Princess of Moonrise Kingdom

Wes Anderson is the current reigning king of weird childhood moments: alienation, ennui, and balls-to-the-wall eyeliner.  Watching Moonrise Kingdom last night reminded  me of why Anderson's movies are so lovely.

The story: there is a youthful love affair, an escape from scout camp, a search, a night spent alone, a discovery, an adoption, and a great storm. There are overtones of Vietnam, which aren't inappropriate for a movie set in 1965. There are maps, tiny canoes, a kitten in a basket: the proper accessories for kids on the run. It's not a big movie, but that's just fine: the movie's stars are the kids, and everything is scaled to fit them.

Anderson gets terrific stuff when he directs children. Although his dialogue sometimes feels stilted, most pre-teens are little weirdos, and so giving them weird things to say is totally natural. The roles he gives his child actors are some of the most interesting in the oeuvre, and that's saying a lot for a man who wrote the Tenenbaum family into existence.

However, Anderson's greatest, indisputable gift has always been his knack for look. Each scene is in this movie is so carefully composed and art-directed that it feels like the cover of a children's book come to life. The film stock feels retro and touchable, giving it a warm, accessible quality. And, of course, Anderson's great talent for art direction and set design means that Moonrise Kingdom is  instantly recognizable as a Wes Anderson production. Characters wear impeccable knee-socks and raccoon-eye make-up, live in overlarge shabby houses, and run away from home carrying suitcases full of books. Everything in the frame has been considered. While I sometimes miss the looser-feeling energy of Anderson's earlier films, the well-behaved look of his more recent productions are undeniably beautiful.

It's no wonder that Anderson's movies inspire a rabid fan following, often with young women in their late teens and early 20s set. That's a demographic who feel great ambivalence about leaving their own childhoods behind. In Anderson's world, a little bit of female instability often becomes a fascinating personality facet, and Suzy, the rage-prone mini-heroine of Moonrise Kingdom, is no exception. No wonder, then, that fans might be convinced that, if they had a portable record player and an armful full of french pop songs, they would be easier to love. The characters's outfits are easy to replicate, and because so much of Anderson's mood is created through look rather than dialogue, it seems plausible that, given enough Fendi fur and eyeliner, you could transform yourself into Margot Tenenbaum.

Anderson, like graphic novelist Ben Katchor and musician Tom Waits, has a gift for creating worlds filled with the unusual and beautiful. Characters are travelling Bible salesmen, pickle purveyors, top-hatted hustlers with pet doves and knuckle tattoos. They are firmly middle-brow, firmly American, not overinvested in things like "home" or "jobs": the type of characters who think nothing of escorting a woman in a raw-silk dress to a vaudeville revival show one night and hopping on a boxcar the next morning. They have money, but it runs out. They have affectations, like corn-cob pipes and red toques. They often sleep in tents. They are attractive because they do what they want (often suffering in the process: see every Bill Murray character in every Wes Anderson movie), and in the end, most people usually  come around.

Despite missteps like The Darjeeling Limited, I always look forward to the next Wes Anderson outing. When he is good—and Moonrise Kingdom is very good—it's possible to lose yourself in his world. I hope I never grow out of that wistful moment at the end of the film when I wish I could visit that world in person.

Bridal Party

I had the privilege of being a bridesmaid for my friend Jessica last weekend, and it was dope as hell. She was gorgeous - this is a woman who could totally rock a pair of burlap shorts on three hours sleep, so having her hairs and make-up did and a tailored gown certainly didn't hurt. More importantly, it was clear that she and her husband are best friends who also have hot (married!) sex. She was relaxed, danced up a storm, and indulged all the glasses-clinkers with plenty of smooching at the reception. Instead of seeming nervous, she seemed happy. Really, truly, beautifully, genuinely happy.

(Oh, she also let the bridesmaids pick their own outfits. Girlfriend, we are cool for life for that one decision.)

