And Just Like That…
Season 1
Episode 6

Written by Rachna Fruchbom
Directed by Cynthia Nixon

Moment 31:30

For Context: Carrie has come with her friend/realtor, Seema Patel, to her parent’s Diwali Celebration.
Carrie finds herself in a conversation with Seema’s parents in which she discovers Seema has made up a fake boyfriend named Dennis who is always away with Doctor’s Without Borders.
The Patel’s pump Carrie for information about Dennis…

Seema’s Mother: I’m beginning to wonder is she embarrassed of her boyfriend or embarrassed of her parents?

Seema’s Father: So Carrie, tell us, is it him, or us?

Carrie: Oh no, it’s not you…you are both wonderful…

Seema’s Mother: What then? (She lowers her voice) Is Dennis fat? Ugly?

(Carrie has at least the good grace to look uncomfortable…but I believe her discomfort is not about the body shaming slur, but about being caught in her friend’s lie)

Seema’s Mother: We just want her to be happy?

Carrie: No, of course. No, no, no. Dennis is fine.

……………………………………………………

When my marriage ended (that dreaded phrase), and I found myself in my tiny, new-to-me, furnished apartment on King East in Toronto, one of the first things I did when I found myself unsteadily alone was to drive the 3.6km to IKEA, purchase myself a small desk which came in a flat box, drag that flat box all by myself from the back of my KIA in the parking garage on level P4, up to my apartment because I didn’t NEED ANYONE GODDAMN IT.
Then, in a VERY HEIGHTENED STATE, I found the patience to unbox the millions of pieces that make up a small IKEA desk, and SOMEHOW put them all together.
When it was complete ( with no screws left over, just an Allen key) I placed the desk, with it’s companion NEW grey swivel chair (also IKEA, also in a flat box, also dragged from the parking garage to my apartment in a second trip), in front of my living room window that looked out at the only tree for blocks…and then I plopped my Macbook in the very middle of it.

I was a writer, goddamn it.
I would write myself out of this mess.
I would write EVERYDAY till I felt less and less like a giant walking, living, breathing mass of constantly missfiring electrons, again.
And I did indeed sit at that desk every damned day…and wrote.
I sat there every morning when I couldn’t sleep…and wrote.
I sat there every night when I couldn’t sleep…and wrote.
AND AND for two solid years, because I spent A LOT of time awake…most of the awake time that I had free was spent right there, at that IKEA desk…looking at my screen or staring out the window at that tree.

In the mass craziness that was the upheaval of my life, me putting that desk in front of that picture window was me declaring to myself, reminding myself, screaming to myself that I was a REAL writer…and further recognizing that writing has been and would continue to be, if I so chose it, my saviour.
No hyperbole.
Writing balances me, it grounds me…but mostly, it arranges all of my firing electrons into decipherable rows and groups, where I can see everything clearer…so I can figure out where it all goes and/or how to deal with it.

What a gift writing is…it was…and remains, for that matter.
Gratitude abounds for the day my friend Milo picked up some of my essays, written in long hand, that I’d forgotten I’d set on a trunk that served as a coffee table, read them, then held them up to me as I walked down my staircase and said

Milo: Did you write these? Sharron…these are really good.

I was 25 at the time.
I remember feeling a warmth in my chest that was new.
I remember every aspect of that moment.
Maybe…maybe I was a writer,

So, it felt weird that a quarter of a decade later, at the age of 50 (at the time my marriage ended and I bought that IKEA desk), after writing many shows, essays and articles, that I still had to convince myself that I was a REAL writer (whatever THAT really means), but convince myself I did…and continued to on a daily and nightly basis.
If even just writing for me to read.

ME to ME: Yes, I am REAL writer who likes to take a moment to look out the window whilst thinking of my next thing to write…the next thing to type to make myself smile…the next tale to remind myself that I find humour in many dire situations…essays to remind myself that life is a story…and, not to be TOO trite, a story that I can write the middle and the ending to…a story that I am the lead character of. Me.

