Goodbye to All That

And Just Like That is Terrified of Aging

Discussed: And Just Like That, Sex and the City, Mrs. Fletcher, Fleishman Is in Trouble, aging Millennials, diet culture, ageism, youth culture

Out of all the disastrous plot lines we see on And Just Like That, the one that interests me the most is when Carrie expresses intense concern about how to tell her young glamorous neighbor that her loud late-night partying is keeping her up. She tells multiple friends that she is not only intimidated by her younger neighbor, but that the reality of wanting a full-night sleep makes her worry that she is no longer cool.

Recent shows like Mrs. Fletcher and Fleishman Is in Trouble center middle aged female characters who feel bored and restless as they try to recapture a kind of free-spirited life that they worry has already slipped away. And yet, it still feels surreal to imagine that the Carrie Bradshaw, whose entire brand is built on excitement, romance, and extremely fancy shoes, would suddenly feel overcome with self-doubt because she has to tell a bunch of young people on her stoop to be quiet. Throughout the new series, the fizzy pleasures of cosmopolitans and gigantic closets are replaced with an array of disappointments, huge ones like the sudden and tragic death of Big, as well as the myriad ways that Carrie, Miranda, and Charlotte feel out-of-step in the 2020s landscape they suddenly find themselves in. It doesn’t matter how lavish the apartments or how glamorous the fashion: And Just Like That is a series that is consumed with loss.

On the surface, this might give the series a kind of gravitas, but And Just Like That struggles to balance this shift in tone in a way that feels three dimensional. Of course, Carrie and her friends have always been a hot mess, often presented as “types” rather than fully developed characters. Yet the original show also urged us to view each character with empathy rather than derision, and to see their friendship with one another as just as essential to their lives as their romantic prospects. In the sequel, the core friendships remain, but the show doesn’t always seem as interested in exploring the joy of female camaraderie as it is in poking fun at the ways that Charlotte, Carrie, and Miranda are struggling with getting older.

It's a disappointing choice, but also one that fits perfectly in the current zeitgeist, which is absolutely terrified of aging, so much so that even teenagers are sharing anti-aging skincare tips and wondering when to start Botox. In my own Millennial cohort, there is a deluge of ageist messaging that connects the natural process of aging with the threat of losing power. At least in the original Sex and the City, the lives of thirty-something women were presented as exciting. Now, all we get are articles where aging Millennials are depicted as sadly browning avocados. Millennial concerns about aging are often framed as being about economic anxiety rather than loss of social status, but the debate over whether you can still wear skinny jeans or part of your hair on the side are clearly about the latter. These fears aren’t frivolous. Our obsession with youth often renders youth culture the only culture and the decision to go grey or forgo botox often comes with intense judgment, especially for women.

Perhaps the fixation on the “sadly aging Millennial” stings sharply because it echoes the dieting culture of the late ‘90s and early aughts that many Millennials grew up with, where thinness became such an intense signifier of social status that already slim celebrities who were not emaciated were discussed as though they were overweight. It’s hard not to look back at pictures of Jessica Simpson and Britney Spears when they were ridiculed for being “fat” and wonder how we were sold this type of collective delusion. And yet, this same sort of distorted thinking about what it means to be “old” is commonplace today, with online commenters contending that famously beautiful and youthful celebrities are “hitting the wall” when they are barely 30.

A show like And Just Like That has the potential to puncture this limited view of what it means to get older by offering more nuanced storytelling about beloved characters. One of the reasons that Charlotte’s character has been hailed by many viewers as “the best part of And Just Like That” is that, despite her penchant for demanding to speak to the manager, she has also shown genuine growth. While Carrie worries about her coolness and continues to fall back in bed with old love interests, and Miranda makes frustratingly out-of-touch comments to just about every person in her life, Charlotte comes across as not only funny and smart, but as someone who has evolved through her experiences.

Nostalgia was clearly a driving force for the creation of And Just Like That, but two seasons in, I think viewers are also hungry to move forward rather than backwards. I’m hopeful that Carrie’s decision to sell her beloved apartment to her glamorous young neighbor at the end of Season 2 is not just a passing of the torch, but also a sign that she is ready for a new beginning, one where she doesn’t obsess about being past her “prime” and is given more space to come into her power.