Kicking. Squealing.
Like me, blogger Half Sigma has been watching HBO’s Girls each week. HS and I seem to agree that the show offers the most complete and honest look at the state of the modern relationship and seems to parrot many of the ideas tossed around on Game blogs.
HS found an exchange between Hannah and Adam most interesting. Adam is less into Hannah than she is into him. In this episode Hannah had just finished having vanilla sex with a guy from her hometown in Michigan and was telling Adam about it:
I was just so amazed by his apartment, it’s huge, it’s like twice the size of yours and he paid like nothing for it, and it just made me think, like why doesn’t everyone struggling in New York move here and start the revolution? It’s like we’re all slaves to this place that doesn’t even really want us.
This continues the anti-Sex and the City theme in Girls and it may tie into the exchange between Adam and Hannah in the first episode when Adam turned Hannah on by telling her that she shouldn’t be anyone’s slave except his.
In Hannah’s comment we see that the City and the Guy both benefit from being aloof in their own way. A city can’t be said to be aloof in the true meaning of the word, but its coldness and its mystery is part of its excitement. It keeps rejecting, and it seems impossible to master. It’s a challenge, and it’s interesting to see the show draw a parallel between the psychology driving these seemingly irrational choices. Thinking in economic terms or in terms of mental health, choosing the safe city or the safe beta boyfriend seems to be the ideal. But that’s not how individuals make their choices – especially, or at least most surprisingly, Girls.
This is a great leap – but perhaps NYC’s mysteriousness – its aloofness – helps explain its skewed sex ratio. Looking at the map below from the NYC Economic Development Tumblr, we see that there are many more single women in NYC than single men. Perhaps the City is their aloof alpha asshole.
I just spent a weekend in New York City and I think this a valid theory. The suburbs are the beta provider they eventually have to settle for.
I like where you’re going with this. You can also say that men think the same way: something draws us to wilderness in a way that a civilized place such as an upscale mall doesn’t.
In the end, you can tie this thinking to economics: young girls are going where the greater potential payoff is, from their perspectve: a city with a good concentration of high status men, with all of their high-status goods. This is why girls find an aloof place like NYC apex-alpha, but not an unfriendly city like Detroit, which they just find scary, with no potential payoff.
@PA
haha! yeah they don’t wanna go to Detroit, that place is a little too “dope” fore their liking.
Do you have an overall number for the ratio of single males to single females in that age range for NY City? That diagram seems to have approximately equal numbers of males and females when you add it all up, at least visually.
On the other hand, given that it is known as the city of high finance, and the predators go where the prey are, I can well imagine that lots of women go to NYC looking to score.
The last episode mirrors what a lot of the game blogs have been pointing out: she meets a nice guy with a good job who treats her well (he wasn’t even supplicating…he was just friendly and genuine). In the bedroom the first thing she does is stick her finger in his ass (to his horror), and when they are having sex her idea of romantic talk is asking him if she’s tight like a baby (at which point he gives her a “what the fuck is wrong with you?” look).
The point being that Adam is Hannah’s alpha. He’s not a good-looking guy and has no social skills, but given Hannah’s appearance, he’s as close to an alpha male as she’s going to get, and she’d rather be a girl in his harem than the girlfriend of a normal, good-looking guy who treats her with respect.
Donny,
I haven’t been keeping up with much of what others have been saying about the show, but I wonder how feminists feel about it. They probably like that Hannah is working out her own little kinks, but they have to be distraught over the fact that her rationalization hamster is working at double speed.
CR, I don’t know either. My suspicion is they can’t be too thrilled. Maybe that’s where all of the vitriol about racism comes in: feminists can’t really attack the show directly, because after all it’s what feminism is supposed to be all about (a young girl moving to the big city to stake out her place in the world on her own). And like minorities, feminists don’t like to attack their own. So instead they complain that the show doesn’t have enough diversity, even though it is the behavior of these girls that makes them cringe (because they know it’s true).
It really bothers me that people can’t just accept the fact that there are people who don’t interact with minorities on a daily basis, and it doesn’t bother them at all. In fact, it is off their radar completely. But somehow because of this their experience is somehow invalidated? What pretentious nonsense.
Anyway, deep down though I think this show makes feminists uneasy: the genie is out of the bottle and they can’t put it back in.
Picture Rosa Parks watching a rap video and asking: this is what we fought for?
Dear Lena Dunham,
Stop subjecting us to your fat, flabby, tattoo-ridden body and saggy tits. Nor do we want to see Peter Scolari’s dick.
Sincerely,
America
A purported list of words the FEDs look for.
Donny–
Good analysis.
Cheers Doug.
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