*Thar be spoilers here*
In one of the first scenes of season 2 of Girls, Lena Dunham's precocious HBO sitcom, the main character Hannah has sex with a hot African-American guy (Donald Glover), who says "You wanted this...and now you're getting it." Hannah replies, "I'm finally getting it. It's about fucking time."
This scene is a blatantly cheeky response to critics of Dunham who felt the first season of Girls white-washed the hipster boroughs of New York where the show takes place. Feminists seemed to hang their hopes on the very young Dunham to create a show that spoke for them--all of them--and when it turned out that the show was more about self-absorbed, privileged white chicks than an intersectional exploration of fourth-wave feminism, some felt betrayed.
While this is an understandable response, and I agree that the show has some issues with a lack of diversity, at the end of the day it's Dunham's show and I think she gets to do what she wants. I also think her studied and consistently headstrong ability to sweetly flip the bird in the direction of her various critics makes more of an impact than the show itself. And I love it. The more people get pissed off, the more Dunham seems to figure out what really pushes her critics' buttons and..just..ever so slightly...push them harder.
Case in point: the rather hilarious non-controversy over Dunham's love of being naked on her own show. Dunham has a fairy normal body. She's a bit chubby ("I'm 13 pounds overweight and it has been awful for me my whole life!" cries Hannah in one memorable scene) with smallish breasts. In the show, she surrounds herself with actresses with more "conventionally attractive" bodies--the lovely Zosia Mamet, Allison Williams, and Jemima Kirke. And who do you think gets the lion's share of nudity? Yep--the tattooed and dimpled Dunham. For some reason, this pisses so many people off beyond belief! Howard Stern recently said on his ever-tasteful show, "It's a little fat girl who kinda looks like Jonah Hill and she keeps taking her clothes off and it kinda feels like rape...I don't want to see that." (Stern has since apologized to Dunham). It's like, dude, 1) Jonah Hill worked hard to lose a lot of weight, so don't rag on him, 2) I'm pretty sure you have no idea what rape feels like, and 3) Have you ever seen a naked woman? I'm pretty sure Dunham doesn't qualify for "fat". And even if she is fat, I'd willing to bet most people would rather see her naked than Howard Stern.
Stern isn't the only one to reference Dunham's "blobby body" (thanks, Linda Stasi of the totally legitimate news publication, The New York Post!), but Dunham has all but laughed in the face of these mean girls and guys, saying, "My response is, get used to it because I am going to live to one hundred and I am going to show you my thighs every day till I die." BAM.
How can you not love this woman!? Other concern trolls on both the right and left have fretted over the sex lives of the characters. A woman writing into Glamour magazine tsk-tsked the mag for promoting Dunham as one of their Women of the Year, saying "If you think she represents millennials, you're mistaken. We're more than our sex drives." And so are the characters on Girls! Yes, they have a lot of sex, but they also work and get fired, visit with their parents, have parties, and pursue creative ideas (one of Hannah's defining characteristics is that she's an aspiring writer).
On the other side, you get folks who are concerned about Hannah's codependent, semi-BDSM relationship with the weird and narcissistic Adam. In the first season, Hannah and Adam have some...I can only describe them as "lazy-kinky"...sex scenes that are as uncomfortable as they are funny. Some in the blogosphere didn't like that the show seemed to romanticize being treated poorly by a sex partner. Which I think is dumb because when you're that age, it's almost a guarantee that you will be treated poorly by a sex/romance partner. And you'll probably treat some of your partners poorly as well.
Hey, look, I get it. Some of the scenes in Girls have made me roll my eyes (the scene where Hannah follows Adam out into the street while wearing a onesie? And then he spray paints "Sorry" a million times on a wall? Yeah, no.) The whole hipster thing can be grating at times. The characters tend to be pretty selfish and shallow. But I don't think people are allowed to complain about the selfishness of the characters when Don Draper of Mad Men and Walter White of Breaking Bad are much, much more selfish and anti-heroic.
People love to watch women act brazenly sexual and bratty--how else do you explain the popularity of porn and shows like Real Housewives? But people like to watch these selfish, entitled, sexpot brats and then make fun of them and walk away feeling superior. They're not used to watching such women win multiple Golden Globes at age 26. And to have startlingly normal bodies. And to respond to insults with candor and grace, as opposed to repentance and submission. Lena Dunham is talented and audacious and I love it.
I hope she shows me her thighs every day until she dies.
Girls: 4 out of 5 stars
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