Today's Times lifts the veil on a little-known secret: Not everyone who watches Sex and the City is a white, Cosmo-sipping New York shiksa with a closetful of Jimmy Choos. It's true: Of the millions of people who watch that show, the paper of record announces, some of them are women of color and some of them are poor. Several Times reporters ventured out to Harlem and central Brooklyn to report on these exotic creatures, which is where they found Carmen Cruz, a 25-year-old mother who works at a salon in Bushwick. And guess what? She was into fashion. Just like the characters on Sex and the City!

Ms. Cruz’s hair, piled high atop her head, is dyed burgundy and cut in front at a rakish angle. Her eyebrows are plucked thin and dyed to match. She wore skinny black jeans and gold-colored flip-flops, along with a cream-colored blazer with exposed seams and lace, embroidered at the edges with sequins and pearl white and baby blue beads.

Okay, maybe not quite like the characters on Sex and the City. Thanks for pointing that out so awkwardly, Times.

The point is this: On their epic journey of discovery, the Times discovered that women like Carmen had thoughts and feelings and relationships just like the characters in the show and the movie and that, even though these women could not afford the material stuff on the show, it was fun for them as an escapist fantasy. Isn't that unbelievable?

That the Times would put a patronizing story like this on the cover of the "Metro" section, we mean.

Sex and the Rest of the City [NYT]