Living through sitcoms

Watching Sex and the City with my friends on Tuesday nights has always been sort of a tradition. So when 10p.m. rolled around, we all congregated in front of the TV to see what re-run it would be this week.

The opening credits arrived and we were off, into our dreamland of Versache purses, New York City nightlife, and Samantha's latest conquests.

I sat back, popped open a can of Diet Coke and began watching intently as if I needed my "fix" for the week.

Halfway though the show we started on another little "tradition" that we have.

Which of the characters am I most like?

After a long debate about who would be the high maintenance Charlotte or a pragmatic Miranda, I recalled past conversations about this very same topic.

This made me begin to think.

Why is it that people try to compare themselves to fictional characters?

One day I'm Monica from Friends, the next I'm Joey from Dawson's Creek. I started wondering if this was a healthy obsession.

The more I thought about it, I began to realize that everyone I knew played a little part in my real life sitcom.

There was the exotic seductress, the comical friend who is loyal no matter what, the friend with the perpetual rain cloud over-head, a perfectionist that is oddly enough always optimistic, the list could go on and on.

I decided to do a little research on the topic.

Sure enough, out of the 50 people I asked on VWC's campus, 47 admitted that they compare themselves to fictional characters from TV or movies on a regular basis.

But why exactly is it that we have this obsession with fictional characters?

The conclusion that I came to is that this is a way to make sense out of life. If you can lead your life by someone's example it makes it easier to take chances.

Identifying with sitcom characters is not only a "girl thing," but I've found that guys do it as well. When I asked an anonymous male senior from Wesleyan if he related to a character he replied, "Yeah I guess I do, I have always thought of myself more of a Chandler than a Joey. Everyone does it from time to time, I guess it just makes it easier to identify yourself sometimes." For whatever reason, this seems to be the case for the majority of young adults. As senior Uli Nagengast put it "People will always find someone to look up to, it’s only natural"

I couldn't agree more.

In the mean time, I, Carrie Bradshaw, will put aside my investigation, pop open another can of Diet Coke and drift off into another episode of Sex in the City.