Although I was never a little girl who "played wedding," with a lace tablecloth and my little sister roped into flower girl duties, I was a flower at my uncle's wedding. That wee pink dress was immediately relegated to the dress-up box, where its most frequent wearer turned out to be my little brother Sam. Blame his sisters, though: he was too young to dispute being swaddled in pink satin, and we thought it was the last word in comedy. Being a bridesmaid came with more stress (mostly about falling out of my tall high heels), but it also came with the absolute pleasure of being friends with the bride, and being asked to be in her special day was an honour.

My peers have mostly taken a haphazard approach towards building a household. I've been to very few weddings. No engagement parties, one bridal shower - the biggest commitment ceremonies we have are housewarming shindigs when we move in together.

The first wedding I attended as a legit adult was a city hall affair attended by slightly dazed and definitely hungover group of friends who had found out about the nuptials roughly 36 hours before. One of the guests wore glare-cutting ski goggles as sunglasses to cut the August glare; my brother, in another wedding-related sartorial misstep, wore basketball shorts. It was special nonetheless. It takes real cojones to elope.

English majors and liberal studies grads aren't really known for their flashy lifestyles, and maybe that includes aesthetic objections to a big wedding; what's more likely is that we can't afford one on our intern's/freelancer's/back in school/underemployed budget. Or maybe, as we get older and more settled into our cohabitation habits, the point of marriage (love, commitment, etc.) is made hazy by the fact that the lease has been signed and we co-own pets together. What would a wedding change?

My boyfriend's group is pretty different: most of the couples are married, often before they turned 25. They know about things like engagement rings, and caterers, and down payments on houses. They took honeymoons. They have RRSPs or freelance successfully enough to not default on their mortgages. They are, in short, Real Adults. Obviously, marriage doesn't automatically give you a secret key into the Real Adult lounge at the airport (they serve the good bourbon there!), but I do think that solidifying your commitment to your romantic partner makes it easier to consider taking on other commitments, be they financial, professional, or personal. When I asked my dad why he and my mom had gotten married after seven years of dating, he said, "We wanted to deepen the commitment." You never know how deep your love can go until you dive in.

Maybe one day, I'll be planning my own wedding - maybe in a church, maybe down at city hall, maybe on the beach with no shoes. But I do know that the strength of my friends, both married and not, will be a huge part of how I got there. These past few months were a crash course in wedding planning, and in etiquette, and a glimpse at the first steps of Real Adulthood by a person I used to choreograph impromptu weekend dance routines with, and who still makes me laugh so hard I pee a little. Being a bridesmaid was an unexpected joy, a chance to stand up beside a person I like very much and help celebrate her love. It was fun - I now understand why people say yes when they're asked to do these things! - but beyond that, it was an honour. I hope that the dive into those deep waters of commitment goes smoothly for my friend, and for all the friends who decide to take the plunge.

Cut the Waist

Rob Ford and I have a lot in common. We've both undertaken ambitious, radical weight-loss goals, often telling the people around us, "I'm going to get fit and lose a whole pile of weight! Hundreds of pounds! By next week!" We start strong: exercise, trips to the gym, cutting down at meal times, preening in our underwear. But as the weeks stretch on, we lose focus. The gym becomes very far away. Morale swings low. It's a cycle that most dieters are familiar with.

Ford is carrying about 315 pounds on a 5'10" frame, which ballparks his BMI at about 45. Folks should generally aim to be about 19 - 25, and more than 45 is considered "super obese" and a cause for medical concern. He's red-faced in media shots, his second chin hanging down over his shirt collar. He looks like a keg: short, squat, and and like there might potentially dangerous consequences if you shake him up too much.

The Cut the Waist challenge was supposed to be an easy, feel-good victory, one over which he would have complete control. If he happened to raise a few bucks for charity, hey - bonus! It would give some structure to media events, hopefully smoothing some ragged edges between him and, say, The Toronto Star (I doubt that Ford himself gives a flying fuck about media relations, but hopefully some savvy, well-positioned council friend does). It would give him a chance to be seen as a do-gooder, a man who can keep a promise, a man who can cut the gravy at home like he does at work. People would stop saying "John Candy" in sotto voice as he entered the room.

