That said, I started getting the urge to blog again not because of the lack of house progress or a deep need to share what I auditioned for last week, but because I have become a fierce lover of that show everyone is tired of talking about...Girls. And it's my blog, so I can write whatever I want. YES.
Girls is the new(ish) show on HBO written and created by twenty-something writer, Lena Dunham. She has been supported and criticized at both ends of the spectrum and everywhere in between. Google her and you will find more information than you could ever want. I have now seen every episode of the show to date. Some I like, some I like a lot, and some I've forgotten about. The show has made me laugh out loud on numerous occasions--and that is rare. But what has interested me most in all of this is the surrounding talk itself. And I'm just going to come out and say that I think Lena Dunham's show and voice--as she has said is somewhat an extension of her life--has brought to light that we are still a staggeringly misogynistic first world country. Now stay with me here...
This post is not meant to be a further discussion of the criticism of her being privileged. Her parents are visual artists in NYC. I don't know how much money they make and I really don't care. I'd never heard of them and I doubt most of the queefknockers who reamed her for it had either. As for her getting a show because she may or may not be privileged in a business where 80%??? or more of the success is about who you know or being connected to the right people...SO WHAT?!
I am soon entering my late 30s. Though it was not so long ago that I was in my 20s. And that decade was extremely influential in my life. This show still interests someone like me because it is, I believe, a huge step forward in the voices of women. Yes, yes, blah, blah, we've heard it all before. BUT, I think this whole Girls thing is so divisive because Lena Dunham is just honestly a normal young woman in America. Normal in every sense of the word. She is college educated, she is a little weird, she is awkward, she is not 100lbs nor is she 250lbs, she is tattooed, she is a pleasant looking person who looks like a lot of women we all know. She likes to take her clothes off and I fucking love it. She is self involved, yes--another frequent criticism of the show. But, anyone who says they weren't self involved at 24 is LYING. And, you know, the fact that there has been so much fat shaming talk. Talk that so and so actor is out of her league (for her to be fucking on the show). Talk that she should literally just shut the fuck up, shows me that this country is still super frightened of vaginas that want anything. And that is AWESOME.
I would like to point out that I, personally, have not experienced what I thought was rampant sexism in my life. I never grew up thinking I couldn't do something, or that I had to be married to be important. I am pro-women, for equality for both sexes and all sexualities. I am pro-choice and proud of it. I played sports and studied what I wanted to study. (Good job, Mom!) I have also felt confident in my career. Though I haven't reached 50, when roles for women go bye bye. I embrace androgyny. I have felt mostly like a person for most of my life, not a sex. And I really enjoy being a woman sometimes.
But what really got my panties in a bunch about this whole thing was the most recent episode I'd caught this past Saturday. It was a departure from the normal show format, which tends to follow four women in and out of happenings in their lives. In this case, there were only three speaking characters in the entire episode. One of them was guest star, Patrick Wilson, her lover for the episode which chronicled a short-lived fling. It basically summed up most of the relationships I had in my twenties in one, half hour show. Is that sad? Maybe, but it's true. And I AM a normal woman, so this must have touched more than just me.
Essentially, the episode was about being sexually empowered and open until you're not. It was also about playing house. A phrase regarding faux intimacy that I have heard for years and always makes me want to break something. (I just think it's bullshit. If you want to stay at home with your new lover, make breakfast, read the paper and drink from your french press, then fucking go forth.) I thought the episode was fantastic. I related to it and it was hard to watch at times. It was all the things I like in a good show. Afterwards I went to my favorite recap sites to dive a little deeper into the episode. There, I noticed the slew of comments that Patrick Wilson--who is honestly talented, but just your average attractive actor working in tv and film today--was "out of her league" etc. and something just snapped. Fuuuuuck, people, really?! Even though we've been pairing fat assholes with beautiful wives on sitcoms for decades?!
And in my anger, I realized that I LOVE this show because of shit like this. That women who want sex still frighten people. And I'm not just talking about the "Samantha" stereotype. Sex and the City broke ground over a decade ago in its own way and it is interesting how out of date it feels now. It had its time and place like everything else. We did, for once, have a character who had sex because she liked it and mostly didn't want long term relationships. Great! True and real and thank you. BUT, Samantha was rich, attractive and also having so much sex I don't know how she had time for anything else (right, Wilt Chamberlain?). Dunham is different because she is normal. She is pushing the bounds because there seems to STILL be an unspoken rule that, as a woman, you must be hot, stick thin, and rich to want to fuck and have a story written about it.
I lived in Chicago for the first decade of the 21st century. I was in my twenties and single through most of it. And by single I mean that I had relationships that lasted a few weeks to a few months at the most. I hooked up with a fair number of people. Sometimes I cried over them, sometimes I didn't. I liked almost all of them or at least I did at the time. I felt I was progressive, a feminist, somewhat damaged and prone to make a lot of mistakes that I mostly learned from! That could probably sum up most middle class, 25 year-old chicks living in cities. But once about seven years ago, I propositioned a guy I was in a show with, who I was attracted to, and who was a self proclaimed ladies man. I propositioned him thinking that my forwardness would be a turn on. That I would be that kick ass lady who asks for what she wants. Yee haw! He told me no thank you because it made me seem desperate. He liked the chase. That's what was attractive to him...........???!!!!!!! Then I found out later he was fucking the stage manager.
ANYWAY, that still sticks with me because, after pondering the existence of Girls, what it means right now, and all the back and forth over it--THAT is what it makes me think of. THAT DUDE'S REACTION TO ME! Asking for what you want is a risk, true, and he had every right to turn me down. But it was so shocking to me because the rejection was for such a traditional, overly romanticized reason. And though I'm sure he didn't intend to, he made me feel not even like a slut (I barely put any stock in that word anyway) but an alien. It also made me think that I was doing something wrong. That who I was wasn't what men wanted. And then I thought, fuck! Why do I care?! But I did.
And THAT is what is fucked up to me. And why I think what Dunham is doing is important. Because views of female sexuality are still evolving in a wonderful way. Dunham has been asked repeatedly about her choice to be nude a lot on her show and she's admitted that she has body issues and that it's a bit of a compulsion to put herself out in the world like that. But I think it's great. We're living in the same world that still plasters airbrushed, underweight women on billboards. And even though we all know about airbrushing, we still allow these images to tell us who we should be. We still let advertisers sell cleaning products and Easy Bake Ovens to us. (Though I hear some advertiser finally put a boy in an EBO print ad).
I don't want to go over and over what many of us have been talking about for years. I attempt to put a fresh perspective out there in my view of the world. And I realize, and hope, that I'm not the only one. Hell, I'm not that smart. But Dunham is telling a story that so many of us experience everyday. And the fact that all this ruckus is being made about it makes me think that she is doing something right.
