Ginny & Georgia fans have a lot of love for the show, but one character in particular has become a metaphorical punching bag online.
Ginny Miller often gets painted as a villain, but why is that? She’s smart, driven, and mature, especially given that she’s just a teenager.
So what is it about her that brings out the haters?
For what it’s worth, we’re Ginny stans in this house, so if you’re looking for Ginny slander, you won’t find it here!
But we do want to explore what it is about this controversial character that causes such strong reactions from fans of Ginny & Georgia. Let’s get into it.
First, it’s important that we understand who Ginny Miller is. She’s the fifteen-year-old biracial daughter of a white former teen mom. She’s been moved around the country her entire life.
Her mom has a complicated and sometimes criminal history, and that directly informs how she has parented her children.
Ginny is occasionally parentified and expected to take care of her younger brother in their mother’s absence. She’s been forced to adapt her entire life, facing new schools, new cities, and new friends more times than she can count.
She’s faced racism while existing in a family where she lacked racial mirrors — at times, the racist behavior came from her own mother. Despite all of this, Ginny is often seen as annoying by viewers.
A visit to Reddit clears up some of the confusion. It’s true that some fans criticize Ginny based on her behavior (which is developmentally normal for any teenager, but especially one who has been through trauma).
But frankly, there is a heavy element of racism in the way people toss hatred toward Ginny for normal teen antics but excuse similar (and worse) actions from her white mother.
She’s vilified for having sex, but Georgia is frequently given the hero treatment for building a life after becoming a teen mom.
Ginny is called selfish, but her mother gets applause for acts as serious as murder because she generally does it for “good reasons.”
Another flaw of Ginny’s that fans love to harp on is the way she treats her mother. Okay — sure, she certainly has a snotty attitude at times.
But not only is that normal teen behavior, it’s not called out as aggressively when white teens on the show (like Max and Marcus) act similarly. It’s not a lack of attention, either; Ginny & Georgia is widely popular.
The thing people seem to forget is that Ginny isn’t even a normal teenager. She hasn’t been given a stable childhood.
Her mom treats her like a best friend instead of a child who desperately needs structure and stability.
She’s expected to go with the flow and take her mother’s whims in stride. That would be difficult for anyone, but again — Ginny is a child!
Many fans of the show who find Ginny’s treatment unfair agree that there is, unfortunately, no way to get around the misogynoir of it all.
In one particularly telling Reddit post, a user describes Ginny as frequently “pulling the racism card.”
This Black character, who constantly experiences racism and microagressions from everyone around her, is accused of “pulling the racism card” when she refuses to take the abuse.
People aren’t going to like to hear it, but the reason people hate Ginny so much is because she’s Black.
Whether it’s based on an expectation of how Black girls should act, a lack of feeling connected to a character that doesn’t look like them, or something more sinister, the racist undertones in anti-Ginny rhetoric are obvious.
There will be those who insist that it’s not true. They’ll vehemently deny any racism, and they’ll swear they dislike Ginny because she’s selfish or annoying.
But if that were true, they’d dislike those same traits in Georgia. They’d probably even stop watching the show altogether because they’d hate both main characters.
Somehow, that’s never the case. Instead, we’re left with countless social media discussions about what a terrible character Ginny is.
There’s something to be said for the fact that for the overwhelming majority of Ginny & Georgia’s episodes, the entire writer’s room was white. The implicit bias in an all-white writer’s room is hard to overlook. It begs the question of whether Ginny was written purposely to invite certain criticisms.
Even if it wasn’t intentional, it’s difficult to write about an experience that you’ve never had. For a room full of white women to accurately depict the realities of living as a Black teenage girl in America would be nothing short of a miracle.
Look, I’m not here to tell you that you’re a racist if you don’t vibe with Ginny Miller.
But if you’re one of the many Ginny & Georgia fans who take issue with the younger titular character, it might be worth exploring whether any biases have influenced your opinion of her.
At the end of the day, anyone can dislike anyone for any reason, and it doesn’t always boil down to racism.
But the evidence for this case points to a painful truth: Ginny’s Blackness is a driving factor in how well she is perceived by fans, and Georgia’s whiteness contributes to the fact that fans are willing to overlook her flaws.
While we wait for Ginny and Georgia Season 3, let us know in the comments how you feel about the impact of racism on Ginny’s reputation.
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Haley Whitmire White is a staff writer for TV Fanatic. You can follow her on X.
