Lost plot
Sir: While Marianne Macdonald’s article (‘Sex and the City is a myth’, 24 May) was an entertaining read, its central thesis — that the airbrushed on-screen portrayal of the four female leads in Sex and the City is fundamentally detached from real life — was hardly revelatory. Even I, as a straight, male, sometime fan of the series, managed to spot within a matter of an episode or two that the four characters were intended to represent four overlapping aspects of the female psyche, rather than being a gritty reflection of everyday distaff New York life.
Nevertheless, it might have helped her case if Ms Macdonald had at least given the impression of having seen more than one or two episodes herself, since every example she cited of real women’s concerns that the series had supposedly failed to address had, in fact, been covered at length in the plotlines. For example, the absence of any ‘lamentation on the lack of men’ (subject of numerous episodes, including one where Carrie takes an evening class on how to meet men, and Miranda notes that ‘now they’re dying on us’); that ‘the biological clock was a barely perceptible tick’ (try the infertility/adoption storyline underpinning much of the final series, or indeed Carrie’s dilemma in the climactic final episodes); or that ‘the women never, ever, bought a self-help book’ (wrong: self-help gets the treatment in at least two episodes).
Television doesn’t always have to serve up grim realism in order to make its point, but Sex and the City managed to cover an impressive array of issues affecting the modern woman, and do so with verve and wit. But why let the facts get in the way of a good article? Neil O’Connor
Sheffield, Yorkshire
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