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The Taming of the Douche

Image Credit: HBO
Image Credit: HBO

If all you had to do to get a male New Yorker to commit was ask him to be your boyfriend, NPR wouldn’t have just run a story about the ever increasing number of never-married females populating the five boroughs. Which is to say, I don’t buy Girls’ transformation of Adam from a never-returns-a-text canoe builder to the fantasy boyfriend who professes his loves and wants to cohabitate after three weeks. I dated the canoe builders when I was younger (in my case, it was a potato farmer), and they didn’t magically become commitment enthusiasts after spending a few weeks having sex and listening to my gender studies theories. They transformed into ex-boyfriends.

Adam Driver demonstrates great comedic timing and a unique ability to use his body to delineate character, and I’m glad Dunham is giving him material beyond amateur porn monologues. But where did the douchey, shirtless Adam go? When did he grow a vagina? Why so much plaid? Even though I appreciate the climactic Bushwick scene in which Adam slams Hannah for her self-absorption (after she slams her own nose into the pavement), I don’t believe the show earns their final brawl. Hannah obviously needs to end the season pushing away a man so Dunham can highlight Hannah’s inability to view individuals as more than creative fodder, but she elides the arc of the Hannah/Adam relationship to arrive at this conclusion. So I don’t buy it. I don’t buy it any more than I buy the surprise wedding between Jessa and that guy from Bridesmaids. Continue reading “The Taming of the Douche”

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Lights Out

Image Credit: AMC
Image Credit: AMC

The Internet’s collective consciousness expressed grave concern when Peggy Olson stepped onto the elevator of Sterling Cooper Draper Price for the last time. Would this descent also represent her exit from Mad Men? To which I replied, “no, Internet, no.” This concern was not unfounded because the show has been known to discard or greatly diminish the screen time of seemingly essential characters (e.g., Sal, Paul, even Betty). Nevertheless, I doubted that Peggy would vanish or pop up as a Hari Krishna because she is central to the show’s understanding of mid-century American culture. While Don embodies the American desire for reinvention and illusion, Peggy represents the hyper-ambitious spirit and transitional energy of the late sixties far more than any other character—particularly more than the woman who replaced her for much of this season, Megan.

The Internet also seems fairly certain that the “lady’s cigarette” Peggy is testing will become Virginia Slims with the infamous tagline “You’ve come a long way, baby.” Due to Matthew Weiner’s scrupulous attention to period detail, I doubt the show will actually have Peggy create this campaign because, in real life, it was written by a man. This shouldn’t be surprising, for what workingwoman would have considered 1968 a watershed moment in women’s liberation? You were still fired if you got pregnant and couldn’t charge a husband with rape in most states. You could wear Go-go boots though. Continue reading “Lights Out”

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Woman on the Run

Image Credit: AMC
Image Credit: AMC

I have been fascinated with Detective Sarah Linden’s femininity (or lack thereof) since the The Killing premiered on AMC last year. It is blatantly obvious to this former English major that the writing staff strictly adheres to their character bibles, and I love it! (see ’ma?  My degree was worth it!  Sorta…)

Most serial drama lady cops have a particular duality to them: they’re the tough gal at work, but they have another defining quality underscoring their “femaleness”—usually their sexuality, motherhood, or the estrogen-driven emotional irrationality that comes with ladydom, of course. For example, Dexter’s Lieutenant María LaGuerta is a demanding boss in the field, but she flirts and uses her sexuality to sustain her power (and subsequently ends up undermining it). Or there is Detective Olivia Benson from Law and Order: SVU.  I won’t harp on the amount of makeup she wears nor how attractive Mariska Hargitay is (although I guess that’s what happens when this is your mother), but it should be noted that even she gets pinned down as a “mother figure” in the twelfth season when she is appointed with a guardianship. More importantly, Benson has a reputation for getting too emotionally involved in cases—because that’s what ladies in law enforcement do, right? Continue reading “Woman on the Run”

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Girl Fight!

Image Credit: HBO
Image Credit: HBO

When most sitcoms depict women fighting, it goes a little something like this: cue the laugh track as the girls grab each other’s hair and spin around in circles before realizing they are girls and, thus, must always get along and will subsequently be shaving each other’s legs by the end of the episode.  There will have been no hints of anger before this episode, and there will be no repercussions. Girls do not fight this way. Men fight this way, absent the hair pulling. In an, albeit clichéd, gender analysis of fighting, I would argue that when girls get angry, they tend to procrastinate. We seethe, turn passive aggressive, talk behind our friend’s back, and then return to seething for approximately six months until some minor issue breaks open the dam of crazy. There are obviously exceptions to this rule (e.g., drunk fights or fights with strangers in grocery stores), but most women are socialized to be nice, compromising, and agreeable. Even though we are encouraged to cry, we are not encouraged to become angry or confrontational even when the offending party deserves it. I don’t believe women are biologically programmed to act this way. We are sentient beings who become angry just like our male counterparts; however, we are forced to express it with a smile, so when the crazy dam does burst, it does so with a frantic, gesticulating, screaming flood. It’s at this point when we begin throwing toothbrushes and screaming about pubescent masturbation practices because of a poorly written book about a twenty-three-year-old’s dead boyfriend. Thank you, Lena Dunham. Thank you for writing a girl fight without a single strand of pulled hair and an abundance of seething. Continue reading “Girl Fight!”

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Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon

Image Credit: AMC
Image Credit: AMC

In a season obsessed with the emergence of youth and the resignation of the old guard, it is fitting that the two most climactic scenes in this pivotal episode involve the physical embodiments of life and death. “Commissions and Fees” suggests that the price of entering the brave new world of the late sixties must be paid in blood. Lane’s suicide may be bloodless, but his puffy, ashen face evokes blood by its conspicuous absence. Blood comes up again after Don’s speech about the insatiable nature of desire with Roger remarking that Don should wipe the blood off his chin. However, actual blood only enters the frame with a brief red flash on a young girl’s underpants. Sally has been playing at female adulthood throughout this season: talking back to her mother, quasi-flirting with Glen, wearing makeup and Go-go boots, and acting as though she and Megan are the same age. Nevertheless, like many tween girls who long for the trappings of adulthood but are horribly frightened and confused by the often crude realities of womanhood, she runs back into her mother’s arms the moment her pubescent female body makes itself known.

Sally is standing in front of the Museum of Natural History’s diorama of a Pleistocene couple, talking with Glen about the couple’s offspring when she experiences the unique pain of menstrual cramping. After a very expensive cab ride, she returns to her mother’s bed and is spooned like a child as her mother tells her that this pain, blood, and sadness simply indicate that everything is working properly. Sally, like the Pleistocene woman, can now have a baby. Betty is, of course, correct, and it’s a much better response than the standard bromides about becoming a new woman, but what does it say about femininity when properly functioning adulthood equals pain? Continue reading “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon”