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"  When I graduated from high school in 2001, I asked my parents for one thing: a name necklace, with Anna spelled out in gold script. I&amp;#039;d only seen a few episodes of Sex and the City at that point \u2014 we didn&amp;#039;t have HBO, and it hadn&amp;#039;t become the must-watch event it would in college \u2014 but from what I&amp;#039;d seen, I recognized something about Carrie Bradshaw that I wanted to embody. To be clear, I didn&amp;#039;t want to be Carrie Bradshaw. But what I did know was that Carrie was a woman with wild blonde curls and a look others occasionally described as awkward, who could trip on her heels and have her heart ripped in two and still make it: in New York, in dating, in life. The Manolo-and-Prada filled closet and copious cosmopolitans were secondary to the themes that mattered \u2014 friendship, adventure, and always believing in love. Related: How I Learned Carrie Bradshaw Was Full of Sh*t When the show ended on February 22nd, 2004, I was 21 and living in the Barnard dorms, an English and psych double major who alternated semesters interning at magazines with working as a research assistant to feminist authors. Now, I&amp;#039;m a 31-year-old single freelance writer who primarily focuses on sex and relationships. Ten years after the final episode of Sex and the City aired, the show&amp;#039;s influence on culture has been debated ad nauseam. But I&amp;#039;m only now beginning to grapple with the profound effect the show had on me. I can&amp;#039;t help but wonder \u2014 notice the full shades of Carrie Bradshaw inflection \u2014 how much of my path in the past decade had been shaped by Sex and the City-style expectations. Related: In Defense of &amp;#039;Sex and the City&amp;#039; But if that&amp;#039;s the case \u2014 if my life would have played out entirely differently if Sex and the City had never gotten the greenlight \u2014 then I&amp;#039;m glad my destiny was shaped by Carrie, rather than the girl who now embodies the New York every girl for HBO: Hannah Horvath. When we got to know Carrie Bradshaw on screen, we met her as a fully functioning adult. We didn&amp;#039;t know anything about her parents or her alma mater or what bona fides she possessed to be able to pen a weekly sex and relationship column in the New York Star. We never watched her first career freakouts, la Hannah and her deadline meltdown, or her fumbling exploration of her sexuality la Shoshanna Shapiro. She had her trials, but compared to Girls&amp;#039; coming-of-age struggle, Sex and the City was a frothy fantasy of what a grown-up world could look like. Sex and the City was fiction; my friends and I were smart enough to know that. And yet, the over-the-top outfits, the gilded clubs, and the gorgeous real estate gave us a glimpse into Manhattan at its most magical. Instead of the trash-swept streets of Bushwick and cluttered apartments that give Girls viewers a more honest look into what living in New York City is really like, Sex and the City made us imagine how it could be. To say Sex and the City inspired me sounds silly, and not entirely correct. But it did make me realize that life wasn&amp;#039;t as linear as meeting a man in your twenties, getting married, and living happily ever after. And that was okay. It also directly influenced my career, of course. Again, it wasn&amp;#039;t because I was aiming to become Carrie Bradshaw, but the show opened up more and more outlets for women to write honestly and directly about sex and relationships. It made it okay to share vulnerabilities and be taken seriously, to be a power player professionally and also struggle with romance, and made women everywhere realize that occasional bouts of self-doubt and insecurity are a normal part of life at any age. That&amp;#039;s why Sex and the City has staying power, why people still are clamoring to see a third installment of the movie franchise, and why women still refer to themselves as a Charlotte or a Carrie in conversations. And even though Girls touches on the same topics \u2014 with far more honesty, some may argue \u2014 as Sex and the City, no one aspires to be Hannah Horvath. People do, however, aspire to be Lena Dunham. And while plenty of people say that Dunham never would have become who she was without growing up in an artistic family and surrounded by influential people, she couldn&amp;#039;t have existed without the fictional Carrie Bradshaw paving the way. And it&amp;#039;s important to acknowledge Carrie&amp;#039;s influence on pop culture, because she, along with Miranda, Samantha, and Charlotte are touchstones in a way that Hannah, Shoshanna, Jessa, and Marnie simply are not. We all know the back stories behind the Girls characters, as well as the actresses who played them. We know that Zosia Mamet bought a $1 million home in Bushwick and that Allison Williams can&amp;#039;t wait to walk away from her career and have kids. We know Marnie has a controlling mother and Hannah&amp;#039;s parents are overprotective. I think all this biographical information makes it harder to empathize with the on-screen situations. And though we saw the Sex and the City characters go through plenty of rough times on screen, there was still something glamorous and enviable about their lives. Oddly, in the case of the Girls girls, more realism makes the show less relatable. But maybe that&amp;#039;s because I&amp;#039;m just past the Girls generation. Ten years from now, will a former Girls viewer find herself living in a Bushwick share, wearing a pair of pajamas for the third day in a row, struggling to write an e-book, and realize that her life looks oddly like Hannah Horvath&amp;#039;s? Maybe. Maybe not. But if that&amp;#039;s the case, then I hope she takes a deep breath, calms down, and pops in some vintage episodes of Sex and the City to see that escaping into fantasy can be the best influence imaginable. Photo credit: Getty Images Via ELLE "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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