There isn’t another show like Insecure—a show by and for black women. Girlfriends went off the air in 2008, and Being Mary Jane and Scandal’s leading black women are overachieving characters who are too perfect to be relatable. Insecure, though? Insecure is about black girls pre-magic, and it is everything.
Set in Los Angeles, the HBO series stars writer and producer Issa Rae, creator of the YouTube series Awkward Black Girl. Insecure follows best friends Issa (Issa Rae) and Molly (Yvonne Orji), two professional black women in their late twenties, as they struggle to achieve optimum success in their careers and love lives.
Issa, while beautiful, smart, and fashionable, doesn’t quite have her shit together. In the series’ first scene, we see her getting dragged by a classroom full of kids from the hood: “Why do you talk like a white girl?” “Are you single?” “My dad says ain’t nobody checking for bitter-ass black women.” (Spoiler alert: Black women aren’t bitter, we’re just tired of being expected to settle for less!)