In the last week, there's been a lot of back and forth on if Ford will finish the challenge, which aimed to have him shedding 50 pounds by mid-June. On Sunday's radio show, he told listeners that he was done with it - "I'm not even dieting any more" - but by Monday night, he and his brother Doug were spreading the word that the challenge was still on, but the media events were officially cancelled. Rob was going to finish the diet without overwhelming scrutiny from the press. Things seem to have settled into "I'll finished, but you can't watch," so, you know...par for the course with Mayor Ford.

Meaningful weight loss is often a team effort. Psychologists encourage folks to have gym buddies and to try smaller, healthier meals in a group setting: it's easier when the strange (diet and exercise? Ew) becomes your peer group's "new normal." It takes discipline. Doug, Rob's brother, also signed up for the Cut the Waist challenge, but Doug's shaming, bullying approach to his brother's (non-)participation is damaging at worst and disheartening at best.

Ford (as much as he would have hated it) should have had photo-ops at the gym and hosted fresh-'n'-healthy luncheons for his staff. He should have gotten doctors on board, taken a lunch at a public high school cafeteria, glad-handed for community 5K walks. He should have shown public commitment to his self-imposted goals, and, like any good politician/middle-schooler, shown his work. Most people know how hard it is to take off unwanted weight, and a well-managed public effort to do just that by one of the city's heaviest political heavyweights would have helped in elevating Ford's string of baser moments. Instead, Ford withdrew, and his diet (and his attitude towards his own challenge) became erratic and unpredictable.

It's not hard to see the Cut the Waist challenge as a metaphor for Ford's mayoralty so far. Team efforts have fractured. Media events have become an chance to hide. It turns out that cutting the gravy is actually pretty tough, both in council meetings and on the dinner plate. Missed opportunities abounded. Losing weight, like running a city, is difficult to well; it becomes nearly impossible if you don't have a team of people working with you, cheering you when you're succeeding and helping you redirect around your failures.

Ford's public persona is shifting, from a blustering city councillor who listened to his constituents and got stuff done, to a man who looks more red-faced, both politically and personally, by the day.

Cottage!

Cottaging is a way of life for Canucks. Going to camp, hitting the cabin, swinging by the lake house/beach/what-have-you: it's in our blood. Now more than ever, Canadians are more urban than rural, and our weekends away have become of paramount importance. Getting out of town and getting into some nature, a slower-paced lifestyle, and a more casual family rhythm, can be a balm that lasts months past the initial application.

My family has a cottage on Lake Huron, on a wide, sandy swathe of the world that has somehow, miraculously, mostly escaped the high-intensity development that lakefront properties have inspired in places like, say, Toronto. Unlike some of the mega-cabins that have sprouted in that village, our summer home is tucked back from the road. We've enclosed ourselves with trees; there are nooks filled with rusty (but still valiantly rideable!) bicycles, hammocks, Muskoka chairs and derelict tree forts. The backdoor into the kitchen is usually propped open, and on mornings when the lake and the sky are the same shade of faded-denim blue, the only thing you need is a mug of hot tea and a good, fat book. Afternoon snacks are handfuls of salty nuts or quickly toasted rye bread with a slab of cheese perched on top; then it's back down to the waterfront to read, swim, and walk. After the sun goes down, we go to the drive-in, or play card games, or just sit and stare into a campfire. That place is a heaven.

Last summer, I was off work, but I never really felt like I was on vacation. Instead, I was slogging through the job ads, suffering in a stifling third-floor bedroom and coping with the PTSD from my horrible former job. By the time summer rolled around, I was still working, albeit not for pay: I was working through financial woes, helping my boyfriend work through a serious loss, and seriously reevaluating my career trajectory. While there was time for ice cream sandwiches and beach time in the city, it wasn't until Labour Day that I got to escape Toronto and spend some time in Sauble.

