#girlshbo

Flying back to New York from Sydney in March, I watched the entire fourth season of Girls. (Behind the eight ball on that one, I know, but I don’t have HBO.)

Five months later, the scene that still sticks out to me is the one where Hannah is holed up in her old bedroom, google searching her new romantic rival Mimi-Rose Howard and watching a video of her giving a speech on YouTube. Not just because, well, we’ve all been there, but because of the way that Mimi-Rose Howard carries herself in that 10-second snippet of speech.

Calm. Warm. And seated.

“I want to be like her,” I thought. And I couldn’t help but suspect a lot of it had to do with the sitting.

So somewhere towards the end of my spring campus tour, I decided to try it out for myself: to sit rather than stand when I delivered my talk. And whether it was a placebo or not, it worked. I felt calmer. More connected to the people I was talking to. Less like I was talking at you, and more like I was speaking to you.

Which when you’re leading a conversation about the kind of intimate, consciousness raising subject matter involved in The Sex Myth, is exactly the kind of vibe you want.

I’m doing a couple of big, multi-hundred person events in the Fall, so not sure how the whole seated, intimate thing will play out there (I’ll probably just decide to stand). But all of this is to say that I’ll be requesting a stool for my event in London next week.

I’ll be speaking on Thursday night at Cafe 1001 in Shoreditch, working with online events org Funzing and the bookstore Pages of Hackney. Tickets need to be purchased in advance, and you can buy yours here.

If you’re in the London area, do come along. It would be great to meet you.

“She is so desperately trying to come to terms with what her future is. She never had a plan for anything remotely like this.” Read HBO’s full interview with Becky Ann Baker here.

We can’t get over the looks for Shoshanna’s “Wemun” networking event in the second episode of Season 6, which were inspired by a variety of influences. GIRLS costume designer Jenn Rogien explains: “Shoshanna is a working woman, but she doesn’t quite have it all together.” For Rogien, “It’s almost a take on the iconic DVF wrap dress. One tie and you’re done, or in this case, one zip and you’re done, but it’s entirely modern in that it’s a pair of shorts.” For Jessa, gate-crashing the event, Rogien always had a vintage suit in mind. Rogien knew she’d struck gold with a grey vintage Versace suit: “It was the most amazing combination of Wall Street, meets Working Girl, meets completely inappropriate.” 

Hermie’s home is right out of Brooklyn. “It was written as a Park Slope building … something not as fancy. So we picked a neighborhood that would fit an older person, and feel somewhat cluttered. Starting from scratch, we ended up putting flyers up in a neighborhood we thought had the right look from the outside. If people called, then we had scouts go out and scout the interior.” - Suk Yi Mar, GIRLS Location Manager