Every era has a soothsayer responsible for divining messages from the future, whether it’s Cassandra from Greek mythology or the “psychic medium” John Edwards surprising Kelly Clarkson with a reading on daytime TV. After a lengthy perusal of Instagram, I’m pleased to announce that my generation’s prophet has finally come in the form of Jemima Kirke, the artist and former Girls and Conversations With Friends star whose responses to viewers’ anonymous questions on Instagram Stories have captured the internet’s fancy lately.
Kirke may be best known on social media for her blunt, take-no-prisoner Q&As, but she’s also a reliable source of no-BS fashion judgment during red carpets, and devoted to guarding the secret of what movie she’s watching at any given time:
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One of the things that’s always charmed me about Kirke’s public persona is its overlap with the one maintained by her Girls character, Jessa (except I’m pretty sure Jessa wasn’t on social media, preferring instead to live in ~the moment~). Kirke is definitely not Jessa, as she made clear when she vetoed the idea of using her own paintings in the HBO series in 2014. “Already, for some reason, people think I’m Jessa, and I think that would just push it over the edge for me. I think it would be too confusing for people,” she said at the time.
All that said, I can totally see Jessa responding “I think you guys might be thinking about yourselves too much” to someone on Instagram who asked her for “advice to unconfident young women,” as Kirke recently did. It’s harsh, sure, but it’s also…bracingly true, speaking as a formerly unconfident young woman who did think about herself way too much. I mean, what else is Girls about, if not the archetype of the inherently selfish 20-something? Sometimes you just need someone to tell you to snap out of it, even if said someone is an actress and painter you’ll likely never actually meet in real life.
