Sex and the City Math is All Sorts of Wrong

When we were in college, Sex and the City was still on the air, making girls and gays giggle on Sundays. We watched with baited breath each week as Carrie Bradshaw muddled through the trenches of romance, marriage, friendship and all the other urban perks of being fabulous and young(ish) in New York. Oh how we aspired to be her, that Carrie Bradshaw. So much so that we hopped on the next bus to New York, fresh-faced from college graduation, diploma in hand. We found a cozy (infinitely small) apartment in the East Village and wrote our hearts out in our quest to sleep our way through all the gay men in New York and chronicle it.

Reality hit us hard. We now know how much writers' earn, on average, and we saw how Carrie lived and yet chose to ignore what seemed to be a huge disparity betwixt reality and fantasy, but now thanks to The Frenemy (via Refinery29), we've got confirmation: Carrie Bradshaw had a side job as a drug lord to pay for her lifestyle. In other words, if she only worked on one weekly column (and later wrote $4/word articles for Vogue) girlfriend could barely -- just barely -- cover rent and utilities on an UES one-bedroom apartment. So where does that leave food (countless lunches and dinners and brunches with the girls, seeing as you have one thing to do each week -- write about your very own life), the cabs, and the booze? In the real world, it means lots of Ramen -- but for Bradshaw its all champagne and cute over-priced diners. And don't even get The Frenemy started on the clothing and shoe allowance. She'd have to get paid in barrels of oil per word to afford that crap she bought (but sometimes that crap was so fabulous we gagged).

The article is lengthy, but pretty hysterical and worth a read, if you've got the time (c'mon, it's Wednesday, you know you do). There are some amazing quotes in there, especially the kicker: Carrie Bradshaw, you dream-crushing, bone-crushing bitch.

But hot damn, we sure did love that dream-crushing, bone crushing bitch.