The Perfect Outfit

Materialism to Impress Men

Main character, Carrie Bradshaw, is defined by her sense of fashion and her unique ability to create quirky yet inspiring outfits. Her fashion choices “act as signifiers to [her] multi-faceted personality,” and both define who she is to us as viewers, as well as who she is to other characters inside the diegesis of the show (Kuruc, 208). Carrie herself believes that her identity is shaped by her clothing, and uses fashion as a way to impress men that she encounters.

Although in many ways the show attempts to code Carrie as a reformed and independent woman, her particularly great sense of concern for her appearance, especially in the presence of men, frames her as fashion obsessed and materialistic. When around her female friends Carrie is often seen without her hair done and with very light make up on. Yet, when she knows that men will be around, Carrie would not dare be seen dressed in anything less than her best.

In the Season Six premiere episode, “To Market, To Market,” Carrie is seen drinking coffee with Miranda, wearing a small pink sweater over a voluminous peasant shirt and baggy jeans. She is not wearing make-up, and her hair is messy, simply pulled back behind a headband. This outfit is a stark juxtaposition to her normal attire, and in an “ironic” bout of fate, Carrie sees the man who she is going on a date with later that night. She immediately gets all worked up, claiming “I look like shit!” and “This is not my perfect outfit!” (“To Market, To Market”). Around Miranda, Carrie had no qualms about her outfit, yet around a man, she is worried that her lack of style may make her attractive and therefore less desirable and worthwhile. The camera then follows Carrie as she runs through the busy streets of New York, doing all that she can to avoid being seen in this “less than perfect” ensemble in front of a man that she wants to impress. This long cut helps us as viewers to become invested in the scene; we feel as if we are running with Carrie, doing all that we can to avoid the embarrassment of being seen in such garb.

This constant need to impress and attract men through fashion and clothing challenges the notion that Carrie has successfully redefined what it means to be a modern woman. Rather than obtaining power, she simply perpetuates feminine hegemonic roles.  Her obsession with appearance makes her seem both shallow and materialistic, and thereby feeds into the traditional belief that women are expected to dress nicely for their male counterparts. And more importantly, this works to demotes Carrie, and all women, to the position of the disempowered, subservient gender.

Park Avenue Meets Call Girl

Materialism to Impress Men

While Carrie Bradshaw’s character and identity is defined by her unique sense of fashion, so too do the show’s other characters use clothing as a way to identify. More specifically, Charlotte believes that by purchasing and wearing a new, different line of fashion, she will become a different woman, better suited to attract the attention of men. By offering that women need to consume and wear particular clothing lines to attract men, Sex and the City in fact reduces Charlotte to the traditional hegemonic stereotype of an appearance-obsessed female, thereby disempowering her.

When her fiancé Trey has trouble performing in bed, Charlotte automatically assumes that it is something that she is doing wrong, and neglects that the problem could have to do with Trey himself. Charlotte attributes it to his lack of physical attraction to her, particularly his distaste for the way that she looks, and this insecurity reduces her female stature while providing her fiance with more control. The camera works in a unique way to define this relationship between Charlotte and Trey. As seen in the image above, we as the viewer get a point of view shot so as to become a part of the experience. We feel as though we are Charlotte: naked, vulnerable, being carefully observed and critiqued by a man. By putting us in Charlotte’s place we feel a sense of empathy, and can possibly understand why she takes the actions that she does.

Charlotte believes that the solution to the problem is investing in lingerie, deciding that “if she was ever going to get Trey to see the sexual part of her, she’d have to dress the part” (“Frenemies”). She wholeheartedly believes that her clothing will help her to “be someone else,” to be the kind of person that this man will finally “see sexually” (“Frenemies”). Wearing lingerie is out of character for Charlotte; throughout the show’s six seasons she is coded as the reserved, more traditional character by her fashion choices and clothing style. Viewers can draw meaning from her style and can understand her identity through her simple yet elegant wardrobe. Scholars agree that “it would seem peculiar for Charlotte to dress in a highly sexualized ensemble,” yet, for the sake of a man, she is willing to and wants to alter this identity (Kuruc, 201). As such, she uses fashion as a tool of discipline, as a way to constrain her old identity, and create a new one.

