{"id":7037,"date":"2010-10-12T00:00:48","date_gmt":"2010-10-12T07:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/muslimahmediawatch.org\/?p=7037"},"modified":"2010-10-12T00:00:48","modified_gmt":"2010-10-12T07:00:48","slug":"guiding-blight-the-real-girls-guide-to-everything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mmw\/2010\/10\/guiding-blight-the-real-girls-guide-to-everything\/","title":{"rendered":"Guiding Blight: The Real Girl’s Guide to Everything"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The Real Girl\u2019s Guide to Everything Else<\/em>, Strike.TV<\/a>\u2019s peppy new Web series, first struck me as ludicrous. Fast-paced and low-budget, it\u2019s riddled with plot holes and inconsistencies, becoming more fantastical as the first season progresses. The writing lacks depth, the characters lack development, and the show\u2019s thesis whacks you across the head with startling regularity. But the message itself is bold, sharp, and significant.<\/p>\n

Season One<\/a>, consisting of six chapters less than ten minutes apiece, starts with Rasha (Robin Dalea), a Lebanese-American lesbian journalist, telling her best friends that her agent is going to drop her unless she pushes out some frothy \u201cchick lit.\u201d Vanna (Nikki Brown), Sydney (Reena Dutt), and Angie (creator and producer Carmen Elena Mitchell) devise a plan to fund Rasha\u2019s desired project\u2014a book titled The Women\u2019s History of Afghanistan<\/em>\u2014through the advance from her novelette. In order to authenticate her chick-lit savvy, though, Rasha is tossed into the world of straight dating\u2014a clear jab at the series\u2019 Sex and the City<\/em> inspiration. Of course, she\u2019s also scheduled to marry her longtime girlfriend, Liz (Jennifer Weaver), in two months.<\/p>\n

The show is miraculously self-aware, especially when it references Sex and the City<\/em>. Brown\u2019s character, Vanna, mentions early on that Rasha\u2019s book could be something of a \u201cSex and the City<\/em> for brown women,\u201d to which Mitchell\u2019s character, Angie, responds that she can be the \u201ctoken\u201d [white girl]. The plotline pulls just enough from SATC for old-school fans to recognize glib renditions of Carrie\u2019s opening-credits bus-splash or Samantha\u2019s sex obsession, but the NPR<\/a> and Aymar Jean Christian<\/a> interviews with the cast make clear that the production was a concentrated effort to invert the assumptions of Sex and the City<\/em>-style popular culture. It truly is very feminist in nature.<\/p>\n

Real Girl\u2019s Guide<\/em>, for its part, attempts to be representative of \u201creal women\u201d\u2014thus the lesbian protagonist and her multi-ethnic friend-group. It provides new roles for women of color who are usually typecast by mainstream media, largely rejects materialism, and expands the conversation about women\u2019s careers. But its weakness lies in its less-than-useful representation of lesbians and Afghan women.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not unrealistic that Rasha\u2019s more masculine gender identity would get in the way of her life goal, but it is unrealistic\u2014and possibly detrimental to butch-identified lesbians\u2014that she would radically alter her gender expression as though this feminized counterpart lived inside of her all along. What we eventually see is the capitulation of a strong lesbian character to a gaggle of cisgender<\/a> women who have fun temporarily turning her femme, much to her partner\u2019s ire.<\/p>\n

The show\u2019s general treatment of lesbianism is similar to the way in which Orientalist tropes are later handled: through a never-ending track of teachable sound-bites. Though Liz clearly hates the heterosexual dating-game that her partner is playing, Rasha continues to glaze over the degree to which she\u2019s involved in the experiment. She neglects to share with Liz that she has an internet dating account and that she\u2019s found her \u201cMr. Big\u201d\u2014a deep-pocketed Republican who looks eerily like Rush Limbaugh.<\/p>\n

Apparently, all of this secrecy stems from Rasha\u2019s fear of the impending wedding\u2014another SATC reference, and, ostensibly, a way to showcase lesbian normalcy (See? Even lesbians get cold feet). By Chapter 3, every lesbian reference starts to feel a bit like that: See? Even lesbians like fashion\/lie to their girlfriends\/have relationship problems. To its credit, the season\u2019s only almost-sex scene is a lesbian one, so the effort to normalize lesbian relationships is not entirely fruitless; and, that almost-sex scene ends with an interesting argument about the value of marriage to gay couples.<\/p>\n

Rasha\u2019s religion is never made clear (though at one point she mentions that if she\u2019s caught in a sexual situation with Big, she\u2019ll just tell him that if he tries anything her brothers will cut off his hands), but the issue of representation becomes a little thornier when Big offers to take her on (what he believes to be) a romantic get-away in Afghanistan. There, in their little two-week tent-home, Rasha arranges an interview with an Afghan woman. \u201cThe last journalist who came here gave me this,\u201d the woman says, holding out a copy of the book Love, Lunch, and a Macy\u2019s Sale<\/em>. \u201cThis is your idea of equality?\u201d Rasha assures her that it isn\u2019t; that most American women don\u2019t have the time or the money to shop frivolously. It\u2019s heavy-handed, but it aptly conveys the point.<\/p>\n

And then Big is back from his jaunt, having just befriended the local mullah, and it gets a little crazy. At risk of giving away the season\u2019s climax, let me just say that the opportunity to make a point about Afghan women came and passed. The apex\u2014though it was in fact filmed before the release of the SATC 2 movie\u2014rips a page from its predecessor\u2019s absurdity, losing the chance to lend gravity to Rasha\u2019s subject matter and instead choosing to make the story, once again, one of love and romance. Really, one of the only serious points in Real Girl\u2019s Guide<\/em> dissolves into a sob-fest in the underground lair of a Taliban warlord named Habib. Hardly helps the cause, ladies.<\/p>\n

While the show is full of other small ironies and departs from the mainstream in its message, it also glosses over representational issues as though by merely inserting a lesbian or a woman in hijab, its goals have been met. Nevertheless, it deserves another chance\u2014and will likely get one, this winter, if it meets its fundraising goals. You can contribute here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Real Girl\u2019s Guide to Everything Else, Strike.TV\u2019s peppy new Web series, first struck me as ludicrous. Fast-paced and low-budget, it\u2019s riddled with plot holes and inconsistencies, becoming more fantastical as the first season progresses. The writing lacks depth, the characters lack development, and the show\u2019s thesis whacks you across the head with startling regularity. 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