Secret.
When I put that desk at my window?… I was channeling pure Carrie from SEX and the CITY vibes.
Messy, stylish, coltish, unsure, forward moving, self-possessed but still fucked-up like the rest of us, fictional New York writer, Carrie Bradshaw.
And I couldn’t help but wonder…how many women (and men, and humans) out there were like me?…
Desk in front of the window, poking madly on their MAC, feeling like a gal/dude/human about town, living their best, messed up life…thinking, “If Carrie can live through all that shit and write about it? So, can I.”

That little apartment she had, with its pictures standing on the table by the front door, the book cases, the old school buzzer and rotary phone, the closet filled with designer clothes, the REAL NY style bathroom, I loved it…it was a real depiction of a NY apartment.
Not like the main apartment from Friends…but a REAL sized, imperfect, super cute and interesting space…where a lady writer and life liver…lived…with her sweaters stored in the oven.
I wanted to be that cool.

I know my fandom and inspiration is controversial, because not everyone loved (or loves) the show…but I indeed loved and love the imperfect beast that is SEX and the CITY.

Women supporting women.
Women being single and loving it.
Women being single and hating it.
Women having great jobs.
Women wearing gorgeous clothes.
Women fucking whenever they wanted.
Women saying exactly what they wanted to say.
WOMEN SAYING EXACTLY WHAT WE ALL WANTED TO SAY.

Case in point, let’s go back in TV time to an episode when Samantha Jones is putting up flyers of her ex-boyfriend Richard all over Manhattan with the word CHEATER blazed across them. A cop (played by Greys Anatomy’s Chandra Wilson) approaches her, telling Samantha that it’s against the law to post flyers.

OH, the following line is NSFW, just FYI.

Samantha: This man told me he loved me and I found him eating another woman’s pussy.

Cop pauses.

Cop: Continue on, Ma’am. Continue.

Samantha was the OG.
Is STILL the OG…you go Kim Catrall.
And Carrie Bradshaw was and is a controversial character.
She is a mass of frustrating contradictions.
What always struck me as funny is that under it all, Carrie was the most prudish character on the show…on a show called, SEX and the CITY.
Carrie was never naked, and all three other women WERE naked…a lot.
In fact, Carrie never had many sex scenes at all, or if you really think about it, even talked about sex to the depths that Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha (of course) did…even though she wrote a column called, SEX and the CITY, on a TV show called, SEX and the CITY.
If you think back to their weekly breakfast/brunch banter, Carrie actually cringed when Samantha and Miranda talked about the specifics of the act.
Who knows why this character choice was made…was it SJP’s idea?…was it Darren Star’s idea? Who knows, but it was an odd choice…and actually kinda intriguing, if I’m being honest.
Carrie was more about finding love than having sex…which, I guess was part of the allure and possibly could have been part of the character choice.
She writes about sex, but is really just like the rest of us…looking for love.
And she messily stomped around NYC looking for love…for six seasons.
Well, and sometimes, sex.
Just keeping it real.

ALL that being said?
Yes, yes…I admit it, I loved the show.
I just fucking loved it…and still love going through the episodes when real life gets…well, too real.
The familiarity of these women, their shoes, their lives, their fictional successes and failures help me breathe, sometimes.
Through all of my rewatches of the series during the pandemic (twice…sue me..plus both movies…yes, both) I was buoyed, even though Carrie started to drive me more and more crazy, as I saw her life and mistakes through my own older experiences and views.
Suddenly, I found myself judging her as I sometimes judge myself when I look at back at the many stupid choices that I made, or things I said or did when I was younger…when I was flailing, trying to figure out who the hell I was.
But somehow, as I continued my pandemic rewatchings, I started to find a peace in which I accepted her “flaws” or “choices”, which gave me space to give myself break on my own “flaws” and “choices”.

Don’t tell me that this show didn’t teach me shit.

