It was a line from Samantha that did it. In “A Woman’s Right to Shoes,” arguably one of the most lionized Sex and the City episodes of all time, Carrie is lamenting the loss of a pair of Manolo Blahniks she was asked to take off at a friend’s baby shower. Miranda points out that, legally, the friend owes her for them.
“I can’t ask her to pay for my shoes,” sighs Carrie.
“Why not?” asks Samantha. “If you gave a party and told her to leave her baby outside in the hall and her baby was missing at the end of the night, believe me, there’d be payback.”
Obviously, I’d seen the episode before; I can quote complete scenes from most of the series. But in that moment, fresh from a pseudo-breakup (the particularly stinging kind I’m not allowed to call “a breakup” because we were never official) and a bachelorette party where half the attendees had children, I found it hit differently.
“That is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard,” Charlotte replies, agog at Samantha’s comparison. Carrie concurs. Meanwhile, tucked under the covers with my laptop perched on my lap, I couldn’t stop cackling. Because I didn’t think there was anything remotely crazy about what Samantha had said. It was probably the sanest thing I’d heard in weeks.
I know shoes are not children—though it’s fun to feel compelled to clarify that in writing—but that doesn’t diminish the power of the universal truth at the heart of the sentiment, one that I think a lot of single women in their 30s can relate to. Because at a certain point, thanks to a mix of social conditioning, internalized misogyny, and basic sexism, female friendship groups are split into factions based on lifestyle choices. Single versus married. Mortgage versus rent. Shoes versus children. And so on.
That’s not to say we’re destined to always be pitted against one another, or that there can’t be common ground found by crossing party lines. After all, in the aforementioned scene, Miranda is speaking as a mother and insists that children are the ones bringing germs into buildings instead of people’s shoes. But the divide still exists and, every so often, we have to rally against it in order to preserve our friendships, our sense of self, and occasionally also our outfits.
This is not an observation I would’ve made when I started watching Sex and the City. Throughout my teens and 20s, I watched the show with fascination, awe, and envy. It was a form of escapism, a Cosmopolitan-soaked delusion filled with terrible men, Marlboro Golds, and Galliano’s Dior. So far removed was it from my reality at school in the depths of Somerset, England, and later as a student in Bristol, that I couldn’t possibly imagine myself anywhere near that glossy world, let alone relate to anything the characters went through. That has changed somewhat dramatically since I turned 30 last year.
Now, on the precipice of 31, I’m just one year off from Carrie’s age at the start of the show—a fact not one but three single female friends my age have recently pointed out to me. All of us are diehard fans and regularly dip in and out of it. And all of us have found ourselves quoting it more than ever in the last few months, with various vignettes finding themselves wedged into conversations about our own lives.
Berger’s brutal Post-It note came up recently after a friend’s situationship ended over text. Miranda’s monologue about feeling fed up that all single, straight women ever talk about is men was used as an example to help another friend stop obsessing over a recent Hinge date. And of course, a perennial favorite often whipped out at engagement parties and weddings is Lexi Featherston falling out of a window after telling a room full of couples, “I’m so bored I could die.”
All of these moments and more offer a newfound comfort they simply didn’t before. Like reassuring reminders that, despite the advent of dating apps and social media, many of the vagaries of modern love are the same as they always were. “Watching the show makes me feel less stressed about my own path,” says Emily*, 35, who has been single for four years. “My life is really full—I live in London, have built up a truly amazing set of friends, and have a great career—but I also feel kind of sad and stressed that I m single. What happens if I never meet someone? Or if I do meet someone but I’m then not able to have kids?"
These are universal questions the show poses throughout its seasons, providing myriad answers through its four central characters. “They all show such different examples of what it means to be a woman,” says Emily. “And when they’re still figuring out dating into their late 30s, it makes me feel less behind and like I still have time left, which is admittedly such a grim statement but one that I find really comforting.”
Perhaps the most specifically 30-something issues that the series addresses are those around motherhood. Like Miranda’s unplanned pregnancy. Carrie’s contemplation of whether to pursue a relationship with Aleksandr Petrosky at 38, knowing that he doesn’t want to have children. The scene when Samantha is told her cancer diagnosis could be related to her decision not to have children. And then there’s Charlotte’s fertility journey and her decision to pursue IVF.
“When I first watched the show as a teenager, these issues felt like something only ‘real adults’ had to deal with,” says Sarah* 36, who is now married and considering a family. “I’ve had two pregnancy losses and the episode covering Charlotte’s miscarriage really helped me process them at the time, while watching Carrie consider whether to have a baby at 38 has made me think deeply about how I’ll feel when I’m older if we choose not to try again. Whether I’ll regret it, or whether I could have a wonderfully fulfilling life, with friends and work and a relationship and disposable income, without a child.”
There are slightly more bittersweet moments of resonance, too. Take the episode where Carrie winds up celebrating her 35th birthday alone because her friends are all separately running late due to a confluence of unavoidable adult stuff. Later, after the women have managed to convene at their favorite coffee shop, she admits that despite knowing she has her career and her friendships, it felt “really sad” in that moment to be single. “I feel like I’m having the same conversation these days,” says Mia*, 33. “[It’s] the shame of wanting something we’re not meant to want. The struggle is real—and lonely.”
As I’ve written about before, major celebrations for single women are few and far between, at least where societal norms are concerned. Birthdays are really all we’ve got. And yet, as we get older, life gets in the way of them more and more in ways it somehow never does for weddings or bachelorette parties. “This has come up for me a lot,” says Billie*, 41, whose friend with a toddler recently tried to arrange a small wedding ceremony on the day of their other friend’s 40th birthday party. “She had to properly explain to her that when you’re single, you have no opportunities to be celebrated.”
Perhaps the most important—and enduringly relevant—scene in the show of all, though, is the one that happens after the aforementioned failed birthday dinner, shortly after Carrie concludes her weepy monologue about not having yet found a soulmate. “And I don’t even know if I believe in soulmates,” she shrugs, to which Charlotte famously replies: “Don’t laugh at me, but maybe we could be each other’s soulmates? And then we could let men just be these great, nice guys to have fun with.”
Yes, the quote is impossibly kitsch and has been memed to death. But as I look around at all my exceptional female friends, regardless of whether they’re single or attached, it’s one I feel more potently now than ever. And even without soulmates, at least there are always shoes.