A Complaint

I think this Salon piece grousing that Sex and the City sets up a model of unobtainable female friendship falls precisely into the trap that the author imagines she's avoiding by treating the franchise as if it's an Actual Model for Conducting Ladybusiness.  And besides that, the argument is wrong on the details.  A well-established part of the series is that the characters have wider pools of friends and acquaintances than simply their fabulous selves.  Also, a fact-checker would have noted the deep imperfection of these friendships, the times they've been wounded so deeply it's not clear they'll recover, like when Carrie judges Samantha for her sex life, or Miranda hides a hurtful thing she says from Carrie and confesses it far too late for her to cope with it reasonably.  I say this not so much to defend SATC, which I maintain needs no defense, but out of annoyance at the Church of the Counterfactual.  If you're going to write, be it about politics, fashion, culture, sports, whatever, be sure the thing you're seeing that everyone else has missed is actually there.