Ginny & Georgia

A couple of weekends ago, Ginny and Georgia popped up on  Netflix as my housemate and I were slobbing on the sofa - we thought we’d give it a try. 8 hours later I peeled myself off of the sofa attempting to also peel apart the emotional connection I had developed with the two young women, over the course of the night. It was no longer Ginny & Georgia, it was Ginny Georgia and Mayowa now. We had formed a connection and I was a part of them. 

Let me explain why this series hit me so deep. I felt as though they genuinely really captured a lot of the challenges and difficulties that young people face today in our society. Not all of them, but some of them and they were portrayed reasonably well in my opinion. For example, the experience of depression in Marcus and how this effected his ability to socialise or have a romantic relationship, despite the fact that he was in love. Of course, not every depressed teenager smokes weed, sneaks through windows and is incredibly talented at art OR comes from a stable loving home however, lots of depressed teens do experience a sense of dissociation, isolation and can often turn to substances to manage how they’re feeling. What’s more, the show accurately portrayed the difficulty for the family members watching and not knowing how to respond to the decline of a loved one - for those who are fortunate enough to come from a loving home.

The struggles of an isolated teen mother, with trauma navigating the world and repeatedly being taking advantage of is another aspect I’d say the show portray’s quite accurately. Unfortunately, once you have been a victim of abuse/abusers, it’s common for this cycle to develop where you repeatedly find yourself in awful situations or being taken advantage of by immoral people again and again. 

To take this even further, the show demonstrates the way that trauma slips down from generation to generation as Georgia’s mother was subject to domestic violence and alcohol abuse leaving Georgia vulnerable which ultimately left Ginny with her own set of identity and emotional difficulties.

So yeah of course me being me loved the mental health topics touched upon in the show buttttt my favourite topic of all within this series was that of race, in Ginny’s mixed race heritage. I didn’t go to a predominantly white school in a small town in America so I can’t empathise with this teenage experience however as a mixed race adult I have very much found myself in predominantly white work environments. At times this has been absolutely fine and others, a negative and frustrating experience. I can absolutely empathise with the frustrating position of wanting to educate and address  ignorance/ racism just to make the world a better place yet, at the same time why should I have to take on the responsibility and burden of providing education to a racist who cannot be bothered to educate themselves? Generally a topic i'd love to write more about but am resisting for some reason. 

Obviously on some levels this Netflix series was absolutely ridiculous (like what are the chances of G being able to pull the mayor immediately?) but that’s OK - we’ll allow it for entertainment purposes. The only potential criticism about the show I’d say is.. sometimes Georgia’s face was so perfect it almost looked like it was artificially manipulated .. weird. 

If you are interested in topics such as those mentioned or could benefit from using the series to facilitate discussion around difficult topics with a young person, I definitely recommend. Did anyone else enjoy it?