Stupid Is as Stupid Watches

I saw a pre-release of About Time with my friend Lizzie. We ended up in a conversation with the woman next to us about Girls and Sex and the City. It wasn’t a positive conversation.

For the record, I tried really hard to like Girls. Despite Lena Dunham’s talent sa a writer I hate every character on that show. They are all incredibly self-involved, self-destructive, whiney, and idiotic. No person I know is acquainted with anyone like them so to people outside of Brooklyn, they’re not that believable either.

I thought SATC was overrated as well. These women were doing things in their 30s I know better than to do in my 20s. Samantha would have all kinds of STDs and major emotional intimacy issues. I’ve only known one person my adult life that rivals Charlotte for unrealistic ideas about love and marriage. Carrie spends so much money on designer items and time in emotionally unavailable men that if she were your friend, you’d want to smack her.

The woman next to us said “It’s like they’re glorifying stupidity.” I agree totally.

SATC reinforces the same stupid stereotypes I wish women would get away from. Carrie spends so much money on designer shoes and clothes that she can’t afford her apartment. Years are wasted pining after Mr. Big who was emotionally unavailable. IRL, neither of these situations would have ended well but where’s the fun in reality? Better to teach women you can make a man fall in love with you and designer clothes are more important than rent.

Charlotte firmly believes in the Park Avenue fairytale and once she thinks she has it, she stops working for anything else. When that falls apart, she doesn’t have much left. Despite these major mistakes, she learns nothing. In the second movie she becomes overwhelmed by her family despite not working and having a nanny. The lesson here is that you can have unrealistic ideas about love and marriage and you’ll end up being Mrs. X from The Nanny Diaries.

Girls teaches that you can be a useless, selfish, and lazy but there aren’t any consequences. When Hannah gets an ebook deal and is faced with real work and possible success, she self-sabotages. I found her pathetic but the popularity of the show will reinforce the behavior.

Emotional stability and plotlines based in reality must not make compelling television because these stories keep repeating. In About Time, a woman makes similar mistakes but doesn’t get off so easily. It broke your heart to watch but I loved that she had bona fide consequences.

Maybe that’s why I said About Time was quiet. Every person in the movie was realistic and didn’t act like idiots. We need more of that on TV. I’m going to back to my genre fiction where women don’t take crap and kick butt. Let me know when muggle writers start writing better women.

Music: Suffragette by Nina Gordon