Amanda Marcotte and Amanda Hess join us live to talk about two of the biggest topics in the new HBO show: sex and gender
Every episode of HBO's Girls so far has featured an awkward (read: raw, honest, refreshing) sex scene. First, there was Hannah with her hands around her ankles being asked to play "the quiet game". Then came Marnie (no pun intended), cringing while Charlie attempts to "make love" to her. "Hey, look at me. Look at me. Let's look at each other …" "I'm going to turn around," she says, disgusted.
Since the show's premiere, critics have discussed how the show portrays young adult sex and modern womanhood, both physically and psychologically. Are these empowered young women, exploring their sexual identities? Are they too privileged to illustrate what sex for most young women is like? Does Girls portray a negative message about casual sex? Are the characters relatable? And what about the men in the show?
On Monday, April 30, we'll attempt to answer some of these questions. Join Amanda Marcotte and Amanda Hess at 2pm ET for a live chat about representations of sex and gender in HBO's Girls. Bring your thoughts and comments.
In the meantime, we've collected some commentary and analysis about sex and gender on the show for you to enjoy over the weekend. Hope to see you on Monday!
Why is the sex on HBO's Girls such a drag? – Katie Roiphe
It is undoubtedly cooler for certain generations to take an ironic stance to sex, and so awkwardness and humiliation and misery and disconnect are cooler, in their exquisitely comic way, than just, say, having an OK sexual experience. Lena Dunham's stylized celebrations of awkwardness, charming as they may be, are probably no more "realistic" or indicative of a general zeitgeist, than a scene where someone is actually into sex, and not just whimsically observing how ridiculous it is.
Marnie is TV's latest beautiful control freak – Eleanor Barkhorn
Two weeks into the new HBO series Girls, one character has emerged as the most divisive: Marnie, the gorgeous, uptight roommate of the show's heroine, Hannah … Marnie is not TV's first beautiful control freak: She fits squarely into a character type formed by Mad Men's Betty and Sex and the City's Charlotte, two stunning women with deep neuroses. Marnie, Betty, and Charlotte highlight a strange trend in highbrow television: With beauty comes a desire for control – which the character ultimately must lose in humiliating fashion.
Sex and the single Girls – Laura Bennett
When women embarrass themselves on screen, it tends to be cute or slapstick or both: Zooey Deschanel splayed on the floor in high heels, Maya Rudolph in a wedding dress squatting in the street with food poisoning, Lucille Ball adorably messing up one domestic task after another. [...] In Girls, women's bodies do not have to be strictly funny or strictly sexy, which may be this new show's boldest stroke. Instead, they are emotionally complicated: one more source, in the uncertain landscape of post-college life, of anxieties and self-doubt.
Girls depicts wasteland of sexual promiscuity – Emily Esfahani Smith
Girls will inevitably be compared to another HBO show about young women, Sex and the City (1998-2004). But Girls is less an extension of Sex and the City than it is a response to it – a tacit and even subversive acknowledgement that the sex lives of young post-feminist women are bleak. In Hannah's relationship, we see how the hook-up culture degrades girls. In Marnie's, we see how it degrades guys.