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I’ll never forget the first time I laid eyes on Carrie Bradshaw. I was nine years old, sitting on the carpeted floor in the hallway of my childhood home, covertly peering through the crack of my parent’s bedroom door. It was HBO Sunday, and they were watching the Sex and the City episode where Samantha Jones sets out to have a threesome with a gay couple, David and David. But really, truly, what struck me most was Carrie’s wild mane of flaxen curls. They were astonishingly similar to my own, even though, at the time, they were largely concealed by the Italian mobster-style low ponytail my straight-haired mom was scraping my hair back into every morning.
It was one of the first times I saw a spiraled mane like mine worn big and unbridled on TV. Whether hunched over her laptop in her brownstone apartment or traipsing around the village in one of her iconic $7-vintage-dress-$300-shoes combinations, Carrie wore her curls so effortlessly and glamorously. Up until then, I, like many young people in the ’90s and early aughts, believed that straight hair (like the kind you saw in glossy John Freida Frizz Ease ads) was paramount. It hadn’t occurred to me that my hair could be something to embrace, let alone covet as much as one might Carrie’s single-and-fabulous lifestyle or her eye-watering collection of Manolo Blahniks.
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Now, I admit that while clocking Carrie’s curls on SATC was pivotal for me in coming to terms with my God-given spirals, it would be over a decade before I had the confidence to own it. By the time I stopped obsessively straightening my hair (thanks in no small part to the intel I gathered as a beauty editor and long overdue representation of hair across the textured spectrum), Carrie’s curls as seen in the original series were a thing of the past.
I’m a firm believer that people should wear their hair in whatever way feels best, and often, that’s something that evolves over time. No one should be beholden to their natural texture. But, as the premiere of the second season of And Just Like That… approached in tandem with Sex and the City’s 25th anniversary, I—forgive me!—couldn’t help but wonder: What would it be like if Carrie Bradshaw’s curls bounced back? The new cascade of waves she’s been wearing in the reboot have an air of the old Carrie–they’re a bit fuzzy, a bit undone–but overall they convey a much more polished and sophisticated version of Carrie. I prefer Carrie when she’s mired in chaos. In the past, Carrie would have been the first to tell you that her unpredictable, no-two-days-are-the-same curls embody her essence.
At the end of season two, there’s that scene where Carrie, Miranda, Samantha, and Charlotte are sipping Cosmos at a bar around the corner from Mr. Big’s engagement brunch to Natasha at The Plaza. The girls liken Carrie’s situation to Barbara Streisand’s character Katie in The Way We Were. Miranda explains that Robert Redford’s character Hubbell Gardner couldn’t be with Katie “because she’s too complicated...and she has wild, curly hair.” To which Carrie, holding up a few of her ringlety strands, says, “Hello? C-c-c-curly.” Miranda continues: “He leaves her and marries this...simple girl with straight hair.” Then and there, Carrie decides the world is made of two types of women: The “simple” girls and the “Katie” girls. “I’m a ‘Katie’ girl, and where are our drinks?” After confronting her Hubbell, Mr. Big, Carrie hypothesized: “Maybe some women aren’t meant to be tamed. Maybe they just need to run free until they find someone just as wild to run with them.”
Rewatching this scene, how can you not be nostalgic for Carrie’s untamed curls? “Before a scene would shoot, [Sarah] would run her hands through her hair to get it going; that was her vibe,” recalled hairstylist Sacha Quarles, who worked with Sarah Jessica Parker on SATC seasons two, three, and four. “It wasn’t just a magazine cover. It was beauty with a real-life feel to it.” Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for her elevated waves on And Just Like That... Again, is 2023 Carrie’s prerogative to have a new, more controlled, more precise hair look. Unlike the old days, she can certainly afford the weekly blowouts that set the stage for her artfully crafted bends.
But hear me out: Carrie bringing her curls back wouldn’t just be a delight to curly-haired women like myself. It would also offer an intriguing arc for her character. Her curls will always show she isn’t afraid to break the mold or take up space with her visual self-expression; they communicate her individuality and irreverence. As Carrie continues to come back to herself in the aftermath of Mr. Big’s death, returning to her curls would be a thrilling plot device—both literally and figuratively (Hire me, HBO!). I mean, seriously, if Aidan Shaw can have a resurgence, why can’t Carrie’s curls?