I am now a girl who watch­es Girls

When Lena Dunham’s Girls first aired back in March 2012, I was 19 and about to move to Lon­don from my provin­cial French home­town after an awk­ward and bor­ing gap year. Look­ing back, I realise I would have found sup­port in these Brook­lyn-based girls strug­gling with hopes for the future, rela­tion­ships and the lone­li­ness of big city life.

But sev­er­al fac­tors made me think twice before jump­ing on the already-crowd­ed band­wag­on of Girls fan­dom. First of all, I was young and utter­ly clue­less. Not only had I not yet lived in a hip, met­ro­pol­i­tan city, but my more per­son­al expe­ri­ences had been lim­it­ed too. I didn’t know much about boys and what I want­ed from them, which, more impor­tant­ly, also means that I didn’t real­ly know what I expect­ed, need­ed, or could get from the kind of female friend­ship pre­sent­ed in the show.

My clos­est rela­tion­ships up to that point had been with my fam­i­ly, in par­tic­u­lar my twin sis­ter, even though she nat­u­ral­ly was – and still is – my best friend. But you can’t always speak open­ly with mem­bers of your own fam­i­ly. Not even to your twin. (Espe­cial­ly not to your twin.) So, just as Lena Dunham’s Han­nah decides she must live life before she can write about it, I too felt the need to expe­ri­ence life before I could enjoy and ful­ly appre­ci­ate Girls.

Yet what real­ly turned the scale against the show was the media atten­tion it received, much of which was neg­a­tive, and some of which was jus­ti­fied giv­en Dunham’s prone­ness for drop­ping dubi­ous #hot­takes. (And yes, I do see the irony in writ­ing an arti­cle on Girls com­plain­ing about the num­ber of arti­cles on Girls already in exis­tence.) In their defence – and mine – it should be said that I used to skep­ti­cal­ly read and semi-secret­ly enjoy said pieces for their explo­rations of wom­an­hood, even back before I start­ed watch­ing the show.

For indeed, like Bey­on­cé, I too run the world now. Peer pres­sure, curios­i­ty and undoubt­ed­ly the loos­en­ing up of my arro­gance and the growth of my tol­er­ance through the years have led to my cringe-watch­ing and even­tu­al­ly binge-watch­ing Girls, with my appetite grow­ing as the sixth and final sea­son draws ever clos­er. At the risk of over­stat­ing my case, I now con­sid­er watch­ing Girls to be an impor­tant life expe­ri­ence in itself, one that all mil­len­ni­als should embrace. Because although Girls, like any com­ing-of-age tri­al, isn’t always life-affirm­ing or even enjoy­able, the self-ques­tion­ing it leads one to under­take is worth its recur­ring stabs to the heart.

On what turned out to be a momen­tous evening, sit­ting on the sofa with my female Girls-fans room­mates, I was ready to be proven wrong. What I didn’t expect was to feel uneasy but intrigued after watch­ing the first two episodes. I didn’t real­ly like any of these pre­ten­tious char­ac­ters and espe­cial­ly not the per­ni­cious rela­tion­ships they enter­tained. If I’d been hon­est with myself then, I’d have admit­ted that my dis­com­fort was com­ing from the same aspect that fas­ci­nat­ed me.

I recog­nised some of my own hopes and doubts in Hannah’s finan­cial and cre­ative anx­i­ety and, espe­cial­ly and more wor­ry­ing­ly, in her blur­ry and destruc­tive rela­tion­ship with Adam (Adam Dri­ver). I am now 24, the same age as Dun­ham then, and even though my own recent com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ship with a boy wasn’t near­ly as strange, I relat­ed to her seem­ing­ly coun­ter­in­tu­itive and con­tra­dic­to­ry roman­tic impuls­es. Nev­er­the­less, the self­ish­ness of all involved left me cold. Deter­mined to under­stand how my lov­ing and car­ing room­mates could con­nect to these self-cen­tred snobs, and already sub­con­scious­ly hooked, I car­ried on watching.

My scep­ti­cism had all but evap­o­rat­ed by episode three. At last, the ten­der­ness at the core of these rela­tion­ships began to show itself. At the end of the episode, Marnie (Alli­son Williams) returns home to find Han­nah danc­ing by her­self in her bed­room, but rather than com­ment­ing on this scene, she joins in. Nei­ther one knows exact­ly what the oth­er is going through, but they’re friends. The rec­i­p­ro­cal sup­port they pro­vide comes in small ges­tures, yet it can still turn a pathet­ic lone­ly night into a par­ty. Tak­en aback, I turned to my girl­friends sit­ting next to me. I’d had many mid-week dances with them in this very kitchen. We hugged when I final­ly admit­ted ​‘I like this!’ and then we talked about the show (and our­selves) for a good hour or so.

Sub­se­quent episodes con­firmed my obses­sion. As each character’s per­son­al­i­ty became more defined and more com­plex, I iden­ti­fied my favourites. I imme­di­ate­ly fell in love with Ray the loos­er (Alex Kar­povsky) and found myself reflect­ing on my pref­er­ence for deeply iron­ic and intel­li­gent men when his behav­iour thwart­ed my expec­ta­tions. Such detours would feel like emo­tion­al manip­u­la­tion were it not for Dunham’s bril­liant writing.

By hav­ing even the opin­ion­at­ed Marnie change her mind every cou­ple of episodes, Dun­ham clev­er­ly express­es the frus­trat­ing con­fu­sion that comes with being in your mid-twen­ties and strug­gling to fig­ure out your place in the world. From the sec­ond sea­son on, I grew to hate Han­nah while feel­ing more and more attached to her: I despise her atti­tude yet quite often recog­nise myself in the character.

Much has been writ­ten on Dunham’s ideas about gen­der, race and sex­u­al­i­ty. Her depic­tion of youth has under­stand­ably dis­cour­aged many spec­ta­tors and I have not yet recov­ered from her char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of the first African-Amer­i­can per­son on the show, in the episode ​‘I Get Ideas’, as a racist Repub­li­can. Yet her often weird stance makes me reflect on what the pur­suit of cre­ativ­i­ty and mon­ey, or the fine lines between friend­ship, romance and hatred, mean to me.

My heart often pounds wild­ly as I try to deci­pher my feel­ings towards the show, its char­ac­ters and how they are reflect­ed in the peo­ple in my own life. Soon enough, how­ev­er, one of my room­mates joins me on the couch and lets me ram­ble about every­thing and any­thing for a while, and all is well again.