“Have you seen Girls?”
While two years ago this would be a statement emitted from either someone who has lost their mind in a car crash and cannot remember literally anything, a new immigrant learning English and wishing to find the ladies washroom, or a weird new-age couple that has lost their dog that they named Girls as a statement against misogynistic society, it has taken a whole new meaning in 2013.
If you know me - as a friend, acquaintance, Facebook stalker, or Instagram follower - you know the planet which is my being revolves around the omnipotent ball of flaming light that is Lena Dunham’s show on HBO. The show about 4 girls navigating their early twenties in New York City is, to quote both Lena and Fiona Apple, about “just [wanting] to feel everything”, and though it may be existential, it is incredible relatable. I’ve got the poster in my room, the DVD on replay in my computer, and the nail polish set in heavy rotation. I live and breath it, and almost stopped breathing when I met Zosia Mamet (Shoshana) in February after stalking her out at her show in New York City. I’m proud to be the unauthorized representative for the show at school, in that I’m constantly approached by people that love it, people wishing to start it, and people who want a quick recap or discussion about last week’s episode (come find me if you want to hear my unpopular opinion on how important episode 5 of season 2 was for the show’s livelihood). Needless to say, it’s an aspiring performer’s dream to see a show so perfectly executed, raw, and real. Over its two seasons, Ms. Dunham has been on-point with her depictions of ambiguous relationships, acceptance vs. Individuality, and the difficulty in balancing work and personal life.
When you’re in love, you want the world to know. And this is a show I’ve recommended to everyone. I ask them, just like I ask you now, to watch the pilot and just give it a chance. Not surprisingly to me- and probably many of you as well- a lot of adults I have asked to watch have returned with one unavoidable criticism: “Too inappropriate for high school girls. I didn’t watch television like this when I was young”. I get why adults don’t want younger kids to see the parts of life they should not yet be thinking about. But I am here to tell you all that though elders did not, as teens, feast their eyes upon the sex-and-drug-ridden, bad-decision-making girls of Girls, they’re maybe-just maybe- something that’s very important for me, and my fellow teens, to see.
I’d like to clear the air and mention that if the show just isn’t for you, I totally understand. Things that everyone likes are more often than not pretty boring (other than, let’s say, Meryl Streep and Julie Andrews), and not everyone is into everything. But something’s value, in my opinion, cannot be ignored just because someone doesn’t like it. I cannot automatically assume that I do not like cooked eggs if I do not have a go at them. I did, I don’t. This makes eating breakfast at restaurants somewhat difficult sometimes, but it is something I have to deal with. I don’t like eggs, but that doesn’t mean I should advise anyone not to eat them, because they actually might like them. Eggs might just be very good for them. Are you still following my analogy? You may not like something that someone else is doing, and you may not approve for yourself, but it might be very good for them.
I, along with my friends, are lucky to be somewhat equipped in our environments with the tools to prepare ourselves for life after high school. However, no amount of guidance assistance can tell you about the pure confusion you feel when you’re not sure what you’re going to be doing next summer, or even next year. Rather than isolate specific events in the show that have happened to me in real life, I would like to focus on the overall ambiance of incertitude that envelops the show. The trials and tribulations experienced by Hannah, Jessa, Marnie, and Shoshanna are ones so often felt by high school girls- our cups constantly runneth over with questions like, “does he like me?”, “do I like him?”, “am I going to get into that school?”, “am I good at what I like to do?”, and “am I as good of a friend as I could be?”. And more than that, women in this show are the ones making choices for themselves. They’re messing up on their own agendas, not because their boyfriend told them to. As Lena Dunham said in an interview with Alec Baldwin, “I want women – this is so kind of hippy-dippy, but I want them to make their own choices. I want them to – I don’t want people to live in service to sort of what television thinks they should look like or what their family thinks they should act like.” Sure, sex and drugs are a pretty big part of the show. But we don’t just see the high, we also see the crash. The awkwardness, the confusion, and the jumble of decisions as a result of newfound post-college independence and everything that comes with it. We focus on the sex and nudity because it engraves itself into our brains: it’s something we rarely see on TV. But in my humble opinion, the entire act represents a concept larger than itself: making it up as we go along. Why would adults wish to keep a piece of work that gives such an accurate depiction of the complications of life, from young adults that are just beginning to experience those complications?
Sometimes teenagers can be really stupid, and need some help. Luckily, there are older people, living in their homes, that have experienced the same things they are experiencing. These people live with them, so they understand teens pretty damn well, and also they came out of one of these older people when they were born: meaning the teenagers literally lived inside of adults. Of course it makes perfect sense for them to be the ones the adolescents turn to. However, no matter how cool teenagers’ “parental units” (that was something Zenon would say) are, just like we, as teens, can’t always remember every detail of our Croc-and-tie-dye-gaucho-wearing 10 year old life, so too can they not remember exactly how they felt when they were 16. Parents want to be the people to teach their children all they need to know, but since the dawn of time, there has been an unexplainable barrier of discomfort between them and their children, and they can’t always help. So here come the 25 year olds portraying life as it really is, eg. Ms. Dunham! They still don’t know the answers to adolescence, but they can reassure teens that way they’re feeling is totally legitimate, and if they don’t feel that way at some point, there might be something wrong. The road to finding yourself is not always black and white and never a solo journey, and teens need all the help we can get from anyone that’s willing to help.
The long and short of it? Confusion never ends, and neither should real high school girls watching Girls.