So, when I sat alone in my apartment on my couch near the IKEA desk by the window, day after day, night after long pandemic night, I still wanted to be her…controversial correction: WANT to be her in some way…even though she was/is indecisive, always wanted/wants what she didn’t have, and worst of all, even though she was a cheater…she was a big-ass cheater, a couple of times over.
The scenarios in which she cheated weren’t unreal at all, but because I wanted to be Carrie-esque so much, I felt in my heart that she was super shitty cheating with Big, cheating on Aiden, cheating on Aiden with Big, kissing Aiden in Abu Dahbi while married to Big (yes, I’ve watched that movie a number of times, speaking of “flaws’ and “choices”, mine AND theirs)..those parts were ALL HIGHLY FRUSTRATING to watch.
I screamed at my TV when she was running down Big’s back staircase from Natasha (Big’s wife who he was cheating on with Carrie), I yelled at her when she left in the elevator with the kohl eyes to have a date with Aiden in Abu Dhabi, I rolled my eyes and LOUDLY groaned when she invited Big up to Aiden’s cottage…almost as much as I screamed at my TV when she told Aiden she would quit smoking to be with him, because he didn’t like a smoker.
And she just wanted to be what he wanted.

Girl.

I didn’t want her to have that cheating flaw…or any flaws at all, really…but she did.
May I also add here that Charlotte’s Pollyanna attitude drove/drives me nuts. NUTS. And I’ve never got over it.
But if we are talking Samantha and Miranda…I say yes…yes, yes, yes. ALL the yes.
Complicated, unapologetic, in charge, take-no-prisoners women.
And together? These women and their characters and character flaws made sense to me.

Yes indeed, I wanted to be them.
I wanted to be like them.
I wanted to wear the clothes.
I wanted to have that life.
VERY secretly, even though I was married at the time, I wondered what it would be like to be single and have a desk in front of a window in my own super cool apartment, where I could be flawed and call my own shots…being control and in charge of my life, with only myself to look after.

But, here is the MAIN deal….HERE is the meat of it all…FAT girls didn’t get to be on SEX and the CITY.

Yup, I said it.
It didn’t even piss me off back then, not when I first watched the series…or even on the any of the many rewatches… it just was what it was.
Thin women were the heros on Sex and the City.
Thin women were heros on TV.
FAT women were the clowns.

I want to point out here that I’ve NEVER called myself a fat girl.
Ever.
While I have fought long and hard with my body image as Sharron the person, as Sharron the actress/performer?…I have NEVER seen myself that way.
Not ever.
As some of you may know, I’ve have aggressively fought ANYONE putting that word on me.
I was not a fat actress.
I am not a fat actress.
I was an actress.
I am an actress.
WAIT!! An actor, even.
And I fight this good fight…and in my books it IS a very good fight…EVERY DAMNED DAY.

SIDEBAR (and it’s a long one):
Just yesterday, I put up a post on my socials about people labelling themselves as FAT in pictures ie: “This is FAT ME”, “I am SO FAT in this picture”, etcetera….you get the vibe, I’m sure.
These kinds of posts happen ALL the time, but January is the Niagara Falls of body shaming.
It’s happened every excruciating year, since socials became a thing.
So, it’s happened for A WHILE and it’s shitty…it’s just shitty.
In my post of yesterday, I asked people not to label themselves that way, explaining that it’s harmful and hurtful on many levels…and wholly unnecessary.
I wrote the post because I’ve read some things recently that made me DEEPLY realize that one of the major things that bothers me when people do this kind of labeling, is that when a big person reads it…they know that they are judged on their size by the label-ee.
They are.
How could they not be?
Usually these things are said by friends and family members who inhabit BIG places in the readers day to day life.
And then these wonderful humans suffer, usually in silence, existing in the world with people who have expressed IN SOME WAY or another that they are OTHER or not worthy.
Imagine loving someone who makes fat jokes, or thinks THEY are fat when they weigh substantially less than you…and point it out.
Imagine.
These New Year-New You-FAT Me posts used to make ME feel OTHER…but not anymore…not everyday, anyway…at least, not NEARLY as much as they used to.
Since I have a bit of a following, I decided years ago to always take the New Year-New You-FAT Me moment to write my thoughts on people using the word FAT to describe what they perceive to be a character flaw, an unacceptable Christmas (or pandemic) weight gain or simply pointing at the the worst thing they believe about themselves for everyone to read.
Whatever journey to self love ANYONE is on is impacted by this kind of talk…so, really, what is the positive outcome of this kind of labeling, if any?
The person who thinks they’re fat hates themselves and shares it with someone who maybe is fat and then THAT person hates themselves for not being worthy in the eyes of someone they love or admire.. in the Six Degrees of Real Bacon.
I’m going to say it again in another way…what is anyone losing or gaining (the irony) by labeling themselves this way for everyone to see?
What is the worthiness of this action?
AGAIN! AS I SAID IN MY SHOW FOR KIDS…NO ONE EVER USED THE WORD FAT TO COMPLIMENT SOMEONE.
(Please don’t @ me about FAT ASSES)

