I just watched all 4 episodes of “Girls” on HBO. I really, really,
really enjoyed the dialogue and the plot. Obviously, as a 24 year old "girl", I and all of my
friends can so relate to these young women and the tough things they face in
the name of "finding themselves": pregnancy scares, job uncertainty,
relationships growing stale, STIs, learning to care for yourself and not
succumb to abusive people and situations. Girls is funny and honest, and tries
very hard to not glamorize the complete circus that this time can feel like...
BUT...
I will agree with many of the critiques. I wasn't as up in arms
about the lack of substantive characters/narratives including people of color,
because honestly...most "middle-class/I've been coddled my entire life and
now the real world is so 'hard'/I have the luxury of being in a quarter-life
crisis" white women would NOT have meaningful relationships in real life
with other women of color. Instead, women of color, that is Chicanas, black
women, and Asian women may be relatively peripheral to a world that allows you the
privilege of introspection, wanderlust, and unabashed disdain for working
menial jobs. By no stretch of the imagination am I implying that meaningful
interracial friendships and relationships are nonexistent or that the tropes
present in “Girls” aren’t more indicative of class status rather than race;
however, I believe that the narrative is fairly representative of a large slice
of the population.
The show is spun through the lens of Hannah, a 24 year old,
liberal arts graduate, a writer whose parents have just cut her off. Hannah’s
parents are over-protective professors, she struggles with weight and
self-esteem issues, and her acerbic wit is often misunderstood. She and her
friends are complex characters simultaneously struggling to escape their
insecurities while reveling in the fact that, at this age, life doesn’t have to
make much sense. The plot unfolds somewhat haphazardly, yet brilliantly in each
episode so that the viewer experiences layers of depth in each girl. There are
no “good” or “bad” girls, even the douche-y love interest cannot be relegated
to 2-dimensions so easily. This makes for great HBO programming. Unfortunately,
the few glances of women of color are (surprise, surprise) narrow,
stereotypical, and lacking nuance.
In episode 3, Hannah visits her friend Shoshannah, who is watching
her favorite dating show on TV. In the show, each contestant has to unveil
their “baggage” (their small, medium, and large secrets) at which point they
are either chosen or sent home. One contestant was a black woman. Guess what
her baggage was?
Small: She spends $1000 a month on weave, which host Jerry
Springer deems “un-be-weave-able.”
Medium: She plans her wedding after the first date.
Large: She pokes holes in condoms.
Um, my biggest question after that scene was “Why?” not “Why would
that imagery be so clearly assigned to the black woman?” but “Why are those
images so prevalent in American popular culture that they, unsurprisingly,
insinuated themselves in a show that doesn’t even address black women
peripherally?” The weave meme has unfortunately caught fire in white America.
They know what it is, they can even recognize it, they are morally outraged by
its prices, and by golly, they are going to mention it every chance they get,
even when it is not attached to an actual character. The condom-poking phenomenon,
to me, falls into the delicious treasure chest of hood fairy-tales along with “welfare
queens”, gang-banging, and the origins of rap music.
In episode 4, Hannah has just gotten a new job. She works with a
sexually-harassing boss and two spicy staff members that seem to leisurely
regard work. One of them appears to be Afro-Latina (perhaps Dominican or Puerto
Rican) and, as we can only expect, is caricaturized and stereotypical from the
start. She has an exaggerated accent, dramatic penciled-in eyebrows, tight
clothes, and a neck/eye roll combination unparalleled on recent primetime TV.
Again, I asked myself the same questions from above. As you can
tell, I am not surprised by the lack of well-constructed black and Latina
characters. I actually think it is an honest representation of the stilted and
one-dimensional schema that privilege builds towards people of color generally.
“Girls” is true to life, because that is how so many interactions with women of
color are perceived, analyzed, and then digested by white, middle-class women. As
a black woman, I know these
characters to often be misrepresented or too narrowly defined; but in a popular
culture where there are less black people on primetime TV now than 20 years ago,
what can we realistically expect?
“Girls” is one more reminder that media not birthed from a
multi-cultural, colorful, inclusive perspective will never authentically
reflect what we know to be true and what we hope will one day be celebrated.
In the meantime, we will be left with witty, yet unbalanced
vantage points from majority privilege. I will still be watching Girls, but
these things are always in my mind.
Will you be watching? How do you feel, am I making too much or too
little of this? Read more about Lena Durham, Girls creator, writer, and co-star, confronting the topic (or lack thereof) of race in the show here.
Share your thoughts!
Love,
Brittany
