Girls Just Want to Have Puns

Delicious Double Scoop Necklace

Tee: So, Kohl's

Skirt: Modcloth

Shoes: Bongo, Kohl's

Bag: Journeys

Belt: Apt. 9, Kohl's

Cheery Cherry Sunglasses

I Heart Unicorns Necklace

Dress: Kohl's

Tee: So, Kohl's

Shoes: Payless

Bag: Call it Spring, JCPenney

Jewel Jumble Necklace

Top: Lily White, Target

Jeans: Vanilla Star, Target

Shoes: Guess, DSW

Bag: JCPenney

Yellow Gumball Necklace

Top: So, Kohl's

Jeans: Earl Jeans, Macy's

Shoes: Ami Clubwear

Bag: Candie's, Kohl's
Sunglasses: Mudd, Kohl's

Backwoods Bling Necklace

Tee: Mudd, Kohl's

Skirt: New York & Co.

Shoes: Payless

Bag: American Eagle, Payless

Belt: Candie's, Kohl's

I always think, "Huh?" when people say "no pun intended."  Because isn't the pun always intended, if even just subconsciously?  That having been said, I've probably logged at least one such infraction somewhere on this blog.  But I'm willing to overlook that if you are.

I don't know where Lena Dunham stands on wordplay, but I can't imagine that she'd be against it.  I've (almost) always liked Dunham, and not just because she favors Etsian necklaces that look like something out of a kindergarten teacher's closet (as documented in the February 2014 Vogue).  It's because this creator and star of HBO's "Girls" is the poster child for taking risks.  So naturally, I was drawn to her collection of essays, Not That Kind of Girl.  Like Shopaholic to the Stars, it has a strikingly hot pink, and therefore blogworthy, cover.  Which made me wonder: Is Dunham being ironic?  As in, pink is for weak girly girls?  Or is she saying the opposite, that pink is empowering?  Or maybe that it's empowering only in the right hands?  Or maybe . . . she just likes pink.  But enough about the cover and its implications; the inside has illustrations!  Check out this kaleidoscopic collage of kawaii-tastic treats including, but certainly not limited to, pretzels, eclairs, pineapples, cheeseburgers, heart necklaces, and exotic birds:

Fun and feminine, its appeal is near-universal.  Although I'm sure that there are some people out there who don't like such things, I sure as heck don't want to meet them.  Anyway, their sweetly retro vibe is in sharp contrast with the book's grittiness, setting the stage for Dunham's unique blend of dark comic naivete.  For it is gritty, despite being reminiscent of Mindy Kaling's Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? And Other Concerns.  You know.  If Mindy Kaling had been raised by an artist in Tribeca instead of a gynecologist in Boston and belonged to the dwell-on-it-until-you-land-in-the-hospital-and/or-psychiatrist's-office school of thought instead of the don't-complain-because-everyone's-got-problems school of thought.  This last bit, by the way, was a lesson that Mindy learned from her mother.  But this post isn't about Mindy; it's about Lena.  So instead I'm going to talk about something that she learned from her mother:

"Luxury is nice, but creativity is nicer.  Hence the game where you go into the ten-dollar store and pick out an outfit you might wear to the Oscars (or to the sixth-grade dance)." (107).

This spoke to me for two reasons: 1) Like so many thirtysomethings, I sometimes get sucked into the pursuit of yuppiness, a misstep that clouds my judgment, making me go all pouty because I don't have a Volvo. Or a Brita water filter.  This quote fixes all that by reminding me that yuppies are yucky.   2) My sister and I used to play the $20 challenge game in Marshalls.  Which is to say we'd go to Marshalls with just $20 and try to buy something cool (far less complicated than most card games and, in my opinion, more satisfying).  Lena's mom gives it to us straight: it's not what you have, but what you do with it.  This optimistic and free-spirited, er, spirit is woven through even the murkiest sections of Dunham's confessional, leave-nothing-out prose, echoing the theme that at the core of every artist surges the need for freedom.  Dunham is as unabashed about this as she is about broadcasting her body and her love of carbs.  Which is nice in a world where self-aware women are (sometimes) dismissed as selfish.  Miranda July puts it best:

"Very few women have become famous for being who they actually are, nuanced and imperfect.  When honesty happens, it's usually couched in self-ridicule or self-help.  Dunham doesn't apologize like that -- she simply tells her story as if it might be interesting.  Not That Kind of Girl is hilarious, artful, and staggeringly intimate.  I read it shivering with recognition." (back cover)

When I first read this quote, my knee-jerk reaction was, "What?!  All those other famous women out there are fake?"  (I'm not kidding; I actually thought this.)  But then I remembered that fame is like any other profession, and as such contingent upon following a set of unspoken but unbreakable rules.  Dunham doesn't seem to fall prey to any such playbook, and for that she should be applauded.