Anyhow, this morning, I woke to a bunch of text messages AND a long stream of vitriol in my DM’s from someone I have been a friend to for about ten years, who just RAILED me about my 2022 New Year-New You-FAT Me-BE KIND post.
They spewed grossness over the internet at me on TWO platforms, angry with me to the point of swearing at me for telling them they could not say the word FAT (I never said that, I asked PEOPLE not to ), then this person asked me who the fuck I thought I was…THEN they made fun of my work…THEN they took the grown-up tact of trying to make me feel stupid about something terrible happening to me that was totally unrelated…THEN they wrote out their whole battle with dieting and fitness, their loss of beer and pizza, to prove to me why they should be able to call themselves FAT in old pictures..
THEN, the cherry on top of the pizza or bacon, was when they told me that they ALWAYS hated my preachy writings and asked why couldn’t I just “rock it” instead?

Huh. Friend.

So, in VERY simple terms…THIS is what I read…

“Sharron, why don’t you just shut the fuck up…let me call myself whatever I want now that I am skinnier so people know that I KNOW I was unworthy and fat in this picture from olden days that I am putting up anyway and want to qualify…also, stop writing what you are feeling…I wanna say what I wanna say because I like it and I always have and I don’t wanna change….and because you challenged the way I think, HERE are some things that will hurt you, like you hurt me, so that you will think twice about speaking your mind again”

I could be wrong, but this email has been sent to me TOO many times for me not to recognize the format.
WAY too many times.

Sad, right?
Why do people defend the right to be shitty?
I will never get over it.
I will also NEVER stop writing about it.

ALSO ALSO, it bears mentioning that I always lose tons of followers with those posts, and today was NO different.
I have one word for the people who unfollow and for the “friend” who tore me a new one this morning.

BYE!!!!!!

ALSO ALSO ALSO, and this is a REAL sidebar, this same man (yes, a man) who railed on me on two different social platforms about a post that he assumed (AND WRONGLY, I might add…lord jesus help us all) was about him, a man who is at least 5 years older than me, said in follow-up weird ass apology that he felt like he’d “upset his favourite TV aunt…”

Girl.

WHAT!?!?!

Read the room.

I’m WAY past upset. This mfer even tried to OTHER my emotions.

I was fucking ANGRY.

AND I’m actually going to leave the “TV aunt” thing where it belongs…the mental garage fire.

END OF VERY LONG SIDEBAR.

BACK to it.
AS I waited for the highly anticipated reboot of SEX in the CITY, titled AND JUST LIKE THAT, I read in the advance press about all the changes they were making on the show to address the multitudes of people who had been ignored as living major, leading player lives in New York City, during the first six seasons.
To say the very least, I was excited to see how the show would change.

My simplest joyful anticipation was that I was excited to see women of all expressions, who were over 50, being fabulous.

Well, as we all know from articles, socials, our own eyes and main stream media, the reception of AND JUST LIKE THAT has been mixed.
With ALL of it’s major fault’s, I will say it’s comforting to see this trio (SAMANTHA IS HIGHLY MISSED, TO SAY THE VERY LEAST) back on the screen, women over 50 and mostly embracing it, and a real breath to see these women interacting and having scenes with other women, women who are from different backgrounds.

