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When will 'Girls' grow up?
HBO's "Girls': Where feminism failed
Susan Beth Lehman
Lena Dunham's HBO series, "Girls," has been called the voice of the generation. But I can't help wondering: What generation is she addressing? My generation of women changed the world in the 1970s. To judge from "Girls," not much has changed since then.
Fitzgerald and Hemingway gave us sexually independent gals in the roaring "'20s and escapist '30s, but all of them seemed to be either daredevils or kept women (kept as bedmates or by trust funds). When soldiers went off to World War II, women replaced them in roles as diverse as factory work and baseball. Careers in TV and book editing were well represented by women in films of the '50s. The '60s introduced a feminine freedom never before imagined with the pill and literary liberation in Helen Gurley Brown's Sex and the Single Girl. And a decade later Erica Jong's Fear of Flying gave us permission to be all that we could be, in bed and in our heads.
Between Vietnam, the summer of love and Watergate, Baby Boomers lost their innocence. College-bound women were finally told they might enter professions other than nursing and teaching. Newly minted women doctors and lawyers battled up the corporate ladder.
To conquer New York
And then there were the young women who set out to conquer New York. I know that New York in the mid-'70s was bankrupt and supposedly going down the drain. But to a young aspiring actress/writer/dancer/artist/empowered female like me, the Big Apple looked like paradise.
Black Russians and white wines. Disco clubs and platform shoes. Women who could mimic the prowess of a man without guilt. We wouldn't be just the panting conquered, waiting for a marriage proposal. We could be the conquerors.
But it didn't really work out that way. I don't know many women who honestly had a one-night stand without hoping it might lead to something more enduring.
Many of us married older— or as our parents would say, finally. We had children later, and either by desire or necessity, we balanced career and family as no generation had done before. We were the most educated housewives in history. PTAs became boards of directors.
Fear and trepidation
No one writer can be the voice of an entire generation. We seem to bestow such titles on writers who tap a core insecurity for a mass of the group's rite of passage from youth to maturity.
Jack Kerouac, James Baldwin, Neil Simon, John Hughes, Wendy Wasserstein, David Foster Wallace and Kanye West can all claim to have spoken for a section of their own generation. Each tapped the fear and trepidation of the audience they related to.
Does the very talented Lena Dunham?
Like bell-bottom pants and miniskirts, women have been there, done that, and gotten the tattoo. But Dunham's characters seem to have made no social progress from their mothers' teens and 20s. They think falling into beds freely renders them somehow remarkable; they suffer angst without knowing how to work for it. They seek the approval of men, believing that they are the real Carrie Bradshaw of "Sex and the City," if only someone would just notice.
Goldie Hawn's lament
I once heard Goldie Hawn say that she and her friends weren't cheap or easy— they just believed the promises. "Girls" is about that kind of girl. But Goldie Hawn is 66. Have women learned nothing in the interim?
The show's witty banter is the child to Aaron Sorkin's mastery of complex language (currently on display in HBO's "The Newsroom" series). It has the feel of base, bold honesty. It's raw with emotion and bravely refuses to candy-coat its characters' faults. Its blatant sexuality tests the limits of taste.
But "Girls" breaks no new social ground. These girls seemed to have evolved since the Boomer women came of age. They're lost and confused in New York, waiting to be fabulous with no idea what fabulous is. These young women strive for the same elite, Vanity Fair-style careers that so impressed their mothers. Maybe even their grandmothers (well before Vanity Fair itself was revived in 1983). I just wish they would stop making the same mistakes while trying to get there.
I do watch "Girls." But I watch it with great sadness because I see young women making the same mistakes that my generation made 30 years ago.♦
To read responses, click here and here and here.
To read a response by Madeline Schaefer, click here.
To read a response by Lane Blackmer, click here.
Fitzgerald and Hemingway gave us sexually independent gals in the roaring "'20s and escapist '30s, but all of them seemed to be either daredevils or kept women (kept as bedmates or by trust funds). When soldiers went off to World War II, women replaced them in roles as diverse as factory work and baseball. Careers in TV and book editing were well represented by women in films of the '50s. The '60s introduced a feminine freedom never before imagined with the pill and literary liberation in Helen Gurley Brown's Sex and the Single Girl. And a decade later Erica Jong's Fear of Flying gave us permission to be all that we could be, in bed and in our heads.
Between Vietnam, the summer of love and Watergate, Baby Boomers lost their innocence. College-bound women were finally told they might enter professions other than nursing and teaching. Newly minted women doctors and lawyers battled up the corporate ladder.
To conquer New York
And then there were the young women who set out to conquer New York. I know that New York in the mid-'70s was bankrupt and supposedly going down the drain. But to a young aspiring actress/writer/dancer/artist/empowered female like me, the Big Apple looked like paradise.
Black Russians and white wines. Disco clubs and platform shoes. Women who could mimic the prowess of a man without guilt. We wouldn't be just the panting conquered, waiting for a marriage proposal. We could be the conquerors.
But it didn't really work out that way. I don't know many women who honestly had a one-night stand without hoping it might lead to something more enduring.
Many of us married older— or as our parents would say, finally. We had children later, and either by desire or necessity, we balanced career and family as no generation had done before. We were the most educated housewives in history. PTAs became boards of directors.
Fear and trepidation
No one writer can be the voice of an entire generation. We seem to bestow such titles on writers who tap a core insecurity for a mass of the group's rite of passage from youth to maturity.
Jack Kerouac, James Baldwin, Neil Simon, John Hughes, Wendy Wasserstein, David Foster Wallace and Kanye West can all claim to have spoken for a section of their own generation. Each tapped the fear and trepidation of the audience they related to.
Does the very talented Lena Dunham?
Like bell-bottom pants and miniskirts, women have been there, done that, and gotten the tattoo. But Dunham's characters seem to have made no social progress from their mothers' teens and 20s. They think falling into beds freely renders them somehow remarkable; they suffer angst without knowing how to work for it. They seek the approval of men, believing that they are the real Carrie Bradshaw of "Sex and the City," if only someone would just notice.
Goldie Hawn's lament
I once heard Goldie Hawn say that she and her friends weren't cheap or easy— they just believed the promises. "Girls" is about that kind of girl. But Goldie Hawn is 66. Have women learned nothing in the interim?
The show's witty banter is the child to Aaron Sorkin's mastery of complex language (currently on display in HBO's "The Newsroom" series). It has the feel of base, bold honesty. It's raw with emotion and bravely refuses to candy-coat its characters' faults. Its blatant sexuality tests the limits of taste.
But "Girls" breaks no new social ground. These girls seemed to have evolved since the Boomer women came of age. They're lost and confused in New York, waiting to be fabulous with no idea what fabulous is. These young women strive for the same elite, Vanity Fair-style careers that so impressed their mothers. Maybe even their grandmothers (well before Vanity Fair itself was revived in 1983). I just wish they would stop making the same mistakes while trying to get there.
I do watch "Girls." But I watch it with great sadness because I see young women making the same mistakes that my generation made 30 years ago.♦
To read responses, click here and here and here.
To read a response by Madeline Schaefer, click here.
To read a response by Lane Blackmer, click here.
What, When, Where
“Girls.†A TV series created by Lena Dunham. www.hbo.com/girls.
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