Apparently when a woman gives another woman a compliment, the only socially acceptable response is reciprocal in nature.
compliments
the jane dough
For young women, and in New York especially, watching Girls is a requirement.
cheating
Being in love isn’t an option. You wish it was and you would love to say that your relationships could last more then a night, a week, a month, a year but that’s not your reality.
pop culture
A question I get asked a lot as someone who talks about pop culture from the perspective of a critic who roots my work in social issues, namely: does pop culture (and television in particular) have a responsibility to educate the audience?
girls
I squeal every time I see a comic I love on "Girls." Last week it was Amy Schumer. This week: Colin Quinn!
girls
"She should have just said no," people say, placing the responsibility firmly on the woman involved -- but why? Why is the responsibility on her to say no instead of on the initiating partner to secure a yes?
judgement
The hyperfocus on what girls are wearing with a healthy heaping of judgment sends precisely the opposite message, underscoring that girls should be constantly concerned about what they are wearing and who might be judging them for it.
lena dunham
You'd think Dunham's character had won the lottery and transplanted the entire gang to Hawaii, not spent a couple of days banging a hot stranger
calling yourself a woman
Ever since I turned 20 or so, I started making a conscious effort to try to call my lady-identifying peers "women" instead of "girls" when talking about them in the third person. It's had a weird effect on the way I think of them.
girls
Anyone catch "Girls" last night? Anyone?
girls
I find "Girls" more stressful than the stressiest episode of "Breaking Bad." Season 2 cranked it up another notch. This is a good thing.
gender
Should I have said more? Less? Am I overthinking it? What do other parents think?
gender
There’s this kind of idealized dream of little girls, as sugar and spice and everything nice, which results in huge amounts of pressure to make them as femmey as possible at all times.
advertising
Every major retailer seems to feel a need to make massive sexist gaffes on a regular basis, like they somehow haven’t learned from the gazillion cases before, or they think people have suddenly decided not to care about sexism.
boyfriend
Also, can we call him something less annoying please? Casual sex partner?
dirty talk
And how good sex is like training a parrot.
girls
I thought, how could Lena do something so narrow, so exclusive? And then I actually watched the show.
abortion
I didn't have a hang nail removed in 1999. I had an abortion.
body image
"Look!" she says, innocently enough, "Your legs are like, twice as big as mine!" I never prop my legs up again, and from that one comment, I feel myself turning inward, trying to become smaller than I am.
entertainment
If you had asked me in 2008 who would be end up being the famous one in the 12 -person screenwriting workshop I was enrolled in, I would have said "me."
girls
Sure, there's a lack of diversity on "Girls," but I could say the same thing about "Basketball Wives."
entertainment
Growing up, I never saw myself represented in media. I still don’t.
