It took six seasons for me to kinda sorta get into HBOs Girls. And now that its over, my feelings about its ending are mixed. I grew up with Girls ' or rather, my relationship and expectations of how shows like Girls represent women like me, black women, has grown.Like Sex and the City before it, Girls will forever be a vivid portrait of a particular moment in time, an immortal pop cultural image of being a 20-something woman in New York. Even now, its a little surreal to go back and watch season 1 of the show ' where the clothes already seem weirdly dated, the pop culture references (like Marnies cringe-worthy Kanye cover) of another era.But whats also strikingly dated is how the show did, or rather didnt, deal with race. From day one, Girls received a swift backlash from people who didnt like how abundantly white the show was.'Girls' never really made any powerful insights about race. It couldn't. And more importantly ' it didn't really have to. It didnt help that Girls creator and star Lena Dunham, just 25 when the show premiered, was messily figuring out race in the public eye ' and failing.The race stuff blew up first, Dunham recalled in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter back in February. The second night we aired was the first time I met my boyfriend [Jack Antonoff]; we were on a blind date. I had been metabolizing the criticism all week, and I made a really, really dumb joke that Im perfectly fine to repeat now cause I was fin 25. I said, No one would be calling me a racist if they knew how badly I wanted to fk Drake.Its an anecdote that makes Donald Glovers cringe-worthy appearance as Hannahs black Republican boyfriend in Season 2 all the more telling. And the black female characters on Girls in particular, from Jessica Williams to Danielle Brooks, were alwaysso unsatisfying, so one-note. Girls never really made any powerful insights about race. It couldnt. And more importantly ' it didnt really have to.It took me awhile to accept this, of course. At 23, when the show first came out, I wasnt thinking about the nuances of race, of how Lena Dunham was writing what she knew and, quite frankly, she probably didnt know many black people. I wasnt thinking about the fact that while, yes, New York is diverse, on any given Sunday in Williamsburg or Bushwick or Bed-Stuy you will see throngs of white girls doing brunch at trendy cafes with nary an OG Brooklyn black or brown face in sight.Back then, I was one of those women of color who called out the show when it first came out, who balked at the idea that a series set in Brooklyn had not a single prominent black character, who didnt find Lena Dunhams body radical or revolutionary, who couldnt relate to any of these characters, who got that they were supposed to be obnoxious but found that in itself obnoxious.Something it took me awhile to figure out is that a lot of my issues with the show really had nothing to do with it or with Dunham. It was the bubbling up of a frustration that had always existed but perhaps hadnt been given an outlet. Hate-watching Girls, for me, provided that outlet, a way for me to navigate my feelings ' not just about buzzwords like representation and diversity but, quite honestly, about white girls.I knew (and know) women like Hannah, Shoshanna, Marnie and Jessa. White girls who are complex and messy and imperfectly human. White girls who are also hopelessly clueless about the ways in which their whiteness takes up space. White girls whose feminism often makes no room for me, and indeed sometimes leaves me feeling alienated, even when they purport to mean well, or are just figuring things out. That tension has always been a difficult thing to define, and even more difficult to process when the white girl perspective has always been the default perspective.I knew (and know) women like Hannah, Shoshanna, Marnie and Jessa. White girls who are complex and messy and imperfectly human. White girls who are also hopelessly clueless about the ways in which their whiteness takes up space. Because of this, I could never connect with Girls. Not relate, but connect. I saw all the pieces for what they were and I appreciated them on a certain level, the way one appreciates a piece of valuable art in a museum ' with distance. There were episodes of the show that are truly brilliant, and that I would marvel at and admire. But even watching these well-written, expertly directed vignettes, a general sense of apathy never left me. I didnt want or need Girls to represent me. But I still wanted to be represented. Somehow.And strangely, thats what I took away most from this show. It gave me an understanding, a peek into a perspective I didnt understand. And it also helped me to find the language toexpressmy frustrations about why I couldnt relate or connect to it. Because Girls, for better or worse, marked a seminal moment in the representation conversation.It came out just as Shonda Rhimess Scandal was blowing up ' the first primetime drama with a black female lead in 30 years. Think about that. Post-2012, we have How to Get Away With Murder, and Being Mary Jane, and Queen Sugar, and Shots Fired, and Empire, and Black-ish, and Rebel, and Underground. Were notthere yet, of course, but its a testament to the beauty and power of showsstarringblack people,madeby black people.In 2017, ["Girls"] leaves behind a TV landscape full of increasingly diverse, intelligent, messy, complicated, smart and funny women. It feels appropriate that as Girls heads out, Issa Raes Insecure is just beginning to hit its stride on HBO. Awkward Black Girl, Raes web series which provided the template for Insecure, was for me a badly needed answer to an industry that had yet to tackle the black female 20-something experience.In 2012, it felt like Girls needed to be more than what it was, because there just werent many shows by and for young women on our screens. In 2017, it leaves behind a TV landscape full of increasingly diverse, intelligent, messy, complicated, smart and funny women. What a full circle moment. -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
Click here to read full news..
