According to a recent story from Fortune, TV viewers can expect an upcoming surge of female-centered divorce comedies. Since women are the ones who file nearly two-thirds of divorces, it’s no surprise that they’re taking the reigns when it comes to television portrayals of life after divorce. With more and more couples having to make the big decision to split, people like Marti Noxon, the creator of The Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce, saw the need for a big shift in the narrative surrounding divorce.
“People would say, what’s the high concept of your show?” Noxon said, “We’d say, ‘You know that thing that happens to 51% of all married people.’ Weirdly it was a big idea.”
The Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce (or #GG2D, if you’re a fan) is ready to begin its second season on Bravo this fall, and will be joined on TV by many other programs that have women in the lead roles, divorced and unashamed. Noxon recalled that when she began planning GG2D, there were a lot of things she wanted to be sure to cover.
“For me, Girlfriends Guide to Divorce was a bit of a Trojan horse. One of the things I was really interested in writing about was sexual politics and relationships between men and women in a world where the woman can be perceived as having as much — if not more — power in the world as her mate or former mate.”
She continued, “And we’ve discovered that the majority of our audience is working women, whether married or divorced. We really see these women on our show having to work for their money. They are privileged, they work in a rarefied world, but they’ve had to earn it. The show deals with women struggling with kid and work issues, trying to discover who they are in their new life, and sort of lead two lives. That’s something a lot of women can to relate to.”