Girls.

Bar kissing an actual boy, sneaking into the living room to watch Sex and the City after your parents went to sleep was just about the most badass thing you could do in the 7th grade. I know this because the bulk of my middle school years revolved around such schemes – creeping out of my bedroom after hours, surreptitiously snagging the box of Cheezits from the kitchen, unlocking the parental controls on our television, and settling down for 30 minutes of sexy, taboo television.

As an overly hormonal and sexually fascinated 12 year old, Sex and the City represented everything I didn’t know and wanted to learn about sex, boys, and being a ‘woman’ – whatever that meant. Before I found the show, to say that my knowledge of sex was limited is an understatement. Of course, I had never kissed a boy, let alone really talked to any, and I had convinced myself sex was the act of two grown ups kissing in a swimming pool (somehow resulting in the birth of a child), a naivete that was brutally shattered the first time I tagged along to a Samantha Jones ‘sleepover’.

Outside the glitzy world of Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte, it seemed that everyone around me was experiencing the initial stages of their sexual awakenings – first crushes, first slow dances, first hand holds, all culminating in that magical first kiss on the dance floor of a bar mitzvah. Everyone, that is, except me. While other girls were getting boyfriends and exchanging sexually suggestive emoticons on AIM, I was still watching Arthur and making dresses for my dolls out of kleenex.

Sex and the City was a bridge into this unknown world – one that I certainly wasn’t a part of but could learn about privately from the comfort of a bag of Cheetos and my father’s La-Z-Boy armchair. Watching the show allowed me to keep up with other girls in my grade without actually having to subject myself to the terror of asking a boy to grind with me at a school dance. I suddenly could discuss fashion trends and faux pas, the art of flirting, the heartache of relationships, and the pros and cons of being a liberated cosmopolitan-drinking woman in New York City. I immersed myself in learning about all things the show represented women doing – talking sex, having sex, and being generally sexy.

However, as I descended into my high school years, I was shocked at how ill-prepared Sex and the City had made me for the heart-wrenching reality of being a teenager. Shock soon evolved into outrage, as I became aware of the limiting and backward expectations the show set up for girls growing up in our generation. I had internalized the show’s ridiculous notion that being a ‘real’ woman meant ultimately fulfilling one of four roles – excessively promiscuous, frustratingly prudish, exhaustingly cynical, or childish enough to forgo rent payments for a $700 pair of Manolos. These women had flaws, sure, but their flaws were ultimately the secret to their lovable, sexy, mysterious, and hair-flipping perfection. Each woman represented an extreme on the show’s constructed scale of femininity – an extreme that might have been compelling for a growing girl in the throes of puberty, but in reality is completely unrelatable. I could not accept that ‘finding yourself’ meant crossing a threshold where you could suddenly engage in wild sexual abandon and gratuitous spending on designer clothes. Where was the show that depicted life as it really was? Awkward; painful…in hindsight hilarious, but decidedly un-sexy. Where was the show that I could actually relate to?

Enter Girls – a show that within the opening scenes of its first episode intentionally acknowledges and divorces itself from the delusional narratives of Carrie Bradshaw. Lena Dunham creates a shadow box of life as we – members of ‘Generation Z’ or whatever the fuck they’re calling it these days – know it. Watching Hannah, Marnie, Jessa, and Shoshanna fumble through their daily lives instills a de-romanticized sense of familiarity Sex and the City could never achieve. What Girls offers is a beacon of post-recession hope for the aimless, entitled, scared-shitless twenty-somethings suffering from advanced stages of social butterfingers syndrome.

Finally, a show that opens its arms to those of us insecure, self-deprecating weirdos who don’t even know what we’re having for breakfast tomorrow, let alone what we’re going to do with the rest of our lives. A show that makes it okay for us to admit that we’re sexually inexperienced, hopelessly fucked-over by unrequited love, or that we once got drunk, ate a ton of brie, and then threw it up all over our cellphones (see episode 7). Finally, I can take comfort in the fact that I’m not the only one who’s googled things like ‘diseases that come from no condom for one second’. I’m not the only one who stress-eats, who self-indulgently dreams about being the voice of our generation, or who doesn’t want a boyfriend, just ‘someone who wants to hang out all the time, thinks I’m the best person in the world, and wants to have sex with only me.’

Girls tells it like it is and makes no apologies for the blunt way it slices into all that is right – and wrong – with our generation. Put simply, the show calls us out on our shit. We’re forced to confront some embarrassing truths about our bizarre little worlds, like the fact that a boyfriend playing with your stomach fat is somehow a sign of reverse-psychological intimacy, or that a guy who shows enough compassion to follow you after you accidentally smoke crack at a party is made worthy of taking your virginity.

Let’s face it – none of us know what we’re doing when it comes to jobs, friends, and relationships. To convince ourselves that drinking cosmopolitans is the answer or that our knight-in-shining Mr. Big is going to help us figure it out is bullshit. Instead, what we really need is an honest voice (preferably from the mouth of Lena Dunham). Someone who can offer us some real advice like, ‘don’t make date rape jokes at your job interview’ or ‘make sure you get an STD test because HPV is a real thing’. Someone who reminds us that true friends are those who will sit with you after you drink a mug full of opium pods or those who make it their responsibility to remind you that there is nothing flakier than not showing up for your own abortion. Someone who isn’t afraid to reveal the seedy underbelly of sexual activity, such as being peed on by a guy in the shower or having to pretend that your boyfriend’s ‘dirty little whore with a cabbage patch lunch box’ fetish actually turns you on. Someone who encourages us to speak out when we feel slighted – that something good might come out of telling your sort-of-boyfriend you don’t want him sending pictures of his genitals to other girls.

Life at our age revolves around an unrelenting cycle of high points and low points (high point: learning how to love yourself, low point: having to help your naked father after a sex injury). As we manoeuvre ourselves through the shitty period of post-grad transition, it’s nice to know Girls is there to hold our hands. The show revels in what is preciously unique about us – we might be self-absorbed, entitled little punks who make our grandmothers cringe with shame, but at least we can embrace how senselessly fucked up we are and share a laugh about it. And while it may seem at times that we take our lives too lightly, we all know that any youthful whims we may have are coupled with bouts of crushing guilt and paralyzing self-doubt. What makes Girls special is its ability to accurately portray how shitty, though ultimately enlightening, this cliché process of finding yourself really is. Maybe it’s just me, but any show that encourages me to keep vibrating at my kitten-obsessed, L.L. Bean wearing frequency is pretty freaking awesome.