text: Sometimes life imitates art, but apparently not when it comes to the Central Intelligence Agency. Current and former female agents spoke out to the New York Times on Sunday to renounce depictions of CIA women on TV shows and in movies. The group of women say they are nothing like the honey-pots on these shows who use their sexuality to ensnare terrorists and drown PTSD with booze and pills. Retired CIA officer Sandra Grimes, 69, who helped expose her colleague Aldrich Ames as a Russian double agent, says she sees nothing of herself in the characters at the center of shows like State of Affairs and Homeland. 'I wish they wouldn’t use centerfold models in tight clothes. We don’t look that way. And we don’t act that way,' Grimes told the Times. Scroll down for video . That's not me: Retired CIA officer Sandra Grimes (pictured above in January 2013)  is one of many former and current women at the agency speaking out about depictions of female spies on TV and in movies . Veteran CIA analyst Gina Bennett, one of the 'Band of Sisters' who helped track down Osama bin Laden, has the most trouble with how her fallen co-worker Jennifer Matthews was portrayed in the film Zero Dark Thirty. In the scenes before her death in a terrorist attack on a U.S. military base in Afghanistan, actress Jennifer Ehle plays Matthews as a 'giddy' agent, excitedly baking a Jordanian source a cake for their meeting on his birthday. As in real life, Matthews dies as the agent gets out of his car and detonates a suicide vest. 'The problem is that they portray most women in such a one-dimensional way; whatever the character flaw is, that’s all they are,' Bennett said. 'It can leave a very distinct understanding of women at the agency - how we function, how we relate to men, how we engage in national security - that is pretty off.' One of the fictional CIA agents currently on screen is Charlie Tucker on NBC's State of Affairs. Played by Katherine Heigl, Charlie is a character who in the first episode gets drunk at a bar, sleeps with a stranger and lashes out at her psychiatrist. Another example is Homeland's Carrie Mathison (played by Claire Danes) - a bi-polar spy who gives up nearly all responsibility for her child (the product of a secret relationship with a double agent) and spends most of her time controlling sources with sex. A retired covert officer identified as Meredith says sex isn't a major part of the spy game. Offensive: Veteran CIA analyst Gina Bennett says she was upset with the 'giddy' portrayal of her friend Jennifer Matthews (left) in the movie Zero Dark Thirty (played by Jennifer Ehle, right). Matthews, in real life as in the movie, was killed by a suicide bomber at an Afghanistan military base in 2009 . 'Let’s not kid ourselves. For me, working in the Middle East, there’s a lot of attraction for Middle Eastern men for Western women. I don’t mean necessarily sexually...but curiosity, if nothing else. And we certainly have played that.' However, Meredith says she more often has to put men in their place while doing her work. 'You need to remove [sex] off the table very quickly and clearly. Sometimes it’s "Get your hands off my knee or I’m going to break it," or you put as many people into the room as you can,' she said. While the trials and tribulations of female agents on screen are wildly exaggerated, the women interviewed said they do similarly struggle to maintain the balance between their work and private lives. It's not about sex: The real women of the CIA say they are not all honey-pots who use their sexuality to control sources (like Carrie Mathison on Showtime's Homeland, played by Claire Danes above) Sending the wrong message: The women also take issue with NBC show State of Affairs, which features Katherine Heigl (above) as a troubled CIA analyst . 'I briefed Condoleezza Rice while in labor. I’d tell her about the global jihad and then I would turn away and breathe. When these two worlds clash, they clash really hard,' Bennett said. Bennett says that the concerns of her job are so important, that it's hard to come home and sympathize with the minor dramas ruling her teenager's life. 'I deal with people who are trying to kill lots of people in horrendous, painful ways. So I have a wall; it’s really tall. Unfortunately, though, what happens with time is you can’t click it on or off. You just block the sensation of feeling,' Bennett said. 'I’m no longer married because of my wall. So I have five kids whose parents aren’t together because I constructed that wall over time and didn’t know how to get through it,' Bennett added. Many of the women though said they enjoyed working for the agency, which is becoming more and more female friendly with a day care center in Langley and flexible time off. Which is good because Bennett thinks women naturally make great agents. 'Women don’t think more intuitively than men, but we tend to trust our own gut less. We are not going to put all our money in one basket,' she said.
target: A handful of current and former female CIA employees spoke out to the New York Times about the portrayal of women in the agency .
  They take issue with characters like Homeland's Carrie Mathison and State of Affairs' Charlie Tucker who act as honey-pots to thwart terrorist plots .
  'It can leave a very distinct understanding of women at the agency that is pretty off,' longtime CIA analyst Gina Bennett said .