On Work & the Internet

How do Darren Star and his TV heroines fit into the problem of cultural work?

There were all three, side by side: Darren Star’s 21st century protagonists. Carrie Bradshaw of Sex and the City; Liza of Younger; and Emily Cooper of Emily in Paris. I have watched all of these shows, but I’m a consistent rewatcher of SATC and all its movies and spinoffs. “It’s my Star Wars,” I say. I’d never considered these women all together, and suddenly there they were, giving me a way to illustrate changes in cultural work and shifting generational values (and economics).

Bradshaw, if you’re not familiar, is a tabloid newspaper dating columnist. Money is consistently present throughout the show, though many people like to argue her lifestyle is too exuberant for a weekly columnist’s paycheck. But it was a different time, and if you think freelance writers don’t often tell themselves a lunch out or a new pair of shoes will kickstart the muse… well, meet me. Eventually, like most of us, Bradshaw starts to write books. She marries a rich man (spoiler alert) but continues to work, and in the new spinoffs, we find her podcasting to stay relevant while her former Vogue editor has launched a newsletter. It’s an accurate evolution for people who once made their livings through print.

Liza of Younger works in book publishing, and there are constant threats of mergers and et cetera to keep the drama moving; from my memory of the show, it was as true as it needed to be in terms of money and people working in publishing, media, and tattooing in Brooklyn during this time period (I was there).

But Emily Cooper is in marketing. She speaks the language of brands and commercials. She sells. She is likely a younger millennial but is speaking a decidedly Gen Z language. When someone pursues creative work on the show Emily in Paris—singing, curating, cooking—they either have family money somewhere or are stuck with someone for their family money.

Bradshaw would make no sense in this world, in today’s world, had she not married rich. But Cooper makes sense, because her creativity is in service to selling, not itself. The man she really loves isn’t rich, but they would be ok: Would it work for her, in the end, to make that choice? Only because she has her seemingly lucrative job, to which she’s absurdly, American-ly committed.

This shift in Star’s characters over the first quarter of this century is one that mirrors how cultural work has changed, what young people have learned to value. Since writing “On Selling a Lifestyle” in 2022, I’ve been diving more into the ways in which the internet and social media have changed lifestyle media and cultural work—without enough conversation, I think, on the labor issues that emerge.

My earlier pieces on this subject: “On Work,” a very early entry published on my 35th birthday, November 9, 2020; “On Selling a Lifestyle,” September 12, 2022; “Securing the Brand Bag,” March 11, 2024; “The Algorithm of the Mind,” July 1, 2024; “Where Fashion Meets Food,” October 14, 2024; “The Politics of Attention in 2025,” January 6, 2025; “On the Recipe As Object,” January 13, 2025