Did some parts of this book make me cringe?  Well, yeah.  Some of them because they were so alien to me, others because they weren't (over-thinking oneself into a tizzy, to my relief, is far more common than I'd previously surmised).  But then, I'm always willing to put up with a little discomfort in the name of authenticity.  Add a good laugh and an even better story, and I'm zipping through it in a weekend.

Which just goes to show that you can't put a good girl down.

You Look Like a Doily

 Not So Dainty Doily Necklace

Dress: So, Kohl's

Shoes: Guess, Marshalls

Bag: Marshalls

Belt: Apt. 9, Kohl's

Jacket: Decree, JCPenney

These were my wedding shoes.  I purchased them for $12.99 from Ami Clubwear.  They started out life solid red, their only adornment the rhinestone-sprinkled flower perched above the peep toe.  I added Hennytj's lovely pink satin roses and rhinestone buttons as well as craft store peach, yellow, and mint ribbon roses and danced all night with nary a mishap.  Talk about a testament to Gem-Tac!

Garden Guest Star Necklace

Dress: Modcloth

Shoes: Ami Clubwear, embellished by The Tote Trove

Bag: Krystala Creations, Etsy

Scarf: Gifted

Campus Queen Corsage Brooch

Top: Delia's

Jeans: Sears

Shoes: Worthington, JCPenney

Bag: Fred Flare

Scarf: Marshalls

So said Ethan Hawke's Troy to Winona Ryder's Lelaina in Reality Bites when she emerged in a crochet dress to meet Ben Stiller-as-Michael-the-smarmy-record-producer back in the mid-1990s.  A grunge coming-of-age classic if ever there was one, it went right over my head the first time I saw it. (I think I was twelve.)  

Kind of like "Girls."  Yep, that's right.  I'm retracting my former criticism of Lena Dunham's critically acclaimed angst-filled HBO series.  Partly due to my new-found mission to be a kinder, gentler blogger, and partly because I recently watched the entire first season on DVD.  It was good.  Gritty and real and in-your-face and all those other adjectives attached to things that make you squirm.  In the wake of the sad-song-staged final credits, I couldn't help but think that it should be mandatory viewing for twelve-year-old girls, a kind of cautionary tale counseling tempered by a good mom's tough love commentary.  (The irony of my twelve-year-old self lacking the perspective to appreciate even Lelaina's considerably tamer trials is not lost on me.)  Life, after all, isn't all tea house heroine getups.  A point, by the way, most masterfully made in the romantic comedy Austenland, albeit ironically and with more glitter than grit.  But more on that later.  

And with that, we've come full circle.  Not an unfit end for a post starring a doily.  

TV Tuesday on a Thursday: Girls: Pearls and Pebbles

The bright bravado of this first picture channels the kind of femme, funky vibe that I hoped to get from HBO's much-buzzed-about new drama "Girls." But after tuning in to the pilot On Demand, I found that the just-got-caught-picking-its-nose awkwardness of the second picture much more accurately conveys the show's tone. Created by twenty-six-year-old writer and star Lena Durham, "Girls" follows in "Sex and the City's" footsteps by chronicling the lives and sexcapades of four introspective New York City women. Only unlike that fabulous foursome, this quartet is in its twenties and broke. (It's no accident, I'm sure, that picture number one [which I found on Glamour's Web site, by the way] echoes the iconic chic of Carrie and company.)

At the group's epicenter is Hannah (Durham), a twenty-four-year-old unpaid intern armed with an English degree and a half-written memoir. The episode opens with Hannah's parents, both professors (so that's how she got so brainy), telling her that they can no longer financially support her because - and this is pretty wrenching - they just don't want to. The kicker? Hannah's an only child, a fact she incredulously hurls in dear old mom and dad's faces in the elegant and dimly lit restaurant where they broke the news. It's an awful, hide-your-head-under-the-pillow moment, and, as I soon found, a fitting appetizer for what was to come. The next day Hannah asks her boss for a paying position only to be fired. Then she has some hard-to-watch sex with a heinous-looking guy who criticizes her tattoos. When she confides that she got them as a teenager to take control of her overweight body, he says that she should get them lasered off because she's "not that fat anymore." (Oh, the horror.) Then, to top it all off, she goes home to an unpalatable dinner party only to down a mug of opium. High on it and the advice of globe-trotting hippy dippy newcomer Jessa, she bursts into her parents' hotel room, announces that she's the voice of her generation, and demands that they read her memoir -- all moments before collapsing.

It's well done. You know, gritty, disturbing, and weird: your basic unvarnished, coming-of-age slice of life. I get it and there's a good chance I could have lived some version of it had I taken a different path. But I didn't enjoy watching it. I think I would have ten years ago, when I thought that all entertainment had to be painful and deep and different to be good. These days, though, I appreciate TV's lighter side. Luckily, there's a whole TV Guide's worth of laugh-track-happy programming out there to deliver me from my doldrums.