HBO's Girls (!)

I just watched the first episode of the new HBO series, Girls, written, directed and starring 25-year old explosion of awesome, Lena Dunham, and can I just say, WOW. I am pretty sure that Dunham just left a camera in my apartment for the last few months and through watching footage of me and my two friends through her spycam, created a show that provides a near perfect representation of the lives of 20-something girls with BAs. Here are the number of things that Girls gets so incredibly right about me and my twenty-something girlfriends (and as far as I can tell, everyone else) it is eerie:

1. we want guys who are not nice (or just plain treat us like shit)

Within the first few minutes, you can tell that Marnie (Allison Williams) hates her boyfriend not because he does anything particularly bad but because he is too nice. He gives her air kisses, and holds her retainer in the morning, but most disturbing, he sheepishly asks her what she wants him to do to turn her on. While ostensibly these are lovely things a good boyfriend on paper would do, we just do not want this and are very much turned off by this. Firstly, air kisses are just creepy, and retainers are gross and should not be happily held by anyone, let alone your boyfriend. Secondly, he should have not asked her so meekly what she wanted to have done to her sexually but just taken charge and pushed her against a wall (obviously not abusively but in a hot way). Marnie was right when she suggested that her "nice" boyfriend's touch felt like a "weird uncle, putting his hand on my knee on Thanksgiving."  While we search for boyfriends who will "treat us well"(don't even get me started on that loaded phrase), somehow it is impossible for us to view the excessively nice guys in a sexual way, as completely fucked up as that might sound. We get it, we know it doesn’t make all the sense. It is just how we feel.

2. We still love Sex and the city (ugh.)

I thought it was absolutely genius to have one of the characters (Mad Men’s Zosia Mamet) be obsessed with Sex and the City because though I hate to admit it, it still rules. As much as I hate how materialistic the show is, how one-dimensional the gay characters are, and just how immature Carrie can be, the show is unparalleled in its explanation of gender dynamics. Also, no group of girls has ever existed post SATC that has not contemplated its respective members’ character equivalents, even though each of its characters is rather flat and one-dimensional themselves if you think about it (Charlotte is the conservative beautiful one, Samantha the sexually-voracious one, Carrie the pensive, quirky yet fashion-forward artistic one, and then there is the one no one ever puts their friends, Miranda, because she is the butch, consistently angry one and the only one who actually ever works which is inconsistent with the fantasy). I am hoping that Girls does for 20-something girls what SATC did best, which is provide a real glimpse into their lives and conversations and reveal the universality of our problems.

3. We value our friendships above anything else

The second I heard Lena Dunham’s character Hannah say, “both of you are sex goddesses. When I look at both of you, a Coldplay song plays in my heart,” I immediately thought about how this is definitely something one of my friends has at least said in theory at some point in the last few months. It perfectly encapsulates the importance that awesome 20-something girls place on girl friendships. As we were born into the generation where gender relations are so fucked up, having a solid group of girlfriends I have come to realize is so important. We no longer get courted but rather, have to hope that a guy gets drunk or high enough to man up and get the balls (as the lovely proverb goes. There is really no better phrase) to drunkenly make out with you where you then have to contemplate whether this will be a one-night stand or materialize into a relationship. As a result of this messed up approach to “dating” that exists amongst our socially-awkward generation, it has been so key to have good girlfriends who act as the foil to the number of dysfunctional guys who do not have their shit together who constantly seem to enter our lives only to fuck with our minds.

4.  we love/hate our best friends who seemingly get everything effortlessly

I loved seeing the different characters reactions to Jessa (Jemima Kirke), the willowy, Blonde British chick who is immediately posited as the girl we are supposed to hate and rightfully so. She breezes into the show like the beautiful friend who never seems to work for what she has breezes through life, effortlessly. We learn that Jessa is a world traveler and has a lot of experience with men, and these are things that we are made to feel envious of. I am convinced that every group of early twenty-somethings has at least one person like this, someone who seemingly gets everything with so little effort. They seem to live their lives as if they belong in a script in a low-budget independent film scored by the hypothetical musical love child of Zooey Deschanel and Ben Gibbard (may their relationship rip) and seemingly do so, while the rest of their friends struggle, work horrible, degrading jobs and have lackluster relationships. We love / hate these people, because having never not been the way they are, do not get what it is like for us. This results in us simultaneously loving them and hating them out of a mix of jealousy and pity that they will flit through their lives in such a naïve fashion that will never actually “get it.”

honourable mentions: playing Jay-Z in the background was pure genius. Despite its apparent misogyny, hip hop has become our music of choice and has become far more identifiable than the whiny, white-washed indie crap that pervaded prior.  Also, the choice of On to the Next One was just awesome and is pretty much the greatest post-break up /post asshole anthem that could ever exist.