“Girls” isn’t really plural: A narrow view of color on the HBO Hit

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

A Day in the 'Burgh

The other day was a perfect example of why it feels bittersweet to be leaving Pittsburgh at summer's end. When people ask me "How's Pittsburgh?" I tell them that I've been pleasantly surprised. Inevitably eyebrows shoot up in disbelief and the curious pry further, "Really?" Then I launch into my speech about how Pittsburgh's post-industrial decline created a vacuum that served as a magnet for change agents. Usually whomever I'm talking to will search for hints of denial in my face and probably think, 'Poor girl, there must be something in the water..." While that is certainly true (chlorine from Marcellus Shale fracking), there is definitely something special about the 'Burgh. Let me tell you about my day, and maybe you'll understand.

First, some context: I've been working with former Echoing Green Fellow, Andrew Butcher, co-founder and CEO of GTECH Strategies, to develop GTECH's local support base. GTECH, which stands for Growth Through Energy & Community Health, is a thought and action leader in the region and nationally that works with communities to transform economic and environmental liabilities into assets. Their most well-known projects here are the fields of sunflowers planted on vacant lots, of which Pittsburgh has many. 

So the other day I had a meeting with a local venue to talk logistics for an upcoming GTECH event. The venue is the Waffle Shop in East Liberty (historic Brooklyn-esque neighborhood). The Waffle Shop originated as a CMU student art project with a community development twist. It's a cool diner space with weird late night operating hours and yummy waffles. The coolest part though, is that there is a talk-show stage open to the community, with film equipment used to stream the shows live online. In this way, the Waffle Shop serves as a collaborative "third space" for the community to perform and dialogue. We are very excited to be organizing a GTECH event, which will be a brunch panel discussion on Social Entrepreneurship, at such a fitting venue.

After my meeting at Waffle Shop, I couldn't resist going next door to Conflict Kitchen's take out window to grab an Iranian sandwich to go. Conflict Kitchen is a take out stall that only serves foods from places that are in conflict with the U.S. Right now they are offering  sandwiches from Iran, and in few months they will change the entire facade of their storefront window and their menu to reflect another country (North Korea, Afghanistan, Venezuela...you name it).

After savoring my sandwich through another meeting for a school project, I headed over to CMU's Project Olympus for an Idea Lab roundtable discussion on Social Entrepreneurship in the region and nationally. The Idea Lab is student social enterprise incubator led by and for grad students to develop early-stage ideas. Project Olympus is an incubator space and program for for-profit student enterprises that spin out of CMU, of which there are many. It was interesting to have such a rich array of organizations represented in the discussion - Idea Lab, Project Olympus, UPitt Law's Innovation Practice Institute, Scenable, and SponsorChange. We started by talking about Pittsburgh's potential as a hotbed of social innovation. Apparently at a CMU talk last year, Mayor Fetterman of Braddock, PA (itself, a very special place) said something in the spirit of, SW PA, and Pittsburgh in particular, has the potential to be the silicon valley of social entrepreneurship because the need is just so big. Agreed.

With projects like PopUp Pittsburgh, a constant stream of innovation challenges, and companies like Google setting up shop to scoop up nerdy talent, things are looking up for the 'burgh. There does seem to be a dearth of available funding in the area for social ventures. However, PA just recently joined the ranks of NYC, VT, CA and a few other states that allow for the creation of Benefit Corporations (B-Cors) with charters specifically stating that the purpose of the corporation is to not only bring value to shareholders but also to have a positive impact on people and planet. Annual audits will be conducted to ensure that this holds true.

So if you are planning a social venture to do with economic development, consider Pittsburgh as an ideal testing grounds with opportunities and incubators galore!

I will miss the economic development energy and buzz, the strip district, the underground foodie culture, and the techie-ness, if not the unpredictable weather and chlorine-rich water. Oh, Pittsburgh.

Why I need this...

I have so many ideas that I feel passionately about that I sometimes feel my head and heart are going to explode. I know you feel the same way. I've spoken to you, sometimes in long trains of emails or over coffee or for hours over the phone. I've seen you dance, heard you sing, watched with pride as you've stood up in front of people to pursue your dreams. I've visited your websites, helped to revise your works in progress, discussed the hopes, dreams, frustrations and challenges of your one or several jobs. I've been your collaborator, your classmate, adviser, mentee, co-conspirator, biggest fan, and friend. I know that you are also a dreamer and that you have invaluable insights, ideas and gifts to share. We just need a place for all of that sharing to happen.

I know we have Facebook, Twitter, and innumerable websites and blogs already, in addition to the basic email and those old things called telephones and letters, BUT that's how I communicate with you individually or in small groups already. And those communications are a mixed bag of various topics, not just about our roles and aspirations as social change agents. I need a DEDICATED SPACE. I need a way for you all to know and share with each other. I need a place where I can share my ideas and take risks knowing that I will receive honest and thoughtful feedback and support. Know what I mean?

Too often we wait till we've reached some unrealistic standard before feeling comfortable enough to make our voices heard and share an idea with folks beyond our personal network. As Alexa Clay & Jon Camfield write in their article, 'To Succeed, Women and Minorities Need to be Able to Fail,' women and minorities often feel pressure to be professional and 'perfect' and therefore miss out on the necessary steps of taking risks and bouncing back from failures to succeed in the long run. Alexa writes:

That night, we both confessed how our biggest obstacle to success was perfectionism: the need to wait for the perfect conditions or the perfect idea or venture before we shared it with people. In this way, we often failed to build communities of support. It was a conversation--a moment--that has since allowed me to share early and often. I learned that in sharing and being open about where you are headed, you actually increase the odds of getting there by enrolling the support of others. In this way, embracing uncertainty and problem solving around uncertainty with others from the beginning rather than waiting until you’ve ruled it out is a necessary component of risk-taking.

I think this is doubly true for black women. Of course we have a growing number of amazing role models, but where are the works in progress? Where is the lab setting where we can just be ourselves, experiment and share without the pressure of having to seem polished and on top of everything? I for one would love such a forum.