Written By Andrea Martinez
I have recently been obsessed with the TV show, Girls, directed by Lena Dunham, who also happens to play the main character Hannah (who I can’t stand the most). It aired from 2012 to 2017 so the vibes of the show are honestly super indie and if you stay to watch the credits at the end of each episode the most indie song you could think of will be playing.
This show has caused me worse second-hand embarrassment than PEN15, and that says enough about how you feel watching it. If I could summarize it in three words, they’d be sex, friendships, and ill-advised. I know it sounds like I’m bashing this show, and you may be wondering why it is my favorite right now, but there’s something about the characters that is so insufferable that you can’t help but develop a love for them and can’t keep your eyes off (at least in my case).
These 4 women, Jessa, Hannah, Shoshanna, and Marnie, are all terrible at decision-making and unable to admit their faults to each other, mainly because they don’t think they’re in the wrong. For example in the most recent episode I watched, Hannah formed an unusually close friendship with a 14-year-old, Cleo. She takes Cleo to get matching “best friend” frenulum piercings and makes Cleo go first, after seeing her screech in pain Hannah backs out. It was already weird enough to be friends with a high-schooler, but Hannah managed to top it off by backing out on a painful piercing that a 14-year-old shouldn’t have even gotten in the first place.
These are usually the kind of people I tend to hate, but seeing their occasional goofy, sweet side has made me resonate with each of them. I can be kind of an overwhelming mess as most of them were, but I can also make decisions based on logic and not emotions (which they are usually bad at). But seeing their anxieties and how they’re still figuring things out even though they expected their lives to go differently after graduation made me start to reflect on myself.
As a junior, time feels like it’s flying, and my anxieties about life after graduation are already high. Girls honestly helps me cope with the uncertainty of my future because of how realistic it is. This show doesn’t glorify post-grad life; instead, it reveals how challenging life can be, which is a wake-up call considering how we’re raised to believe we’d instantly find a career after graduation. Watching their experiences makes me feel less alone and even helps me appreciate my past mistakes because life isn’t always perfect, and I need to remind myself of that more.
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