From time to time I read The A.V. Club. There are articles that I enjoy and agree with their opinions. More and more, I find myself going "really, guys?" My ire began when they re-watched Avatar: The Last Airbender. I disagreed with their assessment of the final episode. I'm not going to go into details as I know of some friends are still in the process of watching it for the first time. Largely, I ignore the website as I feel like it's a bunch of hipster writing reviews. The other day one of their reviews for Girls came across my twitter feed. It frustrated me. I've watched Girls, and hated it the whole way through. At first, I was intrigued because main stream media seems to really hate the show due the main character being homely. I shrugged at that. Then the indie media keeps heralding it with great praise for its feminist stances. So I watched it, didn't enjoy it, and thusly complained to TheGirl about it. I kept watching the show to see if it would get better, and to figure out exactly what I didn't like about it.
The reality: it’s a show about average, white, hipsterish girls living in NYC. It's the hipster version of Sex in the City. The difference being that the first couple of seasons of Sex in the City were actually good. Most of the characters in Girls are horrible people, only it's not funny or intriguing. Shows about horrible people are nothing new, and usually make for great TV. Often they are funny like Seinfeld, or are in the dramatic vein of Big Love. The main character, Hannah, has a horrible boyfriend that has temperamental artist syndrome i.e. he’s an aspiring playwright. In one scene, he urinates on her in the shower because he thinks it's funny. The sad part isn't that she puts up with it. The sad part is that he loves her, and when he fully commits to her she thinks she isn't good enough to be loved by this chump. Then I end up rooting for the boyfriend for a second until the riot grrrl in me kicks in saying um no we all deserve better than that. That’s the real crux of why I hate this show. It’s so heavy handed with how it’s hard to be a woman in the city. So let’s everyone be victims, and not stand up for ourselves b/c you know that’s hard and stuff. I find myself rooting for the average girl who isn't all that inspirational, but has the only story line that is trying to discover something about herself. If the characters don’t evolve in the slightest then what’s the point? I’m sure some feminist studies major will write a paper about how Girls is changing media with its vulnerability. Girls isn't changing anything. Every time I'm almost on board with the show, the plot device shifts so hard I'm crushed under the weight of what the show is pushing me to believe. Good art is subtle. This is not subtle. TheGirl and I finally watched the last season of Big Love. That’s a show that can be hard to love as the subject of polygamy is hard to take. The writers did an amazing job at portraying all the characters. It’s insane that a television show centered around a polygamist family actually ends up being a feminist show while a show centered around white girls in Brooklyn is far from that idea. Through five seasons we watched Nicollette Henrickson struggle from being a victim to a survivor of a history of abuse at the hands of fundamentalist chauvinists. I realize Girls is still in its first season, but I'm doubtful that Hannah has that much growth in her. And how had is it to survive being white and privileged? If nothing has ever really happened to the characters then where is the plot line supposed to go? The girls in Girls went to college, that's how most of them met. Hannah was an English Literature major. She's a writer. Maybe it's naive of me, but how can you go through a program in which the feminist movement is featured so prominently only to be such a weak, shallow character. We are twenty years past the Riot Grrrl movement. You can't tell me that Hannah wouldn't have had a Bikini Kill poster in her dorm room, or didn't at least listen to Sleater Kinney. Why can't I have empowered women in my media? I want Girls to be more than it is because it has the potential to be great if the writers could just know when to stop. You can be vulnerable and strong at the same time.
I’ve always been different. Most of it stems from being a geek. In grade school, I was picked on a lot by other kids for liking Star Wars, Star Trek, and Spider-man. As I got older I was still bullied for being a geek, but then I ofter heard slurs like “dyke” or “fag” in the high school halls. I wasn’t out, and I was struggling. I knew my parents wouldn’t understand, but I doubted in the long run that they’d judge me too harshly. High school on the other hand... I attended a public school in rural Appalachia. My “kin” were from a different part of The South, and my parents had master’s degrees. There was a target on my back from the minute I stepped on the school yard just for being not “from ‘round here” and coming from an educated background. So to add being an out lesbian into that mix meant I’d get bullied even more by those backwater Southern Baptists. I still got bullied for being an assumed gay, but I figured it’d be worse if I were an out gay. This was all happening in the early 90's before Ellen DeGeneres came out of the closet. Pre-Ellen's outing, you kept your mouth shut until you got to college in a more liberal area. Also, I wasn’t even sure IF I was gay. High school is a weird time, full of change and angst galore so I had enough to deal with.
Flash forward a few years. I’m in college, I come out, no one has a problem with it because I have surrounded myself with awesome friends and family. My mother is supportive in her own quiet way. My brother and his family would lead the PFLAG parade. (Robby,my brother, and Jude, my nephew, really do love a parade.) I become comfortable with who I am. Then I meet my future fiance on the 7th floor of my college library in the art section. We talk about amazing music, and I develop a serious crush. It takes awhile, but eventually we start dating, we move in together, and one day this lovely girl asks me to marry her. I say yes. We live in a state where we can legally marry each other. We tell our friends and family, and everyone close to us is ecstatic for us. To quote Ad-Rock from the Beastie Boys, "she's the cheese and I'm the macaroni." Everyone is happy for us except TheGirl's older sister and brother. The latter isn't much a problem because we don't live close. The former presents a problem as she lives in the next zip code. Recently, the sister asked TheGirl not to show any type of affection toward me when we are in public with them for fear that her kids would get bullied because of our gayness. TheGirl stood her ground, and said no. She patiently explained that would mean putting us in the closet. We've both been out for quite some time, and there's no way we're going back in. Overall, this didn't bother TheGirl too much as this is what she's come to expect from her older sibling. I, on the other hand, was very upset by this. It triggered something deep down inside of me. I've never understood why the sister has such an ax to grind with our being gay. Anytime we hold hands the sister has a look like she's eating lemons. I find this whole situation ridiculous. I love TheGirl, and TheGirl loves me. What's the harm? How are we threatening marriage and society? We give to charity, and are just generally good people. We both embrace the Ghandi quote, "Be the change you wish to see in the world." After much consternation, I figured it out. I was upset for two reasons. 1)Using "the children" as an excuse for homophobia is just wrong. If anything we should be teaching the kids that everyone is different, and it's okay to be different. It's okay for boys to like girls or boys or both, and vice versa. It's okay be exactly who you, and for me to be who I am. For someone to use their children to express hate is cowardly. I have more respect for someone who tell me to my face how they feel as opposed to worming around the issue. 2) I come from a family that loves me for exactly who I am. Love is not about putting limits and conditions upon your family and friends. Love is total acceptance of that person. So I'm confused as to why the sister enforces a relationship with TheGirl that would mean only accepting a less than version of her little sister. You can't cut the gay out of someone. It just doesn't work. You can't pray the gay away either. And you can't put the gay in a corner, and expect them to happily truck along with your version of normal. We all deserve the ending to Dirty Dancing.
