Nostalgia Nook: It isn’t raining women anymore
Is Hollywood intentionally leaving the modern woman behind?
You’re such a Carrie! Well, you’re definitely a Samantha. No, what you are is a nostalgic soul, dreaming of an era that no longer exists.
Over the past decades, we’ve been made to believe that younger is better. In television, once women hit a certain age, they become mothers. This label can stifle the representation of the nuances of womanhood.
Since the end of the pandemic and the SAG strike, there's been a decrease in TV show output. Is this decrease to blame for the disappearance of the beloved character archetypes we grew up with?
Young adult and teen content has been dominating the industry for well over a decade, and as a result, the era of adult lifestyle television we grew up alongside has fallen into obscurity.
What's been missing in recent TV shows are complex, messy adult women who remind us that it's okay not to have it all figured out, and that our lives continue to exist beyond our romantic relationships.
We’ve lost the luxury of seeing our struggles reflected in groups of women who’ve not only overcome the same obstacles we face, but evolved into more fulfilled versions of themselves by forging genuine communities with the other women around them.
Recently, there has been an attempted resurgence of this authentic content with TV shows like Adults, Overcompensating and Not Suitable for Work. What all these shows seem to be short of, however, are those quintessential female friendships that taught us the value of a close-knit community.
The lack of representation of female friendships and women in television in recent years hasn’t gone unnoticed by viewers. Many young adult TV shows are failing to develop authentic female characters the way they used to.
The once diverse group has dwindled to one or two girls in a group of men, intended to be eroticized as the postmodern manic pixie dream girl. Or perhaps, this is the Hollywood exec cheat code to pass the Bechdel test.
What we’ve been subjected to is a push for oversaturated love triangles and never-ending cheesy storylines that have completely bulldozed the true power of young adult media.
It's becoming more crucial with every growing step towards conservatism that women do not get boxed into outdated archetypes that serve to limit our ability to connect. Archetypes like the ones we grew up with allow women the opportunity to express themselves in a vast array of ways that have recently been limited. Female friendships and women in general deserve to exist as complete beings, like their male counterparts.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, young women were fortunate enough to have TV shows like Girlfriends and Sex and the City to provide inspiration and hope for their adult years.
We all long to have the honest complexities of our 20s and 30s represented on our screens again; not only for ourselves and our inner teens, but for next generations to come.
And with the ever-changing world around us and the loss of these comforting models, many women may feel as though they are alone in feeling lost. Personally, I find it comforting to know that we all carry pieces of the characters we grew up watching.
Don't we deserve a fun, feel-good show that offers a glimpse into what’s to come? Or will we be forced to bear witness to the tragic fall of the truly classic Hollywood friend group?
This article originally appeared in Volume 47, Issue 2, published September 22, 2026.
