Americans saw quite a
revolution over the past 15 years with programs that bring up issues and
true-to-life situations that audiences can honestly relate to. One of these
shows was HBO’s Sex and the City,
based on a book of the same name by Candace Bushnell. The show spoke directly
to a specific audience—single, smart, successful women in their 30s who had yet
to find love. Women of this demographic, especially the unattached, found the
show liberating, because it affirmed the notion that a woman that age can feel
okay and even embrace her singlehood.
Although Sex and the City has been off the air
for nearly 10 years, it’s a show that is still very much alive in the minds and
hearts of many women today because it was a turning point in American
television. It also paved the way and set standards for movies and television
series about women trying to find love while living a full life. Now, there is
a show airing on HBO that mirrors Sex and
the City more closely and directly than any of its other successors.
Lena Dunham's Girls is very much like, but also quite
different, from Sex and the City. The
similarities are that both shows revolve around a group of four close friends
who live in New York City and are rather clueless when it comes to
relationships with the opposite sex.
The differences are that the Sex and the City women are in their 30s,
and have successful, established careers, beautiful apartments and glamorous wardrobes,
while the young women of Girls are in
their early to mid-twenties and are not sure of who they are or what to do with
their lives in their post-college years. The girls are trying to find a place
in the world by searching for jobs that accentuate who they are, while juggling
the men who come into their lives.
The women of Sex and the City were comfortable in
their own skin even though they take a while figuring out what exactly they
want in a partner. The young women of Girls,
on the other hand, don’t display the same confidence; they’re just beginning to
comprehend the world they live in and are trying to establish their individual
identities.
The characters also
mirror each other, most obviously Girls’ Hannah
(Lena Dunham), is a lot like Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) on Sex and the City in that both are
dedicated writers; Carrie is a professional newspaper columnist, while Hannah
pursues the goal of writing a book, while working at a local coffee shop on the
side.
Hannah’s best friend
Jessa (Jemima Kirke) is a lot like Samantha (Kim Cattrall) on Sex and the City as both women are very
sexually liberated, daring, and fearless. Marnie (Allison Williams) on Girls is like Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) on
Sex and the City. Both women are very
practical when it comes to business and relationships and possess a strong
no-nonsense attitude. The character of Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet) on Girls and Charlotte (Kristin Davis) on Sex and the City, both project an
innocence and have conservative views on sex and relationships.
Even the characters’
relationships echo one another’s. For instance, Hannah’s relationship with the
aloof Adam (Adam Driver) is very much like Carrie’s with Mr. Big's (Chris
Noth). Both couples go through on-again, off-again relationships, and both Adam
and Mr. Big have a fear of commitment.
Right from the first
episodes of both series, the viewer will instantly pick up on the idea that the
couples will have a special connection throughout the series, and will serve as
a core part of the show although the women come across other men along the way.
While it remains unknown exactly if or how Hannah and Adam will end up together,
the notion that it will happen is alive and well.
A
major difference between the two shows is that Carrie and her friends dress
very glamorously and revel in a lavish lifestyle in Manhattan, whereas Hannah
and her friends live more modestly in Brooklyn. Sex and the City is totally unrealistic as far as the women’s
financial and living circumstances are concerned.
Carrie’s
life is the most ridiculously unbelievable because there is no way anybody
living in New York City can afford to live independently relying solely on a
career as a freelance writer. What’s even sillier is not just the idea that
she’s supporting herself with the city’s high rents, but that she can afford
such grand luxuries as cigarettes, Manolo Blahnik shoes (she has WAY more than
she needs) and alluring, outfits and purses with top designer labels like
Versace or Louis Vuitton.
Girls, on the other hand,
portrays the friends’ situations much more realistically from the very first
episode. Hannah’s parents stop supporting her financially, and she is living
with Marnie whom she knows from college, in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn,
while struggling to find a part-time job while pursuing a writing career.
Marnie faces similar problems, when economic woes lead her to being laid off
from her job as an art gallery assistant and she takes a job as a restaurant
hostess and contemplates launching a singing career.
Adults
in their twenties, and even early thirties, today can identify a lot more to
the characters on Girls than the
women on Sex and the City because
practically everything about the lives the young women on Girls lives is basically how people of that age group now live. While
Girls has much more of a grittiness
and practicality than Sex and the City,
both shows speak directly to a specific demographic in a particular time and
place. Although the literal circumstances of the Sex and the City women might be a bit dubious, they go through the
same experiences with friendship and boyfriends like millennial woman. With Girls, it’s the recent college grads
also navigating life and learning about what they want and what they can get
from an imperfect world.
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