Last week, a new TV series, Girls, started to air on HBO in the US. It's a show about four twenty something women living in New York, navigating the bridge between college and real life.
上周，最新剧集《都市女孩》正式登陆美国HBO电视网。该剧讲述了四位20岁左右的纽约女孩，正行走在从大学校园通往现实社会的道路上。

What is interesting about this series is the friendship it portrays. A friend is someone with whom you dare to be yourself. And this is true of the bond between these four girls.
该剧集的卖点在于其描绘的友情。朋友是那个你敢于在他/她面前表现真我的人。而剧中四个女孩间的友情便是如此。

In one of the early scenes of the pilot episode you see two women spooning in bed together. Warmly intertwined, they are awoken by an alarm, having fallen asleep together watching television.
在该剧集试播节目较早的一个场景中，两个女孩亲昵地挤在一张床上，看着看着电视便一起睡着了，然后，一阵闹铃声将亲密无间的二人叫醒。

A short while later, these same two girls, Hannah and Marnie, share a bathtub and laugh about the emasculated boyfriend in the next room.
稍后，还是这两个女孩——汉娜和玛妮，她们共用浴缸沐浴并一起拿隔壁玛妮娇气的男友打趣。

These women are so comfortable together. But when Marnie's boyfriend opens the door, he is laughed out of the room. Men have no place or status within the world of these women.
两个女孩的共同时光是如此惬意。而当玛妮的男友打开门时，可怜的他被一片大笑声赶出了房间。男士无法插足女孩们的世界。

This particular brand of female friendship seems very modern, and many culture critics have been provoked to hail Girls as revolutionary.
大打闺蜜友情牌似乎很时髦，因此《都市女孩》也被许多文化评论人士称赞为革命性创新。

However, Rebecca Traister at Salon.com makes the point that female friendships which are the main source of emotional nourishment only seem new and noteworthy because of relatively recent history. But it's a dynamic that is very old.
然而，来自美国芝加哥的新闻与娱乐网站Salon.com的丽贝卡?特雷斯特认为，虽然由于近代的历史原因，女性间的友谊作为情感供给的主要来源，看上去似乎格外新奇且引人关注。但实际上它由来已久。
Traister explains that for centuries 'intense social and physical bonds between women were an accepted part of life". This was because marriage was not about love but about economics.
特雷斯特解释说，几个世纪以来，“女性间紧密的社会关系与有形纽带，已被公认为生活的一部分”。这是因为婚姻并非关乎爱情，而只是与经济状况有关。

"It wasn't until the early 20th century, as marriage came to be treated as a union based on love and sex, that same-sex friendships began to be seen as competitive to the closeness a woman was supposed to feel to her husband," said Traister.
特雷斯特说：“直到20世纪初，随着婚姻被视为一种基于爱和性的结合，同性间的友情才被视为夫妻亲密关系的竞争对手。”

What is great about Girls is that it opens a window through which we can peer at female friendships in the 21st century.
《都市女孩》的伟大之处就在于，它敞开一扇窗，从中我们可以一窥21世纪的女性友谊。

The women characters' closeness is a byproduct of a world where marriage is no longer the highest goal for women.
在这个社会中，结婚不再是女性的终极目标，所以女性角色间的亲密关系这个副产品也便应运而生。

Without this inherent competitive goal, women can form unbreakable bonds of sisterhood and support. Women have time and resources to be whoever they want to be, and instead of focusing on men they can focus on themselves.
少了“结婚”这个与生俱来的竞争性目标，女性之间就会形成坚如磐石的姐妹情谊和相互支撑。女性有时间也有资源去成就自我，她们不必再将精力都集中在男人身上，从而可以更关注自己了。

Girls has been compared to another famous television show, Sex and the City. One also set in New York, also revolving around the friendship of four women. But unlike Sex and the City, Girls portrays a very different kind of feminine companionship.
很多人将《都市女孩》与另外一部热门剧集《欲望都市》放在一起比较。后者的故事背景也被设定在纽约，故事也是围绕四位女性的友情展开。但与《欲望都市》不同，《都市女孩》描绘的是一种完全不同的女性友谊。

"Carrie and her brightly colored cadre made history in almost cartoonish fashion, in which friendship was a public performance enacted in expansive shiny clubs over jewel-colored cocktails," said Traister.
“（在《欲望都市》中），凯莉和她衣着艳丽的姐妹团以一种近乎漫画式的时尚创造了历史，友情是在热闹炫目的酒吧里，借助宝石色泽的鸡尾酒上演的一场公开秀。”特雷斯说。

"Those flamboyantly drawn expressions have given way to Hannah and Marnie, who breakfast in their grim kitchen, Marnie listening with irritation as Hannah slurps her cereal milk and talks with her mouth full, like regular best friends, not fabulously implausible best friends."
“而这些刻意打造的华丽场景都抵不过汉娜和玛妮在阴暗的厨房里吃的一顿平常早餐，玛妮不耐烦地听汉娜一边大声地喝着牛奶麦片，一边嘴里塞满食物喋喋不休，她们如同普通闺蜜一般，而并非那种关系紧密地不现实的好友。”

This new breed of friendship is more deeply entwined, and the gritty details of each woman's life are laid bare on the dinner table in the crappy apartment they share.
闺蜜这种全新的友情在生活中有着千丝万缕的联系，，在她们俩合租的这个简陋公寓中，女性生活中所有鸡毛蒜皮的小事都被曝光在餐桌之上。

Female friendship is brilliant in its ability to entwine the beautiful, sacred and disgusting facets of the girls that it links.
女性友谊的闪光之处就在于，它可以将女孩身上或美好，或神圣，或讨厌的各个方面全部融合在一起。