Sauble is so wonderful during its off-peak hours: 9 AM on a Wednesday morning, the lakeshore strip is dotted with the occasional jogger or cyclist. Come Saturday afternoon of a long weekend, that same stretch of road is jammed with top-down convertibles and groups of overtanned college students blaring top 40 and squealing along. When I was younger, I wanted the beach to be a party town, because I thought the drivers and their singalongs were glamourous and fun. These days, an evening game of bocce ball on the beach sound way more fun that cooking yourself in an un-A/C'ed car.

The best part of the summer vacation is getting away. It's amazing how much more like myself I feel once I unplug for a few days. I eat little bowls of yogurt with figs and walnuts. I swim - I sometimes feel like a whale, but I swim. I read. I talk to people. I don't spend hours focusing on a screen 18 inches from my face. I do a little writing, maybe, or see a movie, but there's no constant pressure to be mining the internet for the New! Best! Thing! EVER!

I can't wait for the cottage this summer. We have a whole week up there - last summer, we had a weekend, but in the haze of all the bad stuff that went down in the first couple weeks of July, it was easy to forget. But this year, we're hurtling towards a big move and a big trip, and a week off in the middle to enjoy each other's company and relaaaax sounds deliciously perfect.

Trapped Like Sardines In A Tin

In the days after his death, I kept looking for the definitive article, the one that would make me feel okay about Adam "MCA" Yauch's death at the age of 47 - 47! - from cancer. I read online and magazine memorials, watched videos and listened to covers, but nothing captured the tenor of my grief. People talked about the snotty punk kids the Beastie Boys had been back in their NYC hardcore days, or how they had transformed themselves from punk rockers to frat-boy hip-hop impresarios (in the process, opening the door for hip-hop of all stripes and colours to that vaunted suburban record-buying audience), and how Yauch had become, against all odds, kind of a decent dude: Buddhist, father, Tibetan freedom fighter, inductee into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Adam Yauch was one of my first celebrity crushes. Oh sure, there had been Jonathan Taylor Thomas, who was cute, but MCA's gravelly voice and chilled-out vibe was one of the first times, at the age of fourteen, when I felt acutely aware of wanting to hang out with someone because I thought he was cool. Yauch was undeniably cool: the Beastie Boys were everywhere in the summer of 1998, and the videos for "Intergalactic," "Body Movin,'" and "Three MCs and One DJ" were blowing up. I got into the Beastie Boys in a big way.


Hello Nasty was a touchstone: I remember sitting next to my high-school crush (hi Jon-Erik!) in class. When he started humming "Intergalactic," I, in what is probably in my top-ten awkward moments with the opposite sex, started humming "Body Movin'" twice as loud while avoiding direct eye contact. It was like some fucked-up one-upsmanship, or a mating dance, I guess, for suburban white girls with less-than-zero skills with boys.

MCA was possible to love as a kilt-wearing punk, a house-party-crashing douche, and a silver-fox rapper who was fighting the good fight. It was possible, because I didn't grow up with the Beastie Boys, to love all of those guys at one, in one package. It was possible to discover tiny awesome pockets of MCA-ness, back through the ages, and to hear his gravelly voice in my headphones 24/7.

So his death a couple weeks ago left me feeling lurchy and sad. It has become, in a very short time, de rigeur to hash out the whole chronology of MCA and the Beastie Boys - their evolution from punks to hip-hoppers and beyond - but that isn't how I feel about them.

I met the Beasties at their zenith - I know most people will say Paul's Boutique is their best album, and they might be right, but Hello Nasty was my first date with Ad-Rock, MCA and Mike D, so I hold it in high regard. They had settled into being thrift-store-shopping, basketball-playing, hilarious-video-making examples on how to age gracefully into early middle age. They had gone from the rebellious mailroom party animals to thoughtful, stylish, humble CEOs who were game to take on cartoonish photoshoots. Media at the time focused not on their journey, but on how good Hello Nasty was - and it was, and remains, very good indeed.

