Big Love

I started watching Sex and the City the summer between middle school and my first year of highschool. As we all know, at that age we are all just clay wearing knee high converses, waiting to be molded by the world around us.

I started watching Sex in the City because the title said sex and I’m thirteen, raging with hormones and I, too, live in the city. From the first episode I was hooked. 

Glamorous Carrie, a successful journalist, navigates the fragile balance between her work, love and social life in my very own hometown! For all I knew, I was thirteen going on thirty and I would have Carrie’s life any minute now. 

Part of that dream life was the dream guy: Mr. Big. I can’t believe they named him that and we were all just like “mmm I love Mr. Big!” for years, but that’s besides the point. Getting back to what I was saying, the life I wanted so badly included this man. The tall, dark and handsome man who would just bump into me on Fifth Avenue, spill all the condoms out of my purse and then fall head over heels for me. 

I remember my Mom catching me binging the show that summer and saying “I always hated Big”. I was shocked. My own mother? Hating the man of my dreams?! At that point I just chalked it up to the fact that he looked like my Dad and he had been annoying her an awful lot lately.

So, I kept my thoughts to myself and kept binging. I finished the whole series within a few weeks, but stored in the back of my mind was this image of love. The all consuming, dramatic, painstaking love. The love that you have to fight for and takes over any logical side of yourself. The love that constantly see-saws between extremes of depression and ecstasy. 

Of course my daily to-do list never read “find a love like Big”, but that schema of love remained as a lens through which I assessed all my romantic relationships. And if you haven’t guessed already, this was not a good thing. 

Eventually, freshman year of college, I found my Big. Although he was less tall, dark and handsome and more average and blonde, he checked all the other boxes. He had the apartment, the weirdly close relationship with his catholic mother, and, most importantly, complete emotional unavailability.

Our love was pure ecstasy. Except for when it wasn’t, which was around every few days, when I would reach those depths of depression. The logical side of myself told me to end things, which I did several times. But love supersedes logic, right? 

Much like Big and Carrie, the relationship consumed me in a way that chewed me up and spit me out, over and over. It was exhausting and hurt immensely, but that’s what love is, right? Painstakingly passionate?

 Inevitably, because I am a person and not a fictional character, the pain got too hard and I left Mr. Big, for good this time. 

After months of withdrawal, tears, and avoiding anything to do with love, I decided I was ready to watch a old favorite show of mine that dealt with it directly: Sex and the City. I skipped around episodes and landed on the ever dramatic --SPOILER ALERT-- Carrie cheats on Aiden with Big episode. 

Listen, if you haven’t watched the show and none of this is making sense, just go watch it, come back, and read this; it’ll click. 

As soon as I started it, I was struck with the flashback of my mother’s words, “I always hated Big”; this was the episode I was watching then. Primed with that memory, I watched as Big, the man I always wanted, chases after an adamantly unconsenting Carrie, pushes her into an elevator, and takes advantage of her.

Glass shattered before my eyes. I couldn’t believe that this was the man I had placed on a pedestal for so long. This was the relationship I wanted? One in which the guy doesn’t respect my boundaries or wishes? Someone selfish, who takes what they want when they want it with no regard for what I would want?

It’s a form of dehumanization that has been ingrained in my head as part of what it means to be loved. That a man loves you if he forces himself upon you. He loves you if he places his desire to be with you over your desires. If he chases you. 

And if you really look at the media we have consumed, this troupe runs rampant. Damon and Elena in The Vampire Diaries, Blair and Chuck in Gossip Girl, and just the entire premise of You. 

And then what happens once these characters get the girl? A tumultuous relationship; an endless loop of break ups leaving the woman shattered and waiting for the man to return to her once again so that she can feel that ecstasy of “true love”. 

All the shows I lived vicariously through when I was young gave me this toxic idea of love in which a man weaponizes emotion to control the woman. It took me a Big relationship to realize this and I wonder if that would’ve been the case if the toxic love trope didn’t exist.

I understand why these teen dramas create these bi-polar relationships. The drama of it is like drawing a moth to a flame. But, media shapes many important concepts in our lives and creators have a responsibility to understand the impact of their content and mitigate the negative effects on their audiences.   

I am happy to see that we are now entering a time in which content creators are more aware of the influence they have on their consumers, while consumers flag harmful content. I hope this trend eradicates the “Mr. Big’s” on television so that girls can hold a safe image of love in mind. 

by Phoebe McKinley, Cornell ‘22