When Sex and the City first aired in 1998, I was in the thick of young adulthood wide-eyed, ambitious, and just beginning to understand the messy, thrilling, and often contradictory world of womanhood. It was groundbreaking. For the first time, women on TV were talking openly about sex. Not just in hushed tones or behind closed doors, but with wit, candor, and complexity. They asked questions we were all secretly wondering: Can women have sex like men? Can you be single and happy in your 30s? Can female friendship be your greatest love story? Can you be single and fulfilled? What if we’re each other’s soulmates and men are just people who come in and out of our lives?
Sure, it was unrealistic. Carrie Bradshaw wore Manolo Blahniks and Chanel while writing a weekly column, something that would barely cover the cost of her cosmopolitans, let alone her closet. But realism wasn’t the point. It was aspirational and revolutionary. These women were unapologetically themselves flawed, fabulous, and fiercely independent. They challenged societal norms and gave us permission to do the same, or at least live the fantasy for 45 minutes each week.
Sex and the City opened doors for other shows that dared to centre women’s desires and complexities, shows like Girls, Insecure and Fleabag. It laid the foundation for a new kind of storytelling one where women weren’t just love interests or sidekicks, but the messy, magnetic main characters.
Then came And Just Like That, a revival that promised comfort and nostalgia but never quite delivered. As it prepares to air its final episode this week in a time when the world feels increasingly heavy and uncertain, we longed for the magic, wit, and warmth of the original Sex and the City. But the reboot struggled to recapture that spark falling short, just when we needed it most.
I will admit it I hate-watched it. Religiously. Like many of us, I tuned in not because I believed it would recapture the magic, but because I needed to see what had become of the women who invited me into a world that l could only dream of in my 20s and continued to rewatch on repeat. What I found was… disappointing.
Instead of aging boldly, the characters aged blandly. Miranda, once a sharp, career-driven cynic, was suddenly fumbling through life like a teenager. Charlotte, who had finally embraced her own version of feminism, was reduced to pearl-clutching prudishness. And Carrie, our beloved Carrie, was more concerned with podcast etiquette and hip replacements than with challenging norms or chasing dreams.
Where were the strong, independent women who once made us feel like anything was possible? Where was the sex positivity, the radical friendship, the refusal to settle? Instead, we got a sanitised, self-conscious version of womanhood in your 50s one that felt more like a cautionary tale than a celebration.
It’s not that women in midlife shouldn’t be represented, quite the opposite. We need more stories about aging with power, grace, and grit. Stories that reflect the truth that many of us in our 50s are just hitting our stride. We are running businesses, climbing corporate ladders, launching second careers, rediscovering our sexuality, and finally shedding the expectations that weighed us down in our 20s and 30s. We are not fragile, we are fierce.
And Just Like That had the perfect opportunity to show this. It could have been radical again. It could have shown that life for women doesn’t end at 50 but rather it evolves. That sex, friendship, ambition, and joy don’t expire with age. In fact, this stage of life is often when we finally know who we are and what we want and we go for it, unapologetically.
Instead, the show perpetuated tired, ageist tropes. Hip replacements, tech confusion, prudishness, and a general sense of being out of touch dominated the narrative. The women we once admired for their boldness were now portrayed as hesitant, awkward, and unsure. It felt like a betrayal not just of the characters we loved, but of the audience who grew up with them. By portraying midlife as a slow fade into irrelevance, And Just Like That reinforced the very stereotypes Sex and the City once shattered. It missed the chance to challenge the cultural narrative that women become invisible after 50. Instead, it leaned into it.
And that’s the real disappointment. Because we deserve better. We deserve stories that reflect our strength, our complexity, our evolution. We deserve to see women aging boldly not quietly. We deserve characters who remind us that the best chapters might still be ahead.
Still, I’m grateful for what Sex and the City once was. It gave me language for things I didn’t know I was allowed to feel. It made me laugh, cry, and question everything. It was a cultural moment that shaped a generation of women including me. So as And Just Like That wraps up, I’m choosing to remember the original magic. The brunches, the boldness, the belief that women could be anything they wanted even if that meant being single in New York with a shoe addiction and a dream. And just like that… we say goodbye. Not with tears, but with a raised eyebrow, a smirk, and maybe one last cosmopolitan, which are fabulous!
Become a Women’s Agenda Foundation member and support our work! We are 100% independent and women-owned. Every day, we cover the news from a women’s perspective, advocating for women’s safety, economic security, health and opportunities. Foundation memberships are currently just $5 a month.
Bonus: you’ll receive our weekly editor’s wrap of the key stories to know every Saturday.