6 hours ago
8
There are so many things to despise about the new season of And Just Like That, the Sex and the City spin-off, that criticising it is like shooting shoes in a barrel. (Speaking of which, why is Carrie Bradshaw’s cat called Shoe? Surely it should be Manolo Pussnik or something?) But I was still pettily pleased to find a small community of freeze-framers forensically dissecting Bradshaw’s bathroom cabinet, briefly revealed in episode six. Because even I – a person who hasn’t exfoliated since the late queen got excited about cows – thought it was full of totally off-brand … well, brands.
The dreary drugstore sunscreen, sponges and old soap felt jarring. Plus, what’s with the weirdly prominent Tums? Is it product placement or is acid reflux aspirational now? Someone on Substack better versed in SATC lore than me wrote an impressively exhaustive analysis of why some products (a particular nail varnish; Pond’s cold cream) made sense, but even she thought much of it was wrong. Carrie dresses like Marie Antoinette attending a rival’s wedding just to sit in her mansion writing her (execrable) novel; I agree with the Redditor who commented: “She’d be using La Mer. La Prairie Skin Caviar. That Guerlain Impériale nonsense that you’d have to remortgage your house to afford.”
Maybe someone painstakingly selected every product, but it feels more like a missed opportunity, because a bathroom cabinet is far more revealing than even a fridge. I’m not a peeper – honest – but open shelves in other people’s bathrooms are fascinating, from feral-looking scruffs revealed to be followers of 10-step Korean skincare routines, to Instagram princesses somehow conjuring a glazed doughnut glow from a cracked bar of Imperial Leather and an economy tub of Vaseline. A survey of my own bathroom cabinet reveals a forest of manky interdental brushes, HRT, cracked-heel balm, ibuprofen galore and, weirdly, a broken light switch, betraying the dentally challenged, desiccated, headachy, oestrogen-depleted mess behind the, ahem, polished exterior. So if And Just Like That won’t give us bathroom glamour like the escapist fluff it’s supposed to be, it needs to double down on realism: let’s have neck retinol, vaginal oestrogen, cystitis treatments and citalopram.
