It almost seems too perfect that Cynthia Nixon should time her announcement to run for governor of New York (for you have to be a celebrity to run for any office in the twenty-first century of America) around the coinciding twenty-year anniversary furor surrounding Sex and the City‘s (still more relevant than you think) original premiere (June 6, 1998) as of late.
Nixon, quick to realize that in the “woke” era of now, her once least favored character, Miranda Hobbes, is suddenly the only “timeless” aspect of the show–the only person any woman should aspire to be like–has released a tailored line of merchandise for her gubernatorial run, the results of which will soon reveal that Americans–even ones as supposedly jaded as New Yorkers–are suckers for a celebrity of any grade.
As she shamelessly plugged on her Twitter account (the nexus of where all political action seems to take place now) on the eve of SATC’s anniversary, “Are you a Miranda voting for Cynthia? In honor of #SATC20, here’s a line of Miranda merchandise designed by the team behind the Every Outfit on Sex and the City Instagram account… because, well, we should all be Mirandas who vote for Cynthia.” Should we though? Should we all be hyper-discriminating non-romantics who are actually fairly hypocritical for giving Carrie Bradshaw shit for always going back to Big when she herself did the same thing with Steve? And, in truth, that was much worse, for it was cruel to dangle someone as sensitive as Steve in such a manner. Yet Miranda gets a pass for so doing because it’s “feministic” to treat men as they treat women. But, it might actually make them, by the type of bullshit Buddha standards that insist you can move on from a failed relationship, the worse of the two genders for feeling the need to sink to the same level solely to prove a point.
Oh but no, the only point Cynthia is trying to prove is that New Yorkers are way too easily preyed upon for their nostalgia about a time in NYC history that either 1) they were never even a part of or 2) they overly romanticize solely because things could not be, at present, further from the LCD Soundsystem lyric, “New York’s the greatest if you get someone to pay the rent/It’s the furthest you can live from the government.” Among many other reasons, considering how much the Orange One loves to hang out in his various disgustingly gaudy real estate properties there, NY is definitely not removed from the feds as it once felt like. The stiflement is especially palpable in the summer months that saw Sex and the City get its start. And maybe that’s what Nixon is banking on: New Yorkers both novice and of the SATC generation feeling hot and bothered not only by the weather, but by the oppressive state New York has managed to find itself in, the waves of other areas of the U.S. trickling into its usually impervious bubble.
And with the perforation of NYC’s force field, a chasm in the line between where Cynthia Nixon ends and Miranda Hobbes begins has transpired, and is currently gushing bits of faux personality all over hats, tote bags and tees that are soon to be seen throughout the most annoying parts of Brooklyn (and, one imagines, the most annoying geographical conglomerate in all of New York: NYU). Tragically, the likely win of Nixon and the overrunning of the city with this “niche” of woman, so quick to brand herself as one facet of a four-pronged female archetype generated by gay men, only means that Nixon is causing the very thing she claims not to want to do to New York: make it shittier. What’s more, Carrie Bradshaw would be aghast at these “fashions.”