Other parts of their oeuvre became important to us as well: License to Ill, which was all about the hellraising that shitty teenagers get up to, was a great soundtrack for us to get up to shit. Like right before prom, when I went over to Jo's house to get really high and dance around with a bunch of women to "Girls," that 1986 joint that spells exactly why the Boys love girls (laundry and boobs, mostly). It was a tiny, well-dressed, estrogen-drenched mosh pit, made up mostly of lesbians - girls who love girls loving "Girls"! - and we knew all the words.

But for the most part, their beer-flinging past was a curiosity to me: it was like finding out your biology teacher used to start fights in the parking lot after last call. In order to go to the License to Ill days, I had to go go back through the Milarepa days, the Nathaniel Hornblower days, back through Tibet and "Sure Shot" and "Sabotage" and Buddhism, to find a 22-year-old dude who fucked up and then got right. I'm way more interested in the getting right than I am in the fucking up, and against the odds, Yauch ended up getting really right.

I'm going to miss the Beastie Boys, and MCA. They've been in my ears for 14 years - literally half my life - and the loss of MCA's distinctive voice, both as a rapper and as a man, will be hard felt for a long time.

30 Things To Do Before I Pronounce You "Adult"

In 2007, Glamour published an article called "30 Things Every Woman Should Have and Know by the Time She's 30." According to the Huffington Post, this article took off like gangbusters - women were emailing it to their friends and coworkers, and the editors of Glamour eventually tracked down 30 prominent lady-types to write essays on each of the 30 entries.

 The list is divided into two sections: fifteen entries on things women should have, and another fifteen on things we should know. The "to have" section read like a shopping list, albeit one filtered through an empowered attitude: make sure you have a black lacy bra and a cordless drill by the time you hit your thirties, girls, or else Glamour won't think you've made it! The "to know" section is a little more loosey-goosey, but uses the same Zen-lite attitude that permeates women's monthlies (ew). There's an instruction to learn "how to kiss in a way that communicates perfectly what you would and wouldn’t like to happen next," which I'm sure is totally just as effective as using your mouth to say words like "no" and "I don't want to." The list is a spirited but hollow exercise in self-acceptance: instructive bullet points that don't offer any acknowledgement whatsoever that these things are a process.

I'm not yet thirty, but I've got some ideas on how I would write that list.

To Have:

1. A friend you can call to help you move. Don't let those people go - they are vital to your personal economy and should be handsomely rewarded.
2. "Your" addiction. What - sugar? Diet colas (yum - that's mine)? The gym? Cigarettes? HBO shows? What's the thing you do that drives most of the people around you mental? Pick one - you don't get to be addicted to cocaine and bad boyfriends.
3. A really great outfit. Glamour said this too, but I think they meant a really posh outfit, like for job interviews and other adult-style bullshit. This outfit is one that makes you feel totally fly. I love baggy sweats, skater shoes and a puffy vest, because it makes me feel like a mid-'90s backup dancer, and totally confident.
4. Your charity (NB: this is NOT YOUR BOYFRIEND). Maybe you do volunteer work, maybe you donate, but everyone needs to give back.
5. Some great female role models. Not models/actresses or other women whose primary value to the world is how they look; I'm talking about writers, musicians, politicians, business owners, and entrepreneurs whom you can admire.
6. Your signature dishes. Have one for brunch potlucks, vegetarians, picky kids, and impressing your date. I suggest bean salad, bean salad, buttered noodles, and a roast, in that order.
7. Your creative outlet. Non-negotiable. Gardening counts, as does blogging, cooking, making up cocktails, and re-arranging your apartment. Watching movies and playing Guitar Hero does not count.
8. A person in your life who makes things good for you. This can be a partner, a friend, a family member or a workmate - if you're lucky, you have many - but this chum is a source of laughs and support.
9. A game to whip out at parties. I like Munchkin for my nerdz, and Kinks for a drunken party game (everyone puts in two kinks or fetishes - one of their real ones, and a made-up red herring, and folks go in turns trying to match 'em back to their owners).
10. A library card and a credit card. They are both tools. Treat them as such.
11. The ability to be bored. Put down your cell phone and iPod, and try entertaining yourself in a doctor's waiting room, in line at the bank, and on the bus. Boredom allows your mind to wander and gives you a break.  
12. Your favourite body part. I've have gorgeous eyes and an unbeatable rack, which definitely helps balance out my chunky-ass curves. Even if you're not wild about your total package, your delicate neck or strong hands are a total asset and your crush is probably daydreaming about them right now.
13. At least one PG-rated story about a date gone horribly, hilariously wrong. Turn it into a cocktail party story where you are charming and self-deprecating. Tell it to the impressionable teenage girls who glom onto you at weddings.
14. A really cozy sweater, blanket, or duvet. I know I said this wasn't a shopping list, but seriously, just get one.
15. A hairstylist who knows what's up. If your cutter needs to straighten your curly hair before she can cut it, you're at the wrong place.

