When people ask me to explain Girls, I generally tell them that it’s about four 20-somethings who are trying to become grown-up women. It’s a show that addresses the differences and transitions between being a girl and a woman. And then people say “Lena Dunham is naked a lot” or “Is Adam a rapist?” and the conversation gets away from me very, very quickly.
What it means to be an adult — in this case, a woman rather than a girl — is an important question, though. There’s a great story in Answered Prayers about Truman Capote going to visit Colette. In the course of their conversation, Colette asked Truman what he wanted most in the world. Truman answered that all he really desired was to be a genuine grown up. Colette replied that such a goal was “Impossible. Voltaire, even Voltaire, lived with a child inside him, jealous and angry, a smutty little boy always smelling his fingers.”
The notion of being grown-up — beyond someone who doesn’t sniff their fingers all the time — is dependent on the individual. You see that on Girls. Hannah (Lena Dunham) seems to think that maybe it means having a brownstone and possibly an e-book deal. Marnie (Allison Williams) wants to be a professional singer and, apparently, date an Ewok in capri pants. Jessa (Jemima Kirke) thought she could grow up by marrying the only venture capitalist who made money during the recession. (Much belated spoiler — that plan was not successful).
And then there’s Shoshanna.
Shoshanna Shapiro might outdo Voltaire.
Admittedly, if Voltaire couldn’t pull off genuine adulthood, it would seem a big burden to place on Shoshanna Shapiro’s (Zosia Mamet) young shoulders.
But I think she might manage it. She’s not quite a grown up yet, but she’s close.
Because what you consider a fully formed adulthood differs for everyone, maybe it’s simpler to first look at how we regard childhood. The defining feature of childhood seems to be near total selfishness. Children think the world revolves around them. They’re supposed to think that. They’re children. It’s fine. Only when we get older are we really able to think and act in a more selfless way.
Unlike the other characters on the show, Shoshanna isn’t completely self-centered. She doesn’t expect everyone else to meet her needs immediately. And the other characters really, really do. Hannah spends the last episode making the man downstairs cut her hair and demanding her father loan her money because she can’t meet her work deadlines. Marnie decides that now that ex boyfriend Charlie is successful, she can just go out with him — but not before yelling at him in public that he has to go out with her. Jessa, well, Jessa has just dropped off the face of the Earth. None of them are concerned about one another.
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