By Kaylee Johnson
Campus News
I watch the HBO show “Girls” whenever things get turbulent in my life. I got into it when I was a senior in college, performing in an improv comedy troupe, going through boy struggles and trying to place my pushpin somewhere in society’s bulletin board. At that time, I was quite out of touch with adversity and the glamorized world of New York City, intimate female friendship, sexual endeavors with tall actors and an edgy writing career wagged in my face with overwhelming appeal. I was twenty-one, wondering the steps I could take and with how much will and force to end up with that exact lifestyle. Attending a small Catholic college for Childhood Education in the city of Albany, spending every free moment expressing myself creatively in one outlandish way or another – comedy shows, dance classes, poetry projects and prose essays – I felt out of the box, especially within my program.
Most of my lull moments were spent in the campus art building, which was donated by a big wig Albany benefactor of whom local students all knew the name of, but never the face. This affluent family was so well-known amongst college students in the Capital Region, but nobody cared enough to look into the identities behind the money. The art building on my campus looked out of place – modern glass architecture next to dirty brick walls. That’s the exact kind of fake deep thought system that acts as a sealant on a college student’s childhood magical thinking, and it is the only type of thinking that the characters in “Girls” practice.
As self indulgent as the characters in that show present, I related with them, especially Lena Dunham’s character, Hannah. A recent college graduate and eccentric writer trying to make a name for herself in New York City, while also dealing with issues within the realms of love, independence, friendship and managing her own eccentricities, Hannah resonated with me deeply at twenty-one. We both wore quirky dresses, could laugh about our extra pounds and social ineptness.
At the time, the Hannah character represented more than a mirror to me. I had gone twenty-one years without seeing such a strong feminist character in film or television. Sure – I had watched roller coaster snobbish films by directors with pretentiously long names about wives who break away from their families, and coming of age films about teenage girls gaining their footing and breaking away from conformity, but the Hannah character is different in that she is grossly relatable. Her cunning self-aware humor and bravery to broach tough topics make “Girls” one of the best shows ever made.
It was not until I started discussing the show with groups of friends that I realized that others do not have the same idealized view of Lena Dunham and “Girls” that I do. One retro “Animal House” style party boy I went to college with said, “The women in that show are too manly,” and that statement sums up the wiring of his thought system. That man views independence and success as “manly,” and even though he considered himself to be a feminist, his implicit sexism is seeping through the cracks when he tries to discuss feminist issues and female roles. Another friend told me she prefers “Sex and the City,” as if the two shows are comparable. HBO’s “Sex and the City” has some of the same rudimentary themes as “Girls,” but it is not nearly as raw and raunchy. One of the biggest complaints about “Girls” is that Lena Dunham is featured nude too often, but I question whether the critics would complain if she were thinner and more conventionally beautiful.
Hannah still resonates with me, but perhaps in a more nostalgic way as I start to grow up. I am still finding my place in society and experimenting with various identities and paths, but I am more confident and radical than I used to be. I am more resilient than I was in college, eating Goldfish and sitting on my best friend’s dorm room floor watching “Girls” admiringly, and yet some of the themes I will never outgrow. The comfort in flawed femininity and grace in chaos jibe well with me at this point in my life, and Hannah represents all of the women that other widely popular shows fail to recognize or view as misfits.
Kaylee Johnson is a recent graduate of the College of Saint Rose in Albany.
Bonus: The Comics (Click on Other Stories to See More Comics)
“Animal Crackers” by Fred Wagner. In agreement with TCA. Click to Expand.
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