To Know:

1. Figure out how many drinks take you to tipsy, charming, bottom-of-the-ocean depression, fighting-mad, and asleep at the bar. Stick to the first two. 
2. Your sexual style. I loved my 20s, and they were a time of exploration, but as I approach 30, I know what I like, and how to bring it up with my partners. I rely on words to communicate preferences.
3.  How you like to stay fit. Yoga, Zumba, Nia, step, weights, long bike rides, sprints, stiltwalking, stripping classes, whatever. I don't care. Find a way you like to get sweaty. 
4. Whether or not you're good with money. Some people have spreadsheeted budgets, while others rely on  dipping into their purse and pulling out loose twenties. Either way, you have no excuse to beg your landlord for lenience.
5. Accepting that there is at least one person out there who hates you, and probably another who is envious of you, because of the person you're sleeping with. This has basically nothing to do with you. 
6. Are you a pet person or a kids person? Maybe both? Cool. Neither? Also cool.
7. How much time in front of the TV/computer you can handle before you go a little nuts. Aim for, like, 75% of that.
8. What type of place energizes you. Do you love the ocean or the prairie? Do know love office camaraderie or the calm of a home workspace? 
9. If you are actually allergic to gluten/dairy/soy/whatever. If you aren't, please, I beg of you: no more intensive conversations about your bowels at brunch. 
10. Whether or not you are a Diva Cup girl. And then seriously, can we all stop talking about our periods?
11. What not to apologize for. If you are a workaholic, own it; if you need a part-time job, cool. If you like women or kink or prefer to be alone, if you don't want kids, if you haven't put a down payment down on a house, you owe the world exactly nothing in way of explanation.
12. How to take downtime.
13. How to work really, really, ridiculously hard.
14. How to quit a job. Getting hired is tough; knowing when to walk away is tougher. Know your limits and work within them, and don't get pushed around because you "need the money."
15. How to be there for the people you love when they go through hard times. People are going to die, go to rehab, have terrible divorces and breakups, get behind the wheel of a car after four shots of Jaeger, cheat, lie, run up astronomical debt, have abortions, attempt suicide, drink too much, quit their jobs, get fired, go to jail, develop intensely irritating grad-school affectations (UGHH cocktail parties with these people are the worst), move away, throw tantrums, owe money, give you terrible presents, get married to people you hate, and generally fail. Cultivate your forgiveness, your grace, and your listening ears.

Post-Girls

My friends and I, in true post-hipster fashion, recently launched into a "what does it all mean?" conversation about the new HBO show Girls. There are a lot of critical narratives coming out of what we're talking about when we talk about Girls, like race, privilege, representation, money, the prodigy Lena Dunham and the problematic Lesley Arfin, New York, sexual insecurity, exoticism and the value of making this kind of television.

Girls rounds out the trilogy of shows launched in the last year, which also includes New Girl and Two Broke Girls. The titles might suggest that these shows are about children or students, but everyone here is in their mid- to late-twenties. I have a fondness for New Girl, because it's transformed itself from an "adorkable" (sigh) vehicle for MPDG Zooey Deschanel into a strong ensemble comedy; I have a neutral feeling about Two Broke Girls, because while I like Kat Dennings's deadpan delivery and real-girl body, I'm much less excited about sitcom tropes, like a laugh track and a secondary cast full of ethnic caricatures.

