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" In the latest episode of Girls, Jessa (Jemima Kirke) had about 55 seconds of screen time, but that was plenty of breathing room for her to steal the show. Fresh out of rehab and trying on average person complacency for size, Jessa&amp;#039;s taken a job at a high-end children&amp;#039;s clothing shop. When we check in with her, she&amp;#039;s holding up a tiny black dress to a customer, who is shopping for her baby. &amp;quot;Aren&amp;#039;t Christening gowns supposed to be white?&amp;quot; the perplexed mother asks. &amp;quot;Not the chic ones,&amp;quot; Jessa responds. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ll take it,&amp;quot; the mom concedes. Of course she will. She just got Jessa&amp;#039;d. Let me present a familiar scenario: You find out your ex has a new girlfriend via a series of tagged Facebook photos. It&amp;#039;s a toss up which is worse\u2014seeing that he&amp;#039;s moved on with someone less attractive than you (perhaps he wasn&amp;#039;t a catch, after all?), or discovering that his new squeeze is Photoshop perfect. But even more threatening than the homely Stanford MBA or the girl with the perfect Coachella dance selfies and a friend group that might be described as a blondterouge of thigh gaps? The Jessa. The Jessa is a special breed: She&amp;#039;s as content spending Sunday at The Met as she is downing Coors Lights at the Village Tavern. She is a high-low aesthete; her daily look is an infuriatingly perfect mix of hand-me-downs, consignment finds, and gifted Derek Lam. The Jessa never yawns or says a commonplace thing. She doesn&amp;#039;t go to SLT. She doesn&amp;#039;t know what that is. The Jessa wakes up in the morning in lace boy shorts and slips on a zippered hoodie. The coldness of the metal teeth against her sternum doesn&amp;#039;t really bother her. The Jessa rarely wears a bra. While the Facebook junkie with pipe cleaners for arms spent Saturday night sipping vodka sodas on a banquette, the Jessa was playing quarters at a dive bar with Michael Pitt and Jamie Bochert. The Jessa drinks regular Coca Cola, fills out her one piece, and isn&amp;#039;t afraid to get her hair wet. She&amp;#039;s the kind of girl who can snakecharm a table of seven dudes with the cock of an eyebrow. And later, on the way home, six out of seven are still thinking about her: a more cultured, more sexually curious, more Klout-enhancing version of their own girlfriend. N\u00FAmero seven? That guy&amp;#039;s gay. Even though she plays the role perfectly, Jemima Kirke didn&amp;#039;t invent the Jessa. Men did. Hemingway dreamed about Lady Brett Ashley in The Sun Also Rises; F. Scott Fitzgerald created Daisy Buchanan for The Great Gatsby; and thanks to Jeffrey Eugenides, modern day Trip Fontaines fall asleep dreaming of The Virgin Suicides&amp;#039; Lux Lisbon each night. But for a while there, it seemed as if Hollywood was tabling the Jessa in favor of the Marnie. At every award show, we were presented with a cavalcade of strapless gowns, veneer-ed smiles, and concave tummies. But that&amp;#039;s the thing about the Jessa: She&amp;#039;s no passing fad. If you look at the red carpet these days, you&amp;#039;ll find her. She with the human-size arms, soft jawline, and a contagious, cat-ate-the-canary grin. And it&amp;#039;s a cool to see women like Jennifer Lawrence, Mila Kunis, Chrissy Teigen, Scarlett Johansson, and Kate Upton get the recognition. These are mouthy, funny women, whose bodies look somwhat like ours, and who unabashedly go after what they want. But these are also women whose low-maintenance yet hypersexualized beauty ideal is dictated by men\u2014women who blatently advertise their ability to hang with the boys, and adhere to bro definition of the &amp;quot;cool girl.&amp;quot; For all intents and purposes, the Jessa is just Marilyn Monroe in a low cut caftan. Like Jemima Kirke&amp;#039;s character on Girls, who Lena Dunham&amp;#039;s Hannah once said has &amp;quot;a deep well of sadness inside her that most people don&amp;#039;t detect,&amp;quot; the Jessa is powerless without seduction. Even when no one is watching, she&amp;#039;s carefully cultivating her persona. It&amp;#039;s no accident that you think she&amp;#039;s glamorous\u2014she wants you to think so. And when you&amp;#039;re in her orbit, life just feels more vivid. But don&amp;#039;t for a second think that you, your ex, or even an army of admirers will be able to fill the void. For all of her aloof magic, the Jessa requires endless amounts of attention; like a fairy, she&amp;#039;ll die if we don&amp;#039;t believe in her. So why won&amp;#039;t we let her? This post was originally published on ELLE. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a27339/why-men-love-jessa/>