HBO is known for its nudity. From “Weeds” to “Game of Thrones” and now “Girls,” HBO is well aware of the power of the nipple. Yet, one singular aspect of “Girls” sets it apart from its other non-nudity-fearing pack: Lena Dunham.
Lena Dunham is rocking the world of body positivity. Heavier than most girls on TV and definitely heavier than most naked girls on TV, Dunham has kicked down doors many feminists didn’t dream of opening for years. Not only did she make her own place in the world of TV by writing, directing and creating her own show in the beginning and demonstrating just how needed a space where it’s OK to be of an above average BMI is, but she’s opened the floodgates for women to come.
A graduate of Oberlin College, Dunham created, directed and starred in a film, “Tiny Furniture,” which premiered at small, independent film festivals across the country. "Tiny Furniture’s" success gave her an opportunity to create an HBO pilot with Judd Apatow, eliciting the birth of “Girls.”
Witty, emotional, superficial and intrinsically hilarious, “Girls” does a great job illustrating what it’s like to be white, affluent and 20-something. But the best part of the show is that none of the characters, Dunham’s included, are exempt from being made fun of. Narcissism is a large theme in the show, each character is so deeply intertwined in their own stories that some episodes fail to overlap the narratives, except for when calling each other narcissistic.
Sharp-tongued and self-involved, Dunham’s character, Hannah, breaks into fits of humor-laced hysteria with some regularity, inadvertently poking fun at the perceived drama of being a post-graduate that still has yet to break into the job market. Hannah, Marnie and Shoshanna are all educated individuals who, after graduating from elite colleges, find themselves to be reevaluating themselves and their career paths.
This feeling of self-doubt is one of the truer emotions “Girls” presents; the idea of finding oneself in college is extremely trite. Labeled as a time of self-exploration, there’s a general feeling of expectations for one to be finished with said self-exploration once a diploma is safely in hand. However, that’s often not that case. The relocation from college to a post-graduate world presents a new era of feeling out of place. As each character undergoes individual moments of uncertainty, their timings hardly ever overlap. The realism of that feeling of isolation and aimlessness while it seems that everyone else in your life has their shit together is the show’s crowning glory.
While Dunham does not exclusively write each episode, the show is her intellectual child, and she managed to birth it within the misogynistic culture that is show biz. The entertainment industry is one of the hardest places on women. Notorious for paying leading female actors less than their male counterparts, restricting available roles for women of a certain age and having perilous standards of beauty, Hollywood is harsh on women. Lena Dunham is not OK with this. Lena Dunham is changing this, one blemished ass cheek at a time.
This being said, Dunham is not women’s Joan of Arc or Wonder Woman, herself; she leaves a lot to be desired in regards to diversity. The cast is almost exclusively white, and while feminism is a well-trodden topic in the show, racism and social oppression are hardly mentioned. As TV in general is also predominantly white, it’s not as though Dunham is isolated in her white-washing; she just does not rise above it, as her liberalist resume might suggest.
Unfortunately, in the era of the New Jim Crow laws and feigning colorblindness, I’m incredibly dubious that Hollywood would have ever been receptive to a black Lena Dunham. Clinging to a colonial era where we can paint Africa white in a Taylor Swift music video, the entertainment industry is incredibly racist; America is incredibly racist. It’s the depressing reality of the entertainment industry, and while Dunham is shattering the old formula to a successful show, if she hadn’t been white, she would have never been allowed to elbow her way in as far as she had. But maybe changing how white women are allowed to be bold could be the much-needed catalyst for seeing more bold, black women on the screens, not just Beyoncé and Rihanna.
