In this episode Miranda displays a sense of pride in purchasing her first apartment for herself. Despite how content she originally feels about her decision, everyone around her can’t help but point out her single woman status. When touring the apartment her realtor asks, “Its just you? Such a big apartment for just you…maybe the boyfriend will move it?” Miranda replies, “No its just me…I have a lot of shoes.” The realtor clearly can’t wrap her head around the fact that a woman would purchase such a large home without having a husband or a family. When Miranda goes to her mortgage company to sign papers, they tell her to check off the single woman box for payments. Miranda feels as though she is being defined by her “single woman” status, and does not understand why others can’t accept her independence. She represents the modern day, career-oriented woman who doesn’t mind living on her own. The next day at lunch with the ladies she says, “I’m telling you, if I were a single man, none of this would be happening.” Miranda believes that women face more pressures than men to get married and start a family once they approach a certain age. Carrie points out to Miranda that “Buying a place alone means you don’t need a man”, causing Miranda to respond, “I don’t.” Miranda displays a new-age philosophy that she does not need a man to be happy, and views having a partner as a nice bonus, equal in value to having a prestigious career and great friends. Charlotte, with her conservative values displays an oppositional view to Miranda’s independent-woman status. She states, “Everyone needs a man. That’s why I rent. If you own and he rents the power structure is all off, it’s emasculating. Men don’t want a woman who’s too self-sufficient.” Charlotte represents a more regressive view of femininity in the sense that she does not believe men and women should have equal status in a relationship. To her, being the woman means allowing the man to have more control, even if it means renting an apartment you can afford instead of owning it.
When Miranda meets one of her new neighbors, she learns that the women who lived in the apartment before her died alone. The neighbor claims, “Ruthie kept to herself, never married. She died in there you know. It was a week before anyone realized she passed. Rumor has it her cat ate half her face…so just you?” To Miranda, the story of Ruthie demonstrates what happens to a woman if she never marries and does not have a man to protect her. She becomes emotionally distraught over the fear of dying alone in her apartment, and finally sees why everyone keeps asking if it is really “just her” moving in. Miranda’s progressive story line of purchasing an apartment all on her own is later counteracted by her succumbing to this fear. She ends up having a panic attack, and calls Carrie to take her to the hospital. Miranda cries, “I’m going to die alone Carrie.” Carrie tells her that she won’t die alone, unsure herself whether any of them would really end up alone. In this way the show portrays being “alone” as symbolic of failure, an end in and of itself. The entire premise of the show is for the women to seek relationships with men so that they do not wind up as lonely old maids who will die alone in their apartments.
At the end of the episode, Miranda reclaims her feminist attitude when she receives a letter from her mortgage company that lists her as “separated.” Asserting her status as a single women, she writes back to them claiming that she is in fact “single.” Although it is difficult for her to write those words, Miranda knows in her heart that being single is not the end of the world, and that she can find validation in her life without having a man. She then puts a photo of her and her girlfriends above her fireplace, suggesting that friendship is much more important to her than being single in the city.
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