{"id":42451,"date":"2021-12-08T17:23:45","date_gmt":"2021-12-08T17:23:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/?post_type=articles&p=42451"},"modified":"2021-12-08T17:23:45","modified_gmt":"2021-12-08T17:23:45","slug":"and-just-like-that-miranda-hair","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/and-just-like-that-miranda-hair\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Unsolicited Thoughts About Miranda\u2019s Hair On \u2018And Just Like That\u2026\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Cynthia
Cynthia Nixon in And Just Like That…<\/i> (Photo: Craig Blankenhorn \/ HBO Max)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A lot has been said\u2014or, you know, posted<\/em>\u2014about the way the characters in HBO\u2019s new Sex and the City <\/em>follow-up<\/a> have aged. Which is to say, how the women playing them have aged; the choices they\u2019ve made about their appearance, whether they\u2019ve had cosmetic surgery, etc. Star and executive producer Sarah Jessica Parker<\/a> even commented<\/a> on the \u201cmisogynist chatter\u201d online in a recent profile<\/a>. \u201c\u2018Gray hair gray hair gray hair. Does she have gray hair?\u2019 I\u2019m sitting with Andy Cohen and he has a full head of gray hair, and he\u2019s exquisite. Why is it okay for him? I don\u2019t know what to tell you people!\u201d<\/p>\n

Gray hair. God help me, that\u2019s what I want to talk about. Or, actually, not so much gray<\/em> hair as the absence<\/em> of red hair.<\/p>\n

Parker is right, obviously. Women, particularly those in the public eye<\/a>, exist in this impossible double-bind: as they age, they\u2019re either criticized for looking too old or for the cosmetic procedures they choose to have. There was literally a Samantha (Kim Cattrall<\/a>) storyline about this in Season 5, which I\u2019ve only just remembered<\/a>. So, to be clear, I\u2019m not interested in being prescriptive about what the women on And Just Like That\u2026<\/em> \u201cshould\u201d look like or in critiquing what they\u2019ve chosen to do or not do to their bodies.<\/p>\n

But since the very first promo images of Cynthia Nixon, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kristen Davis started appearing online, I\u2019ve been thinking about a particular aesthetic trope: the blonde, brunette and redhead as a sort of holy trinity of female archetypes. It\u2019s an oft repeated motif in film and TV going all the way back, apparently, to The Andrews Sisters. The most recognizable example is probably Cher, Susan Sarandon and Michelle Pfeiffer in The Witches of Eastwick<\/em><\/a>, but we\u2019ve seen it more recently in Mad Men<\/em><\/a> and the first season of Big Little Lies<\/em><\/a> and, briefly, in Being the Ricardos<\/em><\/a>. It\u2019s an oddly pleasing visual troika, which the original Sex and the City<\/em> satisfied via Carrie\u2019s trio of BFFs: blonde Samantha, brunette Charlotte and red-haired Miranda.<\/p>\n

\"Kristen
Kristen Davis, Kim Cattrall and Nixon in the first Sex and the City<\/i> movie (Photo: courtesy of Paramount Home Entertainment)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Of course, these characters represented types, so it\u2019s hard to imagine that the color of their hair wasn\u2019t intentional. Samantha was the blonde bombshell; Charlotte, while not exactly mousy<\/em>, was the most reserved and traditional; and Miranda was, for much of the series, the angriest, the most fiery<\/em>. Interestingly, and perhaps unsurprisingly, you never see trios of men grouped in this way. Male characters, after all, have the privilege of being fully rounded and not reduced to easy categories like the slut, the prude and the ball-buster. As Sex and the City<\/em> author Candace Bushnell pointed out in a recent interview<\/a>, \u201cThe first thing men do is categorize women into types. That\u2019s how you sell things.\u201d That certainly seems to be what the cis male creator and showrunner of Sex and the City<\/em> did when they cast the show.<\/p>\n

In the new series, however, Miranda\u2019s hair is no longer red. Nixon, a natural blonde, sports gray hair in And Just Like That\u2026<\/em> (Though recent video of Nixon filming a scene with the actor who plays Miranda\u2019s son shows her in what appears to be a red wig.) Without having seen the show yet, it\u2019s hard to say what\u2019s behind the choice. Was it Nixon\u2019s call to not dye her hair, or is this part of Miranda\u2019s character arch? That remains to be seen, but it does make a certain sense for the character. She\u2019s a working mother and has always been the most down-to-earth of Carrie\u2019s inner circle.<\/p>\n

\"Nixon,
Nixon, Parker and Davis in And Just Like That…<\/i> (Photo: courtesy of HBO Max)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But I would hazard to guess that there\u2019s even more to it than that. So much of the project of And Just Like That\u2026 <\/em>seems to be about shaking off aspects of the original show that seem objectionable in retrospect. The new series has added<\/a> four women of color<\/a> as series regulars<\/a> to correct for Sex and the City<\/em>\u2019s relentless whiteness. (And, of course, it has to be acknowledged that the blonde-brunette-redhead thing tends to be an extremely white phenomenon.) Is it too much to hope that the show\u2019s writers have also jettisoned the rigid categories into which Charlotte and Miranda so often fell? Even over the course of the original series\u2019 six seasons, the characters deepened and changed, letting go of some of their more artificially defining traits. Judging from the official trailer and a Miranda-focused teaser that surfaced on Instagram this week, Miranda is still Miranda<\/em> in And Just Like That\u2026<\/em> But the gray hair may be a signal that we shouldn\u2019t approach this new story thinking of her as the feisty, cynical type<\/em> she once was.<\/p>\n

Still, looking at the photos of Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte from this latest incarnation of Sex and the City<\/em>, I can\u2019t help but feel an involuntary pang of disappointment, of longing for Miranda\u2019s red hair. The trifecta\u2014with Carrie now filling the blonde role\u2014just feels incomplete, like an unresolved chord. 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