After recently watching the increasingly popular documentary Miss Representation, which is about how women are negatively portrayed in the media, it led me to question the “pro-girl” attitude I believed the TV show Girls propagated.
At the end of the documentary while the credits are rolling, women come on to tell the audience how they can start challenging the misrepresentation of women in the media. One way is by watching and supporting movies, shows and other entertainment outlets created by women.
Great, I thought. I really like Girls, and that show is a powerhouse of women. Focused on the development of four twenty-something girls, it is created, written and directed by Lena Dunham, who in addition is also the major star. What makes it great is that it focuses on four real girls. They didn’t wake up every morning with perfect make-up and didn’t adhere to the Hollywood impossible standard of being thinner than a breadstick. Moreover, Lena Dunham’s character, Hannah, sends the message numerous times that she values her mind over her body, and is for the most part, happy with her own image.
This all great and refreshing in a society that is saturated by one dimensional female characters, but then after patting myself on the back for watching a show that breaks feminine stereotypes so successfully, I immediately thought of another line said in Miss Representation:
“Most films are stories of men’s lives that revolve around men – ‘Chick flicks’ are stories about women’s lives that revolve around men.”
Girls couldn’t possibly be considered a “chick flick,” I thought, their storylines are definitely not romanticized. They are quite the opposite – gritty and frank. Yet, I soon realised that for all this, Girls still falls into the “chick flick” trap.
The past few episodes have all been about the girls and their relationship to boys. Hannah, the main character, is continuously trying to get more than just sexual interest from her not-boyfriend, Adam, who might possibly be the biggest douche on the planet. Hannah’s best friend, Marnie, spends a whole episode trying to get back with her boyfriend, even though she doesn’t like him anymore, and then spends another episode angry and lamenting that he has already found someone else. Jenna, the travelling hippie, meanwhile spends a whole evening at a rave with the father of the kids she babysits, who obviously doesn’t want to discuss their bed times, but more likely her own. Finally, Shoshanna, the resident virgin, is pretty much down for any guy, and is so desperate to lose her v-card that she tries to convince one guy that she’s not an “attached bleeder,” whatever that means.
For a show that claims to be about Girls, it seems odd that all the storylines revolve around men. I feel like the title Girls and Boys would be more appropriate at the moment. Where is the plot about Hannah trying to further her career as “the voice of a generation”? Or her struggle to become financially independent? What are the goals of the other three girls for that matter? We haven’t got that much information about them besides how they relate to men.
It’s frustrating to see how a show that has been remarked upon for its new and feminist approach to women has fallen victim to one of the most stereotypical feminine tropes in the media – that stories about women are only interesting if they revolve around their relationships with men.
I hope that Girls is able to re-focus it back onto the four main female characters, and not just their love lives, as it really is something new that portrays women much more realistically than ever before.
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