Why Would a 40+ Woman Watch GIRLS and Like It?

I'm just going to say it. I like the show GIRLS. Yes, I am a 40+ year old woman who likes this show about 20 something spoiled rich girls in Brooklyn, NY. And no, it's not because it reminds me of Sex and the City, because it does not. It's not even close to Sex and the City with the exception that it deals with four girlfriends and that Miranda had to move to Brooklyn in the last season. And no, it's not because I am living vicariously through these 20 year old girls and wishing I was 20 again. Well, maybe a little... but not for the reasons that you may think.

Photo from HBO.com

I enjoy GIRLS for the story line, the humor and for some of the very real moments that it deals with. I recently read an article by a woman who so clearly didn't get GIRLS or just didn't like it. That's fine. If she didn't like it it's clearly a matter of taste. It's just like some people LOVE Family Guy and love the off-the-wall inappropriate sense of humor in it, and others do not. That's exactly what's happening here.

There are ridiculous scenes like two girls in the bath tub together with one shaving her legs and the other one eating a cupcake. That is the beauty of this humor. Then there's the very real show about Hannah dealing with her grandmother's death and you see and hear the crazy interaction between her mom and her two aunts. Yes, fights like that DO happen! If you don't think they do then you've lived in a very comfortable, protected, lily white world and I envy you.

One of the main reasons I love watching GIRLS is because of Hannah's character. She is weird, awkward, spoiled, narcissistic, confused and in her early twenties. We were all there once and we didn't even have to be all those things.

GIRLS is such a great reminder that you don't have to love your characters to enjoy a show. Hannah has done some things that really make me dislike her, as have some of the other characters, but I forgive them because I want to see what's going to happen next and because I know that it's just a show. For example, I hated Adam at the beginning and then I really started liking him when he saved Hannah from her OCD. At the end of Season 3 I had mixed emotions about him because I could understand how Hannah's idiosyncrasies could be a distraction but I thought he came across as selfish too.

Some of my favorite story lines around Hannah involve her writing and how she struggles with it for various reasons and interruptions, like her OCD returning, the death of her publisher, and then the publisher keeping the rights to her book for two years. It seems like it is always something. I like this part because I can really relate to it.

A very defining moment in the series happens when Hannah starts to work at GQ. She is introduced to all the free snacks and to her co-workers, the other advertorial writers. Here she is, she finally has a great paying job, but she stops and realizes that all these other writers are "real writers" like her who don't write creatively any more. She tries to console herself, after trying to quit, by telling herself

that she'll write on her free time, which we know is easier said than done.

One of my very favorite scenes is the one when Hannah finally really quits her job. It's done in such a brilliant and awkward way and she shows both her ungratefulness to people who just tried to be her friends to her despair in wishing she could save them all. However wrong or right she was, I think she meant well in her usual way that comes across as selfish. She wanted to make them all run away from the temptation of the money and back to their writing. She's still too young and naïve to realize that what they do isn't any of her business.

The last episode brings the whole GQ story and quitting her job all together very nicely when she receives the letter of acceptance from the Iowa Writer's Workshop. I thought, "Ah! That's where you were going with this Lena Dunham and writers!"

It's in these last two shows of the season that I truly lived vicariously through Hannah. As a 40+ year old woman who has been there and done that I could truly relate to what she was going through, that struggle between wanting to write and having to make a living. I too quit my job when I was 24. and I wish I had thought of applying to a creative writing program at that time, like my cousin did. Instead I didn't really write, I went back to work full time after a year, and the rest is history. So watching Hannah in that pivotal moment gave me hope for her character and in a way it reminded me of being 20 something.

It also really made me think of my situation now. Unlike Hannah I'm 44 and I have two children. I can't act as irresponsibly now. I took this year off but I had a financial plan or I wouldn't have been able to do it. I've had my fun and it's time for me to go back to work full time now, writing or no writing.

Did I get any writing done? Yes and no. All I did was work on editing my first novel that I wrote nine years ago but I still haven't taken the steps to self-publish. I didn't write that great second novel that I had planned since before I even quit my job. Ironically, I find myself doing the exact same thing at 44 that I did at 24, not realizing how quickly the years were passing me by.

I was lying in bed with my 9 year old son recently and he innocently asked me, "How many more years do you think you'll live?"

I thought about it, "Around 26," I answered truthfully.

"NO! That's not enough!" he cried.

I thought about it, "No, it's not." And as we lay there I suddenly felt very sad.

So in other words, if any novels are going to get finished, published and written by this 40+ year old woman I better get started now. GIRLS is a great reminder of how quickly the last 20 years have passed me by and how quickly the next 26 years will go by too.

On Why I Totally Get Lena Dunham

Lena Dunham's character Hannah on "Girls" reminds me of America Ferrera's character Ana on "Real Women Have Curves." Her body is a response to society's message to women, especially young women, that you have to have a tiny thin body to be accepted as beautiful.

