Of course, it’s not just body shape. It’s also age. When And Just Like That opened its second season with a montage of Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte et al all heading towards bed with their partners, it was criticised for having too much sex (just as season one was criticised for having not enough sex). These ladies – all women in their 50s – can’t win! Or they can’t win full stop because they are older women enjoying an active sex life.
When Sex and the City premiered in 1998, it was considered groundbreaking that four women could be so open about sex. They talked about it, they boasted about it, they tried it every which way (and on Sundays). But fast-forward 20-plus years and, suddenly, it’s a bit icky?
And just like that ... Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) reunites with former fiance Aiden (John Corbett).Credit: HBO/Binge
Granted, the writing on And Just Like That isn’t as snappy as it once was on Sex and the City, but what hasn’t changed is the show’s approach to sex. Think back to the first season of Sex and the City, early on Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) is nude from the waist up. No bother, that’s what Sex and the City was all about. But when the same thing happened in And Just Like That? It was called sloppy and awkward, with one headline yelling, “Stop getting sex wrong!” Never mind that Miranda was having the most adventurous sex of the lot of them, with her nonbinary lover Che, but because she was an older woman it was somehow OK to make fun of her.
Michael Patrick King, the showrunner behind Sex and the City and the sequel series, defended the approach to sex in both shows, telling The Hollywood Reporter it was always meant to be “glamorous or aspirational or funny”. Again, things women of a certain age were never allowed to be.
Even on reality television, we are routinely presented with contestants who are basically hot (usually white, hetero and tanned, destined for extra screen time) or not (the dorks and virgins who will be voted off quickly or used as an entertaining B-plot).
The final word on all this goes to Coughlan, who even before the Bridgerton hype was destined to be a star with her breakout turn in Derry Girls. In a column Coughlan wrote for The Guardian in 2018, in response to a theatre review in which she was called a “fat little girl”, she said: “I hope in the future that more people will talk about our work, our inspirations, our drive, rather than our looks. A revolution is happening, and I want to play my part in it.”
In Bridgerton, Coughlan beautifully played her part. Let’s just hope everyone else catches up.
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