The sex in Girls 'breaks entirely zero ground

The new US TV comedy show Girls airs on UK screens on Monday. But Dr Brooke Magnanti argues the much-hyped 'real' show about sex life is just that: real and boring. 
 

People who shower praise on Girls for being not Sex and the City are entirely missing the point, argues Dr Brooke Magnanti.

I swear to you if I am made to read one more elegiac review of how "real" the sex in Girls is, I'm going to get the whole back catalogues of Jenna Jameson and Max Hardcore and watch them on a loop until I forget this whole thing ever, ever happened.

Because you know what? The sex in Girls breaks entirely zero ground, I sadly discovered when watching it in the states. Ooh, a lesbian kiss and only 20 years after Brookside as well? You're telling me there's a woman born after 1970 who didn't indulge in a girly liplock well before leaving school? Nah, man. That stuff was clearly put in for exec producer Judd Apatow to get his rocks off on. "Slave to Love" is even playing in the background: a clear audio cue to anyone old enough to remember 9 1/2 Weeks that this schtick is older than your nan's diaphragm.

Or how about Hannah (played by Lena Dunham) and her weirdy boyfriend and his extra-weirdy fantasies about junkie girls? I hate to break it to, you know, everyone going on about this, but we all have random nonsense like that in our heads when we masturbate. Men and women both. If you are grossed out by that guy you are grossed out by yourself. Brains go dumb and nonsensical in sex mode. That is kind of why gonzo porn exists.

I can't fathom what sort of a lesson we're meant to be getting from Hannah's sex life. Sex is terrible if you don't speak up and tell someone what you want? Yeah, I know. People say and do stupid things in the heat of the moment? No duh. Sometimes you get with someone who doesn't want the same things you want? Why, you could have knocked me over with a feather.

People who shower praise on Girls for being not Sex and the City are entirely missing the point. Girls is exactly, and I mean exactly, like Reality Bites and every single other depressing slice-of-life drama I had to sit through back in the neolithic when I was a teen, populated with actors pretending to be just as loserish as the rest of us kids. Genital warts? Imperceptibly chubby anti-heroine? Been there, done that - see alsoIt's navel gazing 90s rubbish like that which sent us skittering into the slender, subtly bronzed arms of SATC by the way. I was already a depressed and depressing young adult struggling to find my way in the world. I didn't need people on screen like me to relate to; everyone I knew was like that already. Enough with the temp-job whining and late night pallor, bring on the everloving shoe collection.

The bizarre notion that television and film is only "good" when it's as close to your own boring life as possible is like saying the only good music is found sound. Heightened reality is the essence of entertainment, a fact well known by everyone from Rilke to RuPaul. Reality, indeed, bites.

Maybe my problem is not the show though - maybe it's generational? After all, folks my age have already done 20-something miserablism to excess, so much so that we can't bear the thought of it any more. Perhaps it is time to pass the torch. Mark my words then: if Girls is as huge a success as it looks set to be, brace yourselves for the shopping-and-f___ing redux in 2024. You heard it here first.

But I'll be skipping any more of this trend. Thanks but no thanks, Girls. I already have a wealth of cringeworthy sex memories to be randomly embarrassed by when they pop up in my psyche; I don't need yours crowding in as well. Call me again when you graduate to being Women. And if you think a guy knowingly gave you warts, for pity's sake, dump him.