Recently, American television has begun to develop a new female identity. No longer under the strict scrutiny of beauty and behavioral norms prescribed by Hollywood, a new generation of heroines is starting to redefine women in television. Among such shows like New Girl and The Mindy Project, HBO’s Girls, which premiered its second season this January, depicts realistic women who do not necessarily fit Hollywood’s mold of the “ideal woman.”
In its most simplified description, Girls draws strong parallels to another HBO program of a different time: Sex and the City. Both shows follow four women as they navigate their way through relationships, friendships and careers in New York City. But on a deeper level, Girls, created by Lena Dunham, unmasks the glamour of Sex and the City, revealing the struggles and frustrations of post-grad life in the midst of a recession. The first season of Girls begins with a short, but to the-point, visit from the parents of Hannah, Dunham’s character. After internalizing that they have decided to financially cut her off, Hannah, an aspiring writer, hands her parents a draft of her collection of essays while telling them, “I may be the voice of my generation. Or at least a voice. Of a generation.”
Hannah experiences the life of a twenty-something-year-old “one mistake at a time,” as the show’s tagline suggests, with her equally lost friends, Marnie (Allison Williams), a gallery assistant who seems to have her life under control, Jessa (Jemima Kirke), an “unpredictable world- traveler” and Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet), Jessa’s younger, more innocent cousin, whose “biggest baggage” in season one was her virginity. In addition to the female characters on Girls, the men on the show also contribute to the show’s underlying rawness, brutal honesty and deadpan humor. What begins as a friends-with-benefits relationship between Hannah and Adam (Adam Driver), where he treats her heart “like it’s monkey meat,” slowly develops into something deeper. Dunham also captures the struggles of trying to continue a romantic relationship that began in college in the “real world.” Mainly, with this sort of dynamic, Dunham focuses her attention on Marnie and Charlie (Christopher Abbott), who have different notions about how their relationship should or should not continue.
Instead of adding to the Hollywood clichés of romance and glamour that mainly dominate television shows focused towards female viewers (think Gossip Girl), Girls unapologetically embraces cringe-worthy moments, often sexual ones. After a bold, seductive one-liner from a pretentious artist, Marnie rushes to the bathroom to masturbate during a gallery opening. In another instance, Shoshannah quietly watches Jessa as she has standing out-the-window sex with her ex. Lastly, Hannah is the last one to realize that her boyfriend from college had been gay throughout their relationship.
Of course, perhaps one of the daring aspects about Girls is Dunham’s openness to on-screen nudity. Dunham seems to reject societal standards surrounding beauty and weight during scenes when viewers can see all of Hannah’s body. Simply put, Dunham has questioned Hollywood’s (and to a great extent society’s) fixation with obtaining an “ideal figure” without making the show all about body image. Even though Dunham has done this in subtle ways, the media has been anything but quiet about her acceptance of nudity in a society driven by Photoshop. In a recent New York Post article, Linda Stasi called Dunham a “pathological exhibitionist,” who should not display her “giant thighs, a sloppy backside and small breasts.” Dunham has also been praised for being a “refreshing” actress who does not apologize to harsh critics. Recently, she arrived at an event wearing a loose shirt and short shorts. In response, a flurry of blogs said that she was not wearing pants, to which Dunham said, “get used to it because I am going to live to be 100, and I am going to show my thighs every day till I die.”
Three episodes into the promising second season of Girls, Dunham already has reason to celebrate: HBO has renewed the show for a third season with twelve episodes as opposed to its normal ten; it also won best television series-comedy or musical at the Golden Globes and Dunham won best performance by an actress in a television series-comedy or musical. With her well-deserved rise to fame, original approach to television and fearless personality, perhaps Dunham really is a voice for her generation.
