Ginny and Georgia

This new Netflix teen drama, which feels like part Desperate Housewives and part Dawson's Creek is the most important thing happening on TV. Taylor Swift apparently got pretty mad over a sexist joke made on this new series at her expense. Fair enough Taylor. However, the show is more important to let this one bad joke ruin what I think might be the most important show since Star Trek first came out. Now that's a BIG statement. But please hear me out. When I went to high school (mid to late 80s), it was a pretty white place to be. It was also the time when the Vietnamese boat people were coming in. These immigrant kids often and naturally hung out together/had their lockers together in a hallway we (the white prevailed kids) dubbed The Great Wall of China. I had one Chinese friend and his parents barely spoke English. I had one black friend who was adopted by Chinese parents. Many of the white kids I knew, their grandparents had immigrated to Canada as did mine (from Denmark) from usually white European countries. When John Hughes released "The Breakfast Club" it was a revelation for me. It felt like the first movie I had seen where the teenagers spoke and acted like real teenagers. I was represented on the screen. Think about that, a white kid thinking he is finally being represented with accuracy in a movie. Can you imagine all the Asian kids, all the black kids, who haven't seen themselves? I think it's vastly important to have depictions of yourself being reflected in the art around you. It means you are important, your life is valued. This is why Martin Luther King told actress Nichelle Nichols not to quit Star Trek, that the character of Lieutenant Uhura, a black woman working right alongside her white colleagues was so so important. Little black girls could see themselves on TV in a way like they had never before. And this is why I'm telling you Ginny and Georgia is doing the same thing and why that's so important. The dialogue feels as honest as anything John Hughes could have written and it's got so much going on in terms of representation - Ginny's best friend is an out of the closet lesbian looking for love, Georgia's co-worker is gay and seems to like to cross dressing on his nights off and he has gotten involved with a gay Asian private investigator who is looking into Georgia's past. The dad across the street is deaf (who is the dad of the lesbian best friend) so there is lots of signing going on. Ginny herself is half black/half white and she dates a half white/half Asian (Damian Romeo - who is Canadian by the way!). So representation is off the chart. And the show is just jammed with plot and mystery - I won't even bother to try. Go watch the best thing happening for teens, for representation of so many diverse groups of people on TV right now. Catch this on Netflix.