Girls

I am a girl.  I am a daughter and a mother of girls.  I am also the grandmother of girls. I think I've been around girls enough to understand them.  On the other hand -

Watching  HBO's new series, "Girls," last night made me wonder if there's anything I can understand about the young ladies depicted in this highly acclaimed new series.  Are my advancing years also advancing me away from understanding what young women are facing in today's world? 

On a very basic level, I recognize these girls.  They are like my 24 year-old daughter's friends in many ways - the employment anxiety, the male-female anxiety, the social awkwardness.  But what I find difficult is the great soup of our society into which they must become an ingredient and, hopefully, a successful ingredient. 

Let's start with the social soup.  It looks like any convention about male-female relationships has deteriorated to the point that there is no convention.  You're either getting it or you're not, and the long term strategy or thinking around the coupling is not there or is distinctly troubled.  For example, Hannah's tryst just seems like sexual calisthenics she's enduring for what purpose?  pass the time?  They could just as easily be playing a board (bored) game.  Both these young people mistake what they're doing for a kind of intimacy, but the sad fact is that it is a cold and awkward exchange. 

One young woman is pregnant and there's no discussion about the father and he doesn't even figure into the dialogue.  She is so troubled and confused about this pregnancy that she misses her abortion appointment, leaving her three friends there to "celebrate" her abortion, waiting as she has another tryst only to discover that she has gotten her period and is therefore, not pregnant after all.

The only character I recognize is the young woman who is unhappily in a long term relationship with the wrong guy and beats him up about it regularly.  I saw this behavior in myself and see it in others who just don't have the maturity or experience to recognize the key flash points of good/bad relationships.

So, the show has me perplexed.  Is this the way it is now for young women?  Has it always been this way and the show's raw depiction has touched some reserve within me that doesn't want to see what a troubled environment my own daughter has to navigate?  I guess I can think of so many characters throughout history that probably have been endlessly dependent on parents, sexually active with all the attendant side effects (pregnancy, disease etc.), confused about life path, rudderless, seeking . . . seeking . . . seeking.  I know it's not just this generation of young people.

But, today's world where everything seems easier and harder is damned confusing to me, so how must it seem to young people at the beginning of their adult lives?  One of the characters on the show, a gynecologist examining Hannah for STDs, summed it up nicely for me after listening to Hannah's litany of fears about the possible results of her trysts - "You couldn't pay me enough to be 24 again."