Girls' night in is about men, sex

20 May 2013 - 02:50 By Jackie May
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Jackie May. File photo.
Jackie May. File photo.
Image: Times LIVE

During a fight, Hannah tells her best friend, Marnie: ''It's like you think meeting a man is the most important thing in the world."

The lead character in the television series Girls, by implication, doesn't.

Hannah thinks of loftier, high-minded and more important and interesting things. Or does she? I've devoured the first series of Girls in a few evenings, and can't wait to get my hands on the next one. In the meantime, and purely for research purposes, I've been watching past episodes of Sex and the City.

My memory of Sex and the Citywasn't favourable. Four rich New York women wearing Jimmy Choos, living in covetable apartments and working at fabulous jobs spend their on-screen time hunting men. I hated the show 10 years ago. The 30-something single women, I thought, were ridiculous.

While watching GirlsI was reminded of Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte. Both shows have four female characters, both leads are writers and all live in New York. But I thought the Girls characters were smarter, funnier, more real than their sisters of the older series.

Hannah and her friends live lives to which I can relate. They have body hang-ups, are anxious, hate themselves and, as Hannah says, they are scared. Girls takes place in the recession, when most people coming out of university and schools are terrified of not finding a job.

While Hannah suffers from anxiety around work and her writing and lots of non-specific anxiety, her older sisters appear to be anxious only about finding a man to marry, or in Samantha's case, a man with whom to spend the night.

But watching Sex and the City again changed my mind. These women are also clever and funny. Though mostly about sex, their conversations areforthright. Theirs was a different generation, predating the recession. The women, in their late 30s, could afford their shoes, and had the luxury of worrying about little other than, in Carrie's case, writing about sex and, for all of them, worrying about the other sex.

I'm no longer young, rootless and questioning life to the extent I did 10 years ago and, this time around, I didn't find Carrie and her friends irritating.

They were a little older, luckier perhaps, more airbrushed, but like Hannah and her friends, they spoke universal truths about love and life.

Yes, Hannah does spend time worrying about writing and her financial status, but she spends a fair part of her day worrying about men and her next lay. Like Carrie and her friends did.

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