《都市女孩》:看美劇 談閨蜜

Last week, a new TV series, Girls, started to air on HBO in the US. It's a show about four twenty something women living in New York, navigating the bridge between college and real life.

上週，最新劇集《都市女孩》正式登陸美國HBO電視網。該劇講述了四位20歲左右的紐約女孩，正行走在從大學校園通往現實社會的道路上。

What is interesting about this series is the friendship it portrays. A friend is someone with whom you dare to be yourself. And this is true of the bond between these four girls.

該劇集的賣點在於其描繪的友情。朋友是那個你敢於在他/她面前表現真我的人。而劇中四個女孩間的友情便是如此。

In one of the early scenes of the pilot episode you see two women spooning in bed together. Warmly intertwined, they are awoken by an alarm, having fallen asleep together watching television.

在該劇集試播節目較早的一個場景中，兩個女孩親暱地擠在一張牀上，看着看着電視便一起睡着了，然後，一陣鬧鈴聲將親密無間的二人叫醒。

A short while later, these same two girls, Hannah and Marnie, share a bathtub and laugh about the emasculated boyfriend in the next room.

稍後，還是這兩個女孩——漢娜和瑪妮，她們共用浴缸沐浴並一起拿隔壁瑪妮嬌氣的男友打趣。

These women are so comfortable together. But when Marnie's boyfriend opens the door, he is laughed out of the room. Men have no place or status within the world of these women.

兩個女孩的共同時光是如此愜意。而當瑪妮的男友打開門時，可憐的他被一片大笑聲趕出了房間。男士無法插足女孩們的世界。

This particular brand of female friendship seems very modern, and many culture critics have been provoked to hail Girls as revolutionary.

大打閨蜜友情牌似乎很時髦，因此《都市女孩》也被許多文化評論人士稱讚爲革命性創新。

However, Rebecca Traister at makes the point that female friendships which are the main source of emotional nourishment only seem new and noteworthy because of relatively recent history. But it's a dynamic that is very old.

然而，來自美國芝加哥的新聞與娛樂網站的麗貝卡?特雷斯特認爲，雖然由於近代的歷史原因，女性間的友誼作爲情感供給的主要來源，看上去似乎格外新奇且引人關注。但實際上它由來已久。

Traister explains that for centuries 'intense social and physical bonds between women were an accepted part of life". This was because marriage was not about love but about economics.

特雷斯特解釋說，幾個世紀以來，“女性間緊密的社會關係與有形紐帶，已被公認爲生活的一部分”。這是因爲婚姻並非關乎愛情，而只是與經濟狀況有關。

"It wasn't until the early 20th century, as marriage came to be treated as a union based on love and sex, that same-sex friendships began to be seen as competitive to the closeness a woman was supposed to feel to her husband," said Traister.

特雷斯特說：“直到20世紀初，隨着婚姻被視爲一種基於愛和性的結合，同性間的友情才被視爲夫妻親密關係的競爭對手。”

What is great about Girls is that it opens a window through which we can peer at female friendships in the 21st century.

《都市女孩》的偉大之處就在於，它敞開一扇窗，從中我們可以一窺21世紀的女性友誼。

The women characters' closeness is a byproduct of a world where marriage is no longer the highest goal for women.

在這個社會中，結婚不再是女性的終極目標，所以女性角色間的親密關係這個副產品也便應運而生。

Without this inherent competitive goal, women can form unbreakable bonds of sisterhood and support. Women have time and resources to be whoever they want to be, and instead of focusing on men they can focus on themselves.

少了“結婚”這個與生俱來的競爭性目標，女性之間就會形成堅如磐石的姐妹情誼和相互支撐。女性有時間也有資源去成就自我，她們不必再將精力都集中在男人身上，從而可以更關注自己了。

Girls has been compared to another famous television show, Sex and the City. One also set in New York, also revolving around the friendship of four women. But unlike Sex and the City, Girls portrays a very different kind of feminine companionship.

很多人將《都市女孩》與另外一部熱門劇集《慾望都市》放在一起比較。後者的故事背景也被設定在紐約，故事也是圍繞四位女性的友情展開。但與《慾望都市》不同，《都市女孩》描繪的是一種完全不同的女性友誼。

"Carrie and her brightly colored cadre made history in almost cartoonish fashion, in which friendship was a public performance enacted in expansive shiny clubs over jewel-colored cocktails," said Traister.

“（在《慾望都市》中），凱莉和她衣着豔麗的姐妹團以一種近乎漫畫式的時尚創造了歷史，友情是在熱鬧炫目的酒吧裏，藉助寶石色澤的雞尾酒上演的一場公開秀。”特雷斯說。

"Those flamboyantly drawn expressions have given way to Hannah and Marnie, who breakfast in their grim kitchen, Marnie listening with irritation as Hannah slurps her cereal milk and talks with her mouth full, like regular best friends, not fabulously implausible best friends."

“而這些刻意打造的華麗場景都抵不過漢娜和瑪妮在陰暗的廚房裏吃的一頓平常早餐，瑪妮不耐煩地聽漢娜一邊大聲地喝着牛奶麥片，一邊嘴裏塞滿食物喋喋不休，她們如同普通閨蜜一般，而並非那種關係緊密地不現實的好友。”

This new breed of friendship is more deeply entwined, and the gritty details of each woman's life are laid bare on the dinner table in the crappy apartment they share.

閨蜜這種全新的友情在生活中有着千絲萬縷的聯繫，，在她們倆合租的這個簡陋公寓中，女性生活中所有雞毛蒜皮的小事都被曝光在餐桌之上。

Female friendship is brilliant in its ability to entwine the beautiful, sacred and disgusting facets of the girls that it links.

女性友誼的閃光之處就在於，它可以將女孩身上或美好，或神聖，或討厭的各個方面全部融合在一起。