Girl, what girl are you?
In 2012 when HBO Girls began airing I was a 14 year old emo kid in Tauranga, New Zealand. I was putting in 8-16 hours a day at the Tumblr factory, so I was aware of Girls but I wasn't exactly the target audience for a show about a group of millennial women in 2010s New York. So needless to say, I never developed much of an interest in watching the show during its run.
The first time I watched HBO Girls it was 2019, only two years after the show ended. It still felt somewhat of the time and current. I, like everyone else, thought the girls were irritating and irreverant, but I binged watched the full thing. I thought Girls was too caught up in showing the dramatics and catty side of female friendships, and completely tired of Hannah and her fuckery. Despite my complaints, I was still completely taken by the raw feminism behind Girls.
.。･:*♡*:･。.
In 2019 I was 21. I knew it all and had it all planned out. I had a year earlier moved to Wellington in February and began my history degree which I was going to finish, do a masters, and begin a career in museums. I was going to be totally pumped to enter the rat race and stay there for the next 40-50 years. I thought the girls on Girls were silly for floundering so heavily in their post-collegiate years and not turning their dreams into a reality, like I was going to - obviously.
I adopted my first cat as an adult, Peggy, and things started to feel like they were falling in to place. I had cheap rent, friends I thought I liked, and Lana released Norman Fucking Rockwell! that August. It was also famously the last year before everything changed. I now look back on this period of my life with ridiculously rose-tinted glasses and pine for a time where things were as simple as getting into comedy shows about young women in New York. (I also became obessed with Broad City in this time).
Lately I've been struck by the concept of the person I would have been had the pandemic not happened. While sparing the boring details about my pandemic-induced mother-of-all-mental-breakdowns, the first half of 2020 was bad. It was an absolute doozey. Things are bittersweet in hindsight. I'm 26, I don't talk to 90% of those friends anymore, and Peggy is dead now. Oh, and I'm factually unemployed. At 21 I was a late bloomer, now it looks as though I have completely fallen behind my peers in the game of life.
I have also spent the last five years continuing to live under an assumption that dedicating myself to my studies meant that there was some kind of light at the end of the University tunnel, one that would lead to a good life with financial stability. That my museums career would materialise from thin air as a result of my slightly-above-average-grades.
.。･:*♡*:･。.
It's now 2024, I'm 26, and I'm doing a Master's thesis in History while my country is experiencing mass lay-offs. The rise of AI means that jobs I have spent the last few years assuming I may do one day, may not exist in the near future. I am having to come to the realisation that I might not get to be what I wanted to be when I grow up. All of this is as I stare down the barrell of an $85,000 student loan that, according to the IRD Calculator, will take at least 20 years to pay off. I'm not alone, as people my age collectively begin to realise that our dreams are held back by barriers far beyond our control, and that our dreams may be just that.
I feel as though I have started to experience something I can only describe as recency nostalgia. This year I started seeing clips from Girls on Instagram and felt an overwhelming pull to return to the show. The desire to watch the show made me feel physically sick with this sense of recency nostalgia. The thought of revisiting Girls - and potentially confronting 2019 Isis and her non-shattered idealogies of how adulthood was going to look for her - made me drip with sweat. As far as I can see it there should be no reason for me to be so nostalgic for 2019 that it makes me dry wretch, but so be it.
Despite my completely unreasonable and unexplained panic over revisiting the show, I was somewhat desperate to watch it again. The clips I was seeing were uploaded by 'hbogirlsrewatchpodcast', which my historian senses led me to think there was a type of Girls resurgence. It turns out that happened in 2023 and the ball is still rolling on it. Amelia and Evan, I love you. I have a parasocial relationship with you.
Now, in 2024, I watch an episode of Girls every weeknight and realise that the 21 year old 2019 version of me who watched it the first time had no clue. I see myself in the girls' struggles to find meaning in things they aren't passionate about. I see how truly lost and bewildered they are and realise I'm looking at myself. I haven't found my way over the last five years anymore than I thought these girls should have when I was 21.
.。･:*♡*:･。.
The fun in being 26 is that I also look around at the people I know my age and I realise they're lost too. I see people who entered the corporate world at 21 and have no forseeable exit. I see people married with multiple kids in an economy that is outpacing them. I see people who want to leave the country but are scared because the housing crisis and shit economy exists in Australia too. I see the girls on Girls and see all of us. I realise that for right now, I'm okay being where I am. I realise that the future is big and scary whether I think I know what I'm doing or not.
21 year old me had no idea what she was watching and thought she was above the girls. 26 year old me thinks she is one of the girls and relates to it heavily. There's a beauty in the fact that 31 year old me is probably going to continue to love Girls and have an entirely new relationship with the show.
So what girl am I? I have Shoshannah tendencies, but evidently I have lost her innocent naivete. Marnie is also very prominent in my type-A personality and incapability to understand that dreams don't happen just because you want them to. I maybe have hints of Jessa, but I'm far too reliable as a friend. Unfortunately I am and will always be a Hannah, for better or for worse.
Who wrote this?
I’m Isis. I’m trying to find my way and occasionally writing about the process. I live in Wellington, New Zealand with my cat Edie. Right now my days are spent working on my MA and thinking about things to blog about that have nothing to do with my research.