Jemima Kirke, star of HBO’s Girls, is the queen of blunt advice. Now, instead of answering the desperate pleas from young women looking for life guidance via Instagram stories, she is answering them on her very own online advice column for Elle Magazine.
Kirke’s advice, both in Tender Tips and on Instagram stories, is similar to the demeanor of her character Jessa Johanson from the HBO hit series Girls. Jessa is both straightforward and unfiltered, often sharing her exact opinion on the other characters’ crisis of the week in Girls, and Jemima herself is no different when offering advice to her fanbase.
HBO’s Girls, created and directed by Lena Dunham, is a show that focuses on the post-grad lives of four women in their 20s living in New York City. It is widely known that Dunham based the show’s characters on the real-life personalities of the actors. This is inadvertently clear in the way that Kirke conducts her advice segments.
Kirke’s advice has also been known to be the pinnacle of unhinged answers that you would only receive from your unfiltered best friend. One of her most notable pieces of advice directed toward “unconfident young women” has been widely reposted on social media for years, with Kirke saying, “I think you guys are thinking about yourselves too much.”
As blunt as that response is, it genuinely changed my life, because it’s so true. In day-to-day life, we get caught up with how others perceive us and forget that we aren’t always the center of attention. Whenever I’m feeling overly insecure, I remind myself that I am, undoubtedly, thinking too much about myself.
However, fear not, because Tender Tips is just as unhinged as Kirke’s Instagram stories. The column was announced in August, with the first two topics focusing on Kirke’s thoughts on true happiness and friendship, respectively.
In the August installment, Kirke answers queries about meditation, quarter-life crises, finding passion, and success. As described by Elle in an Instagram post, this column is “no-fluff,” meaning Kirke’s responses range from in-depth analyses about finding yourself again to a simple one-sentence answer, reading, “I don’t know, ask ChatGPT.”
The most recent topic, friendship, only further delved into Kirke’s complex and eloquent opinions, even offering up suggestions on how to become better at speaking in social situations. One of the first questions mentioned in the article is about struggling to balance friendships among the trials of everyday life, to which Kirke responds, “Falling off the map for a while is not a betrayal.” If you are a fan of Girls, you can immediately see how this piece of advice correlates to Kirke’s character, Jessa, who often disappeared for multiple episodes at a time.
As an avid watcher of Girls and a long-time follower of Kirke’s Instagram stories, Tender Tips is truly an advice column from Jessa Johanson herself. If you’ve ever longed to be consoled by the eccentric and troubled friend group from your favorite coming-of-age TV show, Tender Tips is your new best friend.