Charlotte’s desire to attract and thereby sexually satisfy her man is troubling because of the way that she goes about doing it. Rather than focusing on healthy ways to make a relationship work, she shows her submissive side and retreats to changing herself in the interest of impressing a male figure. The message that this sends to female viewership is clear: yes, ultimately Charlotte succeeds in making herself more sexually attractive to Trey, but only when she buys a particular line of clothing to do so. Both Charlotte’s ends and means are problematic; she not only has a fervent desire to impress and please a man, thereby diminishing her position as an empowered woman, but using clothing and altering her identity to do so makes her all the more powerless.

Fendi, Gucci, Prada, Oh My!

Emphasis of Luxury and Designer Commodities 

Even though the women in Sex and the City support their own shopping habits- which symbolizes the financial autonomy of the modern woman- the show’s emphasis on specific designer labels reinforces the hegemonic idea that women are obsessively materialistic and propagates this fixation within the audience. The usefulness of product placement in television shows has been a prominent feature of the industry since 1990. However, Sex and the City has been critiqued for its overabundance of product placement, name-dropping, and label fetishism because of the ramifications these elements have on the identities of the characters. It is clear that the designer labels metonymically symbolize a high-class status for the protagonists of the show and it is even clearer that this symbiosis is deliberate on behalf of the producers of the show. Not only do the designers that are referenced on the show, such as Manolo Blahnik, Fendi, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and Prada, represent a high-class status because of the actual price of the items, but it is also due to the traditional associations of the brands and how they market their names to symbolize wealth. This association with traditionally high-class brands “becomes a strategy by which HBO promotes itself as a status symbol to be coveted by the prosperous chic” (Scodari, 249).

For example, in the episode “Oh Come All Ye Faithful”, Carrie is impressed when she sees Big dressed in his finest attire while attending a church service with his mother. She comments, “And there he was, wearing Armani on a Sunday.” These thoughts are shared with the audience via voice-over, which is used throughout the series both to bring the audience into Carrie’s mind and to serve as an opportunity for Carrie to directly offer opinions to the audience that are meant to represent the general opinions of womankind. Contrary to the brand naming that occurs for the female characters, in this situation it is not Big who comments on the designer he is wearing himself, but rather, Carrie. This suggests that the label fetishism is something that preoccupies only the female character’s thoughts and is only a fetish that is appropriate for women.

Furthermore, the values that are propagated through product placement in the show are easily transferred to the audience because of the depth of information that is given when the product placement segments occur. Almost every time that a brand is named in the show, other information accompanies it; this may include a description of the item, the price of the item, a specific location to buy it, and even why buying this product is advantageous to other products.  Thus, “the clothing, handbags, and shoes (among other things) that [are] carried and worn often [become] ‘must have’ items. According to Akass and McCabe, the show has been known to start a ‘fashion stampede’” (Brzencheck, 7).

A clear example of this theory is in the episode 10 from Season 1. Miranda and Carrie are in a store, browsing for a pregnancy test when Miranda alerts Carrie, “Here there’s one on sale: half off.” Carrie retorts, “I just spent $395 on a pair of open-toed Gucci’s last week. This is not the place to be frugal” (“The Baby Shower”).  This example illustrates two points. First, we see that Carrie adds additional information to the “product” that she announces. She lets us know a description of the item and the price of the item. Further, although somewhat satirical in nature because of the comparison of importance between birth control products and shoes, this quote clearly shows the writers of Sex and the City attempt to duplicate a value system within the audience. The characters are there not only to show us the hottest brands and the fabulous life, they can teach us- in addition- what is important to splurge on and what is not. This is problematic in encouraging the ideas of independent and empowered womanhood because the things that the characters spend their money on are very superfluous and perpetuate materialistic values. By having such detailed product advertisement, the show helps the viewership become more materialistic and consumerist.