A graphic representation of an age demographic
The pilot of Girls, which aired in 2012, started with the blunt force storyline of Hannah, played by writer and creator Lena Dunham, who was forced into living an independent lifestyle after graduating from college and working an unpaid internship. This was the perfect way to connect with the age demographic targeted to empathetically watch Girls. The twenty-some-year-old characters are all uniquely crafted to depict a version of women in their twenties in the ever-changing modern society.
Dunham, who studied creative writing in college, was able to develop a new spirited way of addressing what it is really like being a woman – or better yet, a human – in the twenty-first century. The focus of Girls isn’t on the glitzy and glamorous life of people who are doing well for themselves financially in New York City – not to diminish fellow female based series produced by HBO in the past, such as Sex in the City, which taught lessons of life, loss and love, as well – rather, Girls is a raw and spectacular view of the less-than-perfect reality that is striking appeal with twenty-somethings everywhere.
The plot is a seemingly random expulsion of the unconscious of a twenty-something. Dunham expertly bursts open the envelope that has held the television-viewing public for decades. With a new way of connecting with an audience, she has done so in the most elevated, yet at the same time base, of manners. Each character is uniquely struggling in one way or another, or more often, in multiple ways.
Dunham’s character, Hannah, who the show focuses most on, encounters the troubling (or what appears to be troubling) realization that being educated and finding work isn’t as easy as many altered media outlets have been purporting. Girls has given twenty-something women a new cast to connect to: Hannah, a person trying to find her place in the world as an English major; Marnie, a heartbroken art history major who is in-between jobs and struggling to come to terms with what she really wants; Jessa, a damaged, free-spirited being who pretends she doesn’t need love or approval, but secretly wants it more than anything; and, Shoshanna, a girl who is wrapped up in her own world which is bubbly and childish, yet is yearning for experience and dabbling in worlds foreign to her own.
Each of these girls is different, quirky and unlike the other. This show has shown the public that friendship is a different form of family, and that the people who love you help you get through hard times. Friends are there to not only revel in your successes, but to pick you up when you’re down or tell you how it is when you are seriously messing things up.
Dunham’s Girls may have taken an alternative route to becoming one of the best known and most talked about series on television, and it may continually spark controversy in the media for being shocking, too graphic or uncensored. But, the truth is – it’s real. These characters may not fit the mold that has been made for women to fit into in the twenty-first century, and the show isn’t clean and proper, but it is real.
Life isn’t perfect. Graduating from college or university doesn’t mean that a job is magically going to appear, and life isn’t easy. The portrayal of life as a twenty-some-year-old in Girls may be shocking to the public, but it is uncanny, and at the same time empowering to know that someone actually understands what it is like to be twenty-something and not be where one had dreamt of being. Mental illness, confidence and self perception issues, sex, the appropriation of the human body, drugs, addiction, family, friendships, job losses and gains, change – these are all issues Dunham has tackled so far, in different ways, through different characters.
The progression of the series depicts the trials and tribulations of people trying to make a living, trying to make a name for themselves, while simultaneously dealing with the issues that are real and affecting and twenty-somethings everywhere. This show isn’t just for entertainment, but it is to wake people up, hoping they will look around and realize everyone is struggling with something. While some people are better at hiding it then others, the truth doesn’t need to be hidden.