In the 90s, every woman was a Miranda, Carrie, Samantha or Charlotte. ‘Sex and the City’ provided an identification matrix with which the entire female population of the Western World could be neatly categorized into one of four groups. What a time for feminism.

Thankfully, it is not the 90s anymore. Indeed, Carrie Fever has devolved into a series of tired movies kept afloat by menopausal soccer-moms who refuse to smile at the overpaid screenwriters’ desperately persistent wordsmithery for fear of angering the vengeful botox Gods. The time of ‘Sex and the City’ is passed; it is now, if modern media is to be believed, the golden age of HBO’s ‘Girls’.

The comparison between the two immensely popular televisions series is not altogether apt. ‘Girls’ is about the lives of newly emancipated twenty somethings who struggle to find a place for themselves in a world in which a liberal arts degree has exactly as much value as the (recycled) paper it was printed on. On the other hand, ‘Sex and the City’ was about the lives of inexplicably upwardly mobile thirty somethings who struggle to multitask the immensely complicated activities of buying shoes, having orgasms, asking pert, rhetorical questions and going to brunch.

Occasionally, each show strays into the territory of the other– ‘Girls’ spends a fair deal of time in its premiere season focusing on the meaningful and meaningless sexual activities of its central characters, just as ‘Sex and the City’ delved into Carrie’s dire, if fleeting, financial problems and at times, and with a surprising degree of sensitivity, handled some of the Big Issues (Miranda’s pregnancy, Samantha’s breast cancer, Charlotte’s divorce.) It is worth noting how progressive ‘Sex and the City’ was in its day.

On the whole, from the comfortable vantage point of a 21st Century American, one might be initially forgiven for thinking of ‘Girls’ as an uncomfortably realistic foil against the puffy, aged, formulaic sensationalism of ‘Sex and the City.’ However, it’s actually more complicated than that.

Where ‘Girls’ and ‘Sex and the City’ primarily overlap is that they both provide depictions of contemporary womanhood and specifically female friendship; creator and lead actress of ‘Girls’, Lena Dunham, chose the name of her show with intent. In one of the first scenes of the pilot episode, in fact, protagonist Hannah Horvath, a budding writer, wallows in the bathtub while she speaks to her uptight roommate and best friend, Marnie. With this intimate picture, Dunham establishes the idea that the friendship of these two characters, which is at the heart of the show, could only occur between two women. Furthermore, as actor, heart-throb and NYU alum, James Franco points out in an article for the Huffington Post, Dunham provides very little insight into the perspective of the male characters. This initial season of the show explores experiences that most people go through– unemployment, breakups, drug use, STDs– but somehow deftly anchors these experiences to a uniquely feminine perspective. Go figure: ‘Girls’ is about girls.

‘But what kind of girls is ‘Girls’ about?,’ you might ask. Well, on paper, the answer seems to be that ‘Girls’ is about girls like me: a middle-class, cisgendered, 22 year old University of Pennsylvania attendee, with a BAS in History and English and a group of close female friends, who is struggling to become a writer. Apart from my ethnicity and time spent in Australia, I meet all the necessary requirements for a Hannah Horvath. And yet, unlike ‘Sex and the City”s characterizations, I can’t but hope that I’m nothing like sensitive Hannah, or, for that matter, neurotic Marnie, or naïve Shoshanna or free-spirited Jessa.

Like ‘Sex and the City’, ‘Girls’ has its clearly defined female archetypes. However, Dunham is a significantly more talented writer than those who powered ‘Sex and the City’ for so many barren years, and, as such, there are shades of gray to her characters and their friendships that distort the paradigmatic boundaries of who she represents. Interestingly, for the most part, the primary way in which these shades of grey show themselves in the course of this season, though there is some indication that things will change in the next, is through the moulding of ‘Girls’ female characters into awful human beings to a magnitude that is alienating, rather than humanizing. The girls of ‘Girls’, to different extents, are selfish, narcissistic and inconsiderate.

By contrast, frankly put, the women of ‘Sex and the City’ are so consumed with embodying type A or type B– being Carrie, Samantha, Miranda or Charlotte– that they don’t have enough depth to be generally and basically, sordidly, awful. Lacking ambiguity, the characters of ‘Sex and the City’ are stellar examples of postcard cutouts of real people, 2 dimensional images that haven’t the volume to contain concepts of good or bad. But boy, do they ever seem better than the alternative.

Season one of ‘Girls’ is hilarious, confronting, beautiful, puzzling, difficult to watch, charming and well made, but is it about me? I hope not; I’ll stay a Samantha-Charlotte hybrid, please and thank-you.

Image Courtesy of  Girls

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Rick Perry’s decision to mandate HPV vaccines for sixth-grade girls back in 2007 has become a bone of contention on the campaign trail. Under the terms of Perry’s executive order, 12 year old girls in Texas were supposed to receive the Gardasil vaccine, which inoculates them against the human papillomavirus (HPV).

HPV is quite widespread, with approximately 50% of sexually-active adults acquiring it during their lifetime. However, according to the Center for Disease Control, in 90% of cases, the body’s immune system eliminates the virus without any adverse effects. But in the remaining 10% of cases, the virus can have serious side effects, including genital warts or cervical cancer.

It is because of the risk of sexually-transmitted diseases that many medical authorities recommend administering the HPV vaccine to all girls before they become sexually active. Even though the executive order was ultimately overturned by the Texas legislature, Perry’s attempt to impose the HPV vaccine by executive fiat is hard to reconcile with his promise to reduce the government’s role in people’s lives.

Fellow GOP presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann criticized Perry’s decision, saying that “to have innocent little 12-year-old girls be forced to have a government injection through an executive order is just flat out wrong.” Even Democrats have joined in the criticism. During the 2010 election, they ran attack ads featuring menacing images of a needle poised to strike a young girl’s arm.

Perry’s decision also vexes social conservatives because inoculating girls against sexually-transmitted disease flies in the face of their support for abstinence-only sex education. Conservative Christian leaders were vocal in their opposition to the executive order, and their opposition was instrumental in convincing the legislature to overturn it.

Another issue with Perry’s support for the HPV vaccine is that Merck, the company that makes Gardasil, donated $30,000 to Perry’s campaign. The company also employs Perry’s former chief-of-staff as a lobbyist. Naturally, these close connections have given rise to claims that the Texas governor was acting more for the benefit of a major donor than the general public.

Although Michele Bachmann accused Perry of “crony capitalism,” he claimed that there was nothing untoward about the situation. “”If you’re saying that I can be bought for $5,000, I’m offended,” he replied. However, as noted above, Merck’s contribution was actually much greater than the $5,000 quoted by Perry.

Furthermore, Merck and its subsidiaries also contributed $380,000 to the Republican Governors Association once Perry took the helm of that organization in 2006. Now that Perry is coming under fire for his decision, he seems intent on distancing himself from it. During a recent debate, he admitted that, if he had to do it all over again, he would have approached the matter differently.

Meanwhile, his spokesman Mark Milner, accused Bachmann and others of staging histrionics in order to draw attention to themselves. “You have candidates out there that are trying to get attention and will throw outlandish accusations out there just to get their name in the paper,” Milner said. “What drove the governor on this issue was protecting life.”

Despite the Sturm und Drang that this has generated, Perry is still the candidate most likely to appeal to the right wing of the GOP. His social conservative credentials are still stronger than those of Mitt Romney, who is still struggling to overcome grassroots Republican opposition to Massachusetts’ healthcare law.

Image Courtesy of  http://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/

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