But what I wouldn’t give for one fabulous FAT (yes, I said it…if it needs to be clear…there it is) woman living her life, dressed to the nines, successful as fuck, sexy as hell and ruling New York.

This desperate want was poked at me as the scene that I transcribed at the top of this post was played out on my Samsung TV screen two nights ago.

Seema’s Mother: “Is he fat? Ugly?”

FUCK.

I sighed, was immediately sad, and paused the scene with my Apple TV controller, and laid down on my blue leather couch, in my new condo that I call an apartment because it sounds cosmopolitan…just feet away from my desk by the window.

“Is he Fat? Ugly?”

Is this still a thing?
Is this still a joke?
Is this still a qualifier?
Is this still worthy of writing?
I was hoping that the new series would make bigger changes.
What a gut-punching disappointment.
In 2022.
AND frankly? The trope is just boring…and cliche…and dated.
AND at the risk of this reading like I think I’m fancy enough that anyone who had anything to do with the show would read anything I wrote, and/or possibly fucking myself over in some weird way, I will say this with great sadness…IT’S JUST FUCKING LAZY WRITING.
How could this show…this show that I love…this show that got me sitting in front of my single, hurting-lady apartment window writing myself to a new life, to self-acceptance and joy…EVER feature or celebrate a big person, or even hire a big person as a lead if THIS stupid joke/thing/qualifier made it into a script in 2022, and then made it past many, many, many people to get to screen, AND was written by a woman, AND AND was spoken to the lead character (an actress who is an executive producer) AND AND AND made it to air, past a female director…to where thousands, if not MILLIONS of women (and men) heard it…and felt, either consciously or unconsciously, OTHER.
Felt unworthy.

The suckage here, is massive.

Anyone reading this MAY think I’m overreacting, but let me assure you, I write about this A LOT, and have dealt with this in my work since I was young enough to know that fat-was-not-where-it-was-at and thin-was-in…I’m not overreacting.
Dear writers, creators, directors, and producers who let lazy writing like that by, whatever size we are at out here at the time, we hear you.
WE see you. We feel it.

Enough.

As I’ve said MANY times, it’s my deepest dream and wish, that more people of size…fabulous people of size…appear in shows where their size is not the reason that they are there or exist in the world.

I wish, wish, wish for, vision board, meditate on, and talk about women and men and humans of size that will be hired, written about and featured because they are humans who love, who live, who fail, who succeed, who rule, who serve, who have regular and extraordinary lives.

THERE ARE LITERALLY MILLIONS OF US/THEM.

And if you are sick of reading me writing about this shit?
THINK OF HOW SICK I AM HAVING TO WRITE IT…AGAIN…EVERY YEAR…and having to continue to hear from people like my “friend’ who don’t see why it’s a problem.

HIRE BIG PEOPLE IN LEADING ROLLS FOR NO APPARENT REASON!!
Just put them in a part with no qualifier.
Make them a mad and passionate story line because it’s just fucking cool.
Let them crash in a plane on a deserted island with a wonderful, mysterious and grumpy love interest that they can out swim.
Write them fabulous, accomplished, happy, active, not hungry, eating, desirable, desired, broken, whole, loved, loving, brave, smart, adventurous, funny, serious…write them, well…WRITE THEM! WRITE US EVERYTHING.

BUT just in case, since I’ve kept up the Carrie Bradshaw practice of sitting in front of a window at my desk (I still have the same desk from IKEA) in my new wonderful home, and I still methodically and joyously remind myself daily that I’m a REAL writer, I know that I FOR SURE will do THAT very thing.

I will write big people doing, being, living, and DESIRING EVERYTHING.

January 8th, 2022 – S.M.
Toronto, ON.

As always, thanks for following along…if you want to subscribe, fill in the box below. I always leave these up for a day or so, to rewrite, before I promote them…so who KNOWS what you will read that I eventually decide is too much for the world at large. : ) BE WELL AND HAPPY NEW YEAR AGAIN!!