From cosmopolitans to vibrators, the cultural heft of Sex and the City

Just some of the ways that SATC helped to revolutionise the way we dress, eat, date, exercise and work

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efore Sex and the City, the cosmopolitan was just vodka, cranberry juice, Cointreau and lime juice. Afterwards it was a symbol of girlfriends, sex, flirting and freedom. But it wasn’t only the image of the pink cocktail that the show revolutionised.

From the time it first aired in 1998, the show – and to a lesser extent its descendant, And Just Like That – has shaped the way we dress, eat, drink, date, exercise and work. What it did for the cosmo it also did for everything from nameplate necklaces to vibrators, catapulting them to pop-culture phenomenon status.

“It was quite startling, the effect it had,” said Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, the author of Sex and the City and Us, which includes a chapter about SATC capitalism. “It even changed the way we brunch. Overnight, we all understood that you go to brunch with your girlfriends to talk explicitly about sex.”