The Netflix algorithm had been relentlessly suggesting Ginny & Georgia on my dashboard, so much that I couldn't help but give in. The show is a coming-of-age Netflix drama series released in 2021, recently wrapping up season 1 with season 2 is in the horizon. It touches on key points such as sexual consent, female pleasure, body image, racism, self harming, parenting, teenage, life’s perspective from a bi racial individual and more.
There are many conversation starters to this story line but I was at first intrigued by the close age gap between mother (Georgia) and daughter (Ginny) which was about 15 years. I thought I would watch and learn about the dynamics of their relationship. I did not expect to be so sucked in. The twist came when I got invested in their lives, especially that of Ginny, a young teenager who is learning more about herself while adjusting and adapting to her new environment. This area will be my focus for this article.
Watching this show really made me nostalgic about my teenage years and helped me to really appreciate the teenage mind. Another thing that struck me was the way they interact with their parents and teachers, I remember thinking, there is no way I could’ve ever dreamt of speaking to my parents in that tone or walking out the door in the middle of their sentence, or having the guts to go through their belongings out of distrust.
Okay, if you have read this far and are confused about what I am talking about, I’ll give you a quick synopsis of the movie with as little spoilers as possible.
The series is about a young teenager Georgia, who ran away from home because of an abusive father and finds herself doing the unimaginable to survive.
She met a handsome man about the same age with whom she fell in love and the had a daughter (Ginny).
Their relationship does not pan out as expected which leads Georgia to find herself on her own once again, this time, as a single mother with Ginny, as she continues to sofa surf and do everything she can for a roof over their heads. However, some of the choices she makes has them constantly on the move to avoid being caught up in an investigation.
Fast forward to the future, Ginny is now an awkward 15-year-old who is more mature than her dynamic 30-year-old single mother, she has a little half brother and they move to a new town in Boston where the 3 of them try to fit in, start afresh and make a new life.
Ginny struggles at first but finds herself a new set of friends and begins to love it in Boston.
Now, on to what really kept me intrigued. Stay with me.
Georgia didn’t believe in sharing everything from the past with her children apart from the fact that she had to survive, grow up and raise them alone.
She buries the past and finally feels at home in Boston with her children.
She feels safe and happy because she believed she had left everything behind that would’ve hindered her from living the life she dreamt of. She now has a home, 2 children and wants the very best for them but her relationship with Ginny seems to be stuck in a cycle and she (Ginny) is getting fed up.
Ginny who is now a teenager wants answers and begins to ask questions about their previous lives, why they are always on the move, about her father and other members of the family, but she hits a wall like she usually does. Georgia believes that her past is in the past, where she will prefer to leave it. I bet she never thought she’d have to explain her past choices to her little munchkin.
Ginny argues that her mother’s life and secrets affect her current life too. She can see that Georgia is holding back information as always. Georgia explains to her that there are some things she simply cannot share with her because she is not proud of the choices she made growing up. She explains that sometimes when you get to know something about someone that you don’t expect, you can never go back. This conversation led to Georgia opening up and telling her that the reason she ran away from home was because her father was abusing her.
I have to say that I really admired this moment because parents who have been abused as children, rarely open up to their own children about it. It is almost some kind of taboo and the most common reason for this is usually to protect the innocence of the child but in this instance, Georgia exhibited some vulnerability although it was out of frustration.
This vulnerability showed Ginny for the first time that Georgia was no superhuman who chose to do life on her own when she had a family she could lean on. It also showed Ginny that you make lemonade when life throws lemons at you. It also gave Ginny a small understanding of why her life and her story is the way it is. She understood, but was still insatiable.
Georgia was doing all she could to make the best lives for Ginny and Austin, but the past kept creeping in and throwing her off course.
It made me beg the question; Can you really leave the past behind and never have to face it even when you have the best intentions for the present and the future?
Now, on to why I stayed intrigued with Ginny’s character.
We are given the opportunity by the writers to witness teenage life as a third person looking in.
Ginny comes on to the scene at 15. She is very intelligent and studious but not as laidback and easy going as her mother, Georgia. In the midst of the chaos of moving cities, settling in and making new friends, she looses her virginity in the first episode to a boy from her school across the road who will eventually become her best friend’s brother. She steals her mother’s liquor and sneaks out of her bedroom window with her friends for her 16th birthday. On this night she has her first cunnilingus experience from a boy at school, Hunter, who professes his love for her during a school band performance (this, she shares with her mother). She also enjoyed Halloween with her friends and utilised the freedom she had as a teenager.
She also experiences how difficult it is to constantly change schools as a young person and how difficult it is to make friends the older you get.
As a teenager, I was really bent on doing my best to do everything my parents taught me was good. So, observing how Ginny’s character unfolds as she learns more about herself also made me ask this question;
Was I perhaps too uptight as a teenager?
From the outside looking in and as a non-biological mother of a 13 year old, I got really sucked in by these 2 characters and I look forward to how the story line develops.
The season wraps up with Ginny thinking that Georgia has too many secrets that she now cannot un-see and so rans away from home with her little brother while Georgia is out at work.
Is she about to repeat the cycle that Georgia has worked her whole life to avoid?
Hard question: Does telling the truth always set you free?
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