apartments that pass by in Sex and the City Is unattainable and unaffordable for Gen Z’ers.
The gender gap is added. Algorithms push young men and women opposite sides. That makes relationship formation more difficult, because Manfluencer Andrew Tate and feminist actress Emma Watson you simply do not quickly find together on a pillow. Men vote more often; women to vote Precisely (much) more progressive than previous generations. This trend is at odds with Charlotte’s oilily conservatism, a ‘Tradwife Light‘From a republican family.
Puppy-eyes
It seems paradoxical that a generation full of progressive young women who glorifies good, conservative Charlotte. Why do these free women keep running behind Charlottes puppy eyes, white collars and hallucinatory dream world?
Could it be that young people need daydreams? Gen Z is a generation that seems difficult to connect with society. They are idealistic (think of themes like the climate), but Do not see their ideas in politics. This feeds political apathy. Only 12 percent of American youth have faith in parliament. A mere 15 percent trust the media.
Whether it is about the housing market, mental well -being or social poverty: Gen Z is not heard much. Cultural critic Rayne Fisher-Quann (born in 2001) speaks in The New York Times From emerging ‘gene Z-Nihilism’. Because of idealistic and financial setback, this generation no longer thinks that ‘normal things’ are possible if a house and a partner are possible. What is more obvious than social detachment and escapism?
Kristin Davis, circa 1986.
Photo Getty Images
And then people still recognize themselves in Charlottes restraint in terms of sex (“men don’t marry it”Up the Butt“girl”). This generation is more conservative. Young people are becoming more moralistic about sex, for example a recent survey by The Times. The Z-generation gene starts with sex later and needs less naked on TV.
The character Charlotte, rather maligned for her prudishness, fits wonderfully with that. Clean or not, as a woman she wants to be able to limit her sex life herself. You can see this sexual cover as a repacked autonomy, journalist Sophie Gilbert writes in The Atlantic: “This generation craves again for real intimacy.”
The new generation finds Charlottes soft soul not reprehensible, but disarming. What does it matter that she romantizes her life? That they are already silent against the messy reality in which finding a love partner is more difficult than ever? Forgling Charlotte embodies the unfulfilled desires of their generation.
Yes, bad news and setbacks are omnipresent. And no, at Park Avenue (where Charlotte resides), Z’ers will not end up quickly. But are the genuine passionate dreams of Charlotte not just delicious?