(Me at 18 going to my prom with my childhood friends. I thought I was so fat.

I wish I weighed that much now)

I've quoted Ana from "Real Women Have Curves" in past blogs because I can really relate to her character. At the end of the movie Ana takes off all her clothes and stands in front of her mother in her bra and panties and says, “Mama, I do want to lose weight but part of me doesn’t, because my weight says to everybody, ‘Fuck you!’ How dare anyone tell me what I should look like or how I should be, when there’s so much more to me than just my weight?”

I love that part but it takes Ana to the very end of the movie to do that and to really speak up about her mother's criticism of her body. Lena Dunham does that with her character in her show GIRLS almost every single week.

I picked up the April issue of Glamour because Dunham was on the cover. I had already seen the fabulous pictures (untouched or not) of her in Vogue. The photos in Glamour are so beautiful too and the interview with Sheila Heti is great!

I think that this was Dunham's best response to the questions about her "nakedness." She said, "As teenagers our bodies become a signal of how good we are or how much worth we have.....To make my body a prop in my work gave it a value I didn't feel it had before. Life's too short for me to explain why it's OK for me to be naked on the show."

That's it. Period. She has used her body as a prop in her work and has given it value.

I have never made my struggle with weight and with my body size a secret. It's been my life-time struggle. Now that I'm older I'm worried even more about my health and even less about my vanity but I must admit there is a little bit of vanity involved. I can really connect to what Lena Dunham says. I was that teenager who thought she was too fat because she wasn't as thin as her friends. I can also understand Ana's character in "Real Women Have Curves" because for a long time I felt that way. I refused to conform to how society thought I should look rather than to accept me for my mind.

But oh how I wish I could go back to my 18 year old self in the picture above and I would have told myself, "You are just fine the way you are. Love yourself for your health and stay this size, but you ARE NOT fat! You are worth so much more."

I have had my ups and downs on being comfortable with my body and with my nudity as I've gotten older. I still have a problem being completely naked in front of someone. I have been known to wear a tank top to hide my middle section. I do wear a bathing suit with a little skirt, but the way I see it at least I wear a bathing suit. I know people who have missed out on the joy of being on a beach in a bathing suit just because they are worried about what other people think of them.

Life is too short! I always remember the topless old ladies in Europe. They didn't need a Lena Dunham to tell them it was okay to love their body. They were happy with themselves and with their life.

So this weekend when I'm on the beach for Spring Break I will be comfortable in my own body and in my bathing suit. I'll walk on the beach with my kids and I'll OWN IT! My body has value! It's mine.

Writing Lists & Comparisons

Along with my random thoughts that I blogged about last week is my love for lists. I cracked up when I watched, "I Don't Know How She Does It," with Sarah Jessica Parker and she's writing lists in her mind while she lies awake at night. I do that. But I have such a terrible memory that I have to write my list down. I use both my phone and my Franklin Covey planner.

This is what an old school Franklin Covey day planner looks like.

 I write my lists in my day planner and I put my appointments in my phone/computer calendar. I am constantly adding to my list and moving items from my list from one day to the other. I hate when I don't do something, forget to move it on in my calendar to another day and then it just falls off. When I go back and review the last month and it irks me to find something without a check or an arrow that just didn't get done. I'm just weird like that.

After two or more years of hearing about GIRLS from my sister I finally sat down and watched Season 1 on Amazon & On Demand. Of course I was hooked! It is such a smart, funny, quirky, weird show about so many different weird characters. I finished Season 2 right before Season 3 started and I cried during the last show. It was so sweet and sad.

I both admire Lena Dunham and I'm jealous. Jealous is such a strong word and people are so critical of it. Poor word. I think it gets such a bad rap. I think jealousy is a very natural feeling, especially when regular people feel a slight jealousy towards super successful people like movie stars and screenplay writers. What I think is more crazy is when people are jealous of other regular people like them.

I posted this on Facebook recently:  Sometimes I do what we should never do and I let a celebrity like Lena Dunham, who is only 27 and has accomplished soooo much already, make me feel like a failure at 43.5. BUT THEN I read this on Wikipedia, "Her father, Carroll Dunham, is a painter of "overtly sexualized pop art", and her mother, Laurie Simmons, is a photographer and designer who creates artistic domestic scenes with dolls." and that Meryl Streep was a neighbor and family friend at their summer rental house in Connecticut and somehow I don't feel so bad after all. I am the star of my own story! (Just a random thought)

Yeah, we really shouldn't compare ourselves to people in general, but especially not people who got a head start in life. It reminds me of the hilarious article that I read, in the fashion of articles  that say, "Five things that successful people do right when they wake up." This one is called, "11 Things Super Successful People Do Before They're Even Born!" People who are born to successful parents who have a summer house in Connecticut and are neighbors with Meryl Streep are on this list.

I know better. I know not to compare myself to others. I am just me. I am an original, unlike anyone else and I need to own that. That's what my writing is all about.