In “Sex and the City,” Carrie Bradshaw never wrote much about her hair. She didn’t have to. Her trademark mane – her long, golden, curly shock of hair – perhaps just as iconic as her Manolo Blahnik strappy sandals, spoke volumes for itself. And it said as much about her psychological state of mind as her inner monologue did.
With the release of the “Sex and the City” movie to arrive on our shores May 30, we thought we’d take a look at the locks of “SATC” throughout the years, and what those hairdos say about our heroines.
Think about the opening credits: Carrie, as played by Sarah Jessica Parker, floats through the streets of New York City in a nearly see-through pink tank and fluffy ballerina skirt. Her hair is kinky-curly, controlled on top by a hair clip, and frosted so you can deliberately see the roots and dark brown (the deeper side) under her blonde surface. This, in a city in which sophisticated women pay for subtle, blended highlights, blow-outs and $100 ceramic irons to have their hair neat, crisp and straight. This, in a city where pea coats and tailored suits in black, gray and navy signify style and grace.
Carrie’s hair announces: I am quirky! I am different! I am a writer whose worldview is askew, whose relationships are complete disasters. And when she splashed by a bus with a more styled, airbrushed version of herself on the side, all the black pea coats turn to stare. I don’t think it’s the muddy water or her alleged celebrity that has them staring. They’re thinking, “A 32-year-old in a tutu? Really?”
In the pilot of “Sex,” aired in 1998, Carrie is a too-cute-for-words sprite with a twinkle in her eye. She’s ordinary-looking – the shoulder-length full-bore curly ‘do was hardly blond at all, more brown with coppery tones – but brimming with confidence to “have sex like a man.”
That is, until she meets Mr. Big, played by Chris Noth. On Episode 2, she’s much blonder, almost platinum in spots, sporting her big, trademark root-showing streaky curls, and she’s about to fall into the downward spiral of obsession and neediness.
The second season is perhaps biggest roller coaster in terms of Carrie’s (now extraordinarily long) hair and her emotional state. As she’s recovering from the first breakup with Mr. Big, her hair is unkempt, blond, long and stringy, with a limp, lifeless spiral curl. Even when she’s trying to dress up, she looks a mess.
When she gets Big back, she suddenly cracks out the hair dryer and straightening iron, her tame and ever-lighter blond hair parted in the middle and touching the small of her back. Her attempt at being more chic and straightened shows how desperate she is to fit into his upscale world. When he is out of the picture again, the wash-and-wear curls spring back.
In the third and fourth seasons, Carrie introduces the distinctly two-tone look, platinum blond on top, and deep brown in back. Sometimes she will tame this look with a curling iron, with big, intentional spirals. This ‘do is accompanied by some of Carrie’s most hideous hippie fashion atrocities, brightly colored patchwork coats and tie-dyed jumpers to show how this oddball fashionista could fall for a back-to-nature granola guy like Aidan, played by John Corbett.
The fourth season is also when she starts trotting out her ridiculous top-of-the-head buns.
When her last go-round with Aidan goes terribly wrong at the end of Season 4, she chops her bohemian locks off.
Which brings us to Carrie’s short fifth-season run of blond above-the-shoulder hair. At first, it seems cute, hipsterish, almost. But eventually, it just reeks of trying-too-hard, all Ziegfeld Girl with her overly styled curls or straightened flips.
Carrie spends “Part 1″ the sixth and final season growing her hair out, starting from a very blonde, very straight, medium-length look. But the time “Part 2″ kicks off, she has grown her flowing mane back – frizz, curls, highlights, roots and all — so at the end, she was nearly a brunette, but always, always with defiant streak of gold. Always feminine, and always quirky with hair as neurotic and out-of-control as she is.
When it comes to her co-heroines, perhaps Charlotte’s hair remains the most unchanged through the six seasons. Charlotte, played by Kristin Davis always has proper bouncy, shampoo-commercial quality, Upper East Side hair – chocolately brown, silky and blow-dried to straight perfection. If Charlotte is feeling saucy, she’ll roll with a little curl. Only once or twice in six years, Charlotte loses her cool enough to have a frizzy day.
Samantha’s blond hair, on the other hand, is always breezy-looking, sexy, light bangs and medium-length layers to highlight her easy sexuality. On occasion, she will spice things up with Marilyn curls. Samantha doesn’t let her emotions or hair get crazy until the sixth season, when she loses her hair to chemotherapy, and like Sampson, also loses her powerful libido. Oddly she dons out a series of crazy cheap-looking wigs, from a Farrah Fawcett flip to Foxy Brown Afro before her hair grows back.
Miranda, however, has hair as emotive as Carrie’s. The character played by Cynthia Nixon starts out with a short, uber-masculine boy haircut, fiery red, to showcase her independence, cynicism and ferocity. She has rejected men and the trappings of dainty, girlish beauty. Yet, even though she has some version of the urban mullet for four seasons, her hair changes dramatically from scene to scene, from slicked-down and chic to retro ’80s bouffant, from the weird wet-dog to “I’ve been tearing my hair out” disheveled. It reflects he as she veers wildly between a woman who feels smart, powerful and sexy to a girl who feels so desperately insecure about her own attractiveness and worth she dates a whole string of losers and panics about the thought of dying alone.
Miranda is also the most punished character on the show, so she is, of course, saddled with the burden of being a single mom. After the birth and while she’s still carrying her baby weight, she starts sporting a rather dumpy new-mom page boy, died an orangey red that looks almost clownish in certain light.
Finally, in the sixth and final season, Miranda lightens up and realizes how sexy she is. In the process of becoming softer and more feminine, she gets a breezy, layered, above-the-shoulders haircut, feminine and natural-looking red, that finally reveals her beauty. For all her newfound confidence and sexiness, she was rewarded with a fling with an uber-hot doctor played by Blair Underwood and finally marriage to her best friend and baby-daddy Steve, played by David Eigenberg.
It might seem like a small thing, but Carrie Bradshaw, for all her self-absorbed navel-gazing and miscommunication and bad puns and fashion obsession, has been a hair pioneer of sorts. She insists – nay, demands – that wild, unkempt, roots-revealing curly hair be regarded as chic and stylish. She let women stop buying into stereotypes like “Men don’t like curly hair” and stop spending oodles of money on straightening products. While she was also always girlish, Miranda is her no-nonsense counterpart who defends the sexiness of short, androgynous hairstyles. In the show, there was a look for every personality, not one more fashionable than the others.
So what will the locks say in the upcoming “Sex and the City” movie? We shall see
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