But Girls, with its indie/HBO pedigree, was purporting to be something different. Not a sitcom, exactly, although some of the scenes are painfully funny (awkward sex = comedy!), but a snapshot into the lives of single, underemployed, urban-dwelling young women. We are legion.

The conversations that have sprung out of Girls have mostly focused on three things: whether or not we are the kind of girls that Girls is about; the representations of race in the show's universe; and the responsibilities of the writers, network, and showrunners to identify and correct discrepancies between the real world and the show's world on both those points.

There is no question that I'm the kind of person who could easily go down a Girls rabbit-hole. Like the main character Hannah, I'm a small-town transplant to a much larger and diverse city. I came for school and stayed for work, which I hoped would be as a famous and well-respected writer. There's a scene in the first episode where Hannah, who has been writing her memoirs, produces the half-way-done product for her parents. She hands them about twenty pages of computer paper, which provoked a knowing guffaw from me. I have totally done stuff like that. My parents, like Hannah's, were generous; they also knew when to cut off the flow, which was much more recent than I'm proud to admit.

But Hannah is naive in other ways. She's convinced she's going to get AIDS, and she was working at an unpaid internship for two years - a mind-boggling length of time that led to a summary dismissal when she had the gall to ask for a paycheck. Like me, Hannah is not the prodigy she wants to be (Lena Dunham, at 25, is a different matter altogether). If the writing is good - and so far it is - this could be good TV. But there's nothing new here. Good TV requires that viewer learn something about the world - good, evil, man, woman, rich, poor, child, adult - that we didn't already know before. I'm not totally sure how Girls is going to accomplish that.

And then there's the race thing. Following a post on The Hairpin, in which the author lamented the lack of diversity in the cast of Girls, the outcry on the internet has gone something like, "What kind of cracker-ass New York are these girls living in, anyway?"There's the contingent of folks who say that Dunham is just writing her experiences, and if she's not tight with ladies of colour, she has no obligation to just, like, stick 'em in. There's the other side, that points out that cities are filled with all kinds of people, and someone who's "finding herself" the way Hannah is might bump against women who aren't exactly like her. But in the Girls universe, the characters of colour are bartenders and nannies, homeless men and receptionists - certainly not positions of respect or authority, and I doubt that Hannah would aspire to emulate them.

So what? Dunham, who is the show's writer, producer, director and star, has no obligation to represent women of colour onscreen. It hasn't been her experience!

Here's the thing: the show is presented as a work of fiction. Dunham and Hannah aren't the same person - for example, Dunham is a lifelong New Yorker, while Hannah is a relatively recent transplant. And since Dunham and Hannah aren't the same person, there's an opportunity for the show to branch out from Dunham's microcosm and talk about what it means to be a girl, in Brooklyn (where the majority of the population is not white), right now.

There's an excellent blog post by Kendra James explaining that she and Dunham have had the same background (raised in New York, Oberlin liberal-arts education, same kinda-money background), but James is Black and Dunham is white. The argument that Dunham is just "writing what she knows" doesn't hold water when she should be aware of the women of colour who populate her universe, going to the same small schools and running in similar social circles. The fact that Dunham's show ignores them completely - and that one her staff writers has actively and obnoxiously engages in "ironic racism" on the side - well, then, you have the makings of An Actual Problem.

So what? I'm a white girl. I have no horse in this race (ha ha, horrible puns). Well, here's the thing: not-on-purpose racism can be blamed on ignorance, and forgiven when corrected. It's not awesome, but it happens.

But if you are explicitly told - repeatedly, and in public - that the content that you're producing is hurting people by pretending that they are not part of your universe and their stories (so similar to your stories!) don't exist or don't need to be told, you hurt them. You send a message that you do not value you their narratives, or that their stories don't need to be told alongside your own - Girls at 8 PM, Black Girls at 8:30 - and that is damaging. And it's my place, as a critical consumer of media, and you know, as a human being, to say it's not okay.