Image from dontknowreally.tumblr.com.

In her review of the new show Girls Amanda Marcotte totally gets how some feminists still fall for the patriarchal-pedestal stereotype that women are naturally wise, serious, moral, hard working, chaste, and otherwise sugar, spice, and everything nice.  And that if they're not then they're broken, wrong, and someone to be both ashamed of and ashamed for.   (Emphasis mine.)

I lament how much ink is being spilled about how it's scary and upsetting to see women performing the same kind of comic tropes that men have done for roughly forever. Now, most critics don't see it that way. They didn't stop for a second to wonder if they'd issue the same criticisms if it was a male-centric show. For instance, I highly doubt Madeline Davis of Jezebel would write a piece where she lambasted a sitcom about a man because the comic main character made a bunch of stupid choices she feels are irresponsible and she hopes that young [men?] out there don't make. Like I said in my Prospect piece, the double standard is staggering. Men in comedy get to be stupid, get to make mistakes, get to make bad decisions and have comically exagerrated bad sex, and we all laugh because we know it's a comedy, not a symposium on How To Act Right. That so many feminist-minded women don't notice what they're doing here is distressing to me.

Source: Pandagon

Overall point being that relentless "positive" stereotypes are still stereotypes.  And even when feminists find them flattering old sexist stereotypes are still sexist. There's nothing wrong or shocking about half the population being below average. Nor, for better or worse, is there much stigma overall that much comedy depends on depictions of below-average people. And, duh, women being people it's ok for half of them to be below average losers too.*

Quick tip: Does anyone old enough to remember the comedy show Friends think any young men consciously or unconsciously emulated the amoral wastrel character Joey?  The dim and mopey Ross? The Maxwell Smart character's brutality or promiscuity in the 1960?  The Maynard G. Krebb's character's pre-doper conformity aversion in the 1950s?  No?

Think any 40-year-old men emulate the Louie character contemporary show of the same name that Amanda mentions in another (excellent) post along the same lines? No? Then either a) ask yourself why the double standard when the characters are women as in Girls or else b) chill.

* It would be one thing if the characters are all depicted as cliché TV bimbos instead of normal sitcom losers. But that's evidently not a problem in Girls.