Thanks again for kicking us off Maria! I think you raised some very great points, in particular that the show points out the abjection. However, while it seems clear that Dunham owns her body, I'm not a 100% sold that the show or even her character does. Adam, avid runner with the rippling abs, frequently poked fun at Hannah's physique, and I don't think she took up running out of any intrinsic desire to lead a healthier life, but instead out of a misguided desire to please him and bond with him. The other characters, the more "physically ideal," make cracks about her small chest. Even her explanation about her tattoos is blustery but fraught with hidden insecurities. I suppose my point is that in a show that is so hinged upon this aspect of autobiography, how do we discern where Dunham ends and Hannah begins? And what are the implications of that on the politics of this show?

Regarding the Hannah Horvath thing, I also muse on the nature of the relationship between Adam and Hannah in order to consider how Adam continually picks up on Hannah's underlying current of self-hatred (or at least dissatisfaction) as the sex scenes surely indicate. Sexual dynamics aside, though, Adam mentions Hannah's weight a couple of times (e.g., "You're not that fat anymore") with the fight in Bushwick representing the encapsulation of how much Hannah's weight has affected her sense of self. Some of the questions that I walked my undergrads through were regarding the extent to which that sense of one's body (as a young female) are typical--did these young women find themselves putting up with men who exploited their insecurities? I was curious to see how the undergrads drew connections between female identity and the body (and then, of course, how class, sexuality, and race served to complicate things). We ended up having a productive discussion about the rise in white rural fat bodies in television and how individual viewer responses to Hannah's laments were often determined by class more than race although I urged the students to consider that the two dimensions are continually linked in televised representation of women. But I do think that there does seem to be a bit of conflation between Hannah/Lena in reviews of Girls with regard to weight (much more so than on the topic of race)--for example, http://weblogs.variety.com/on_the_air/2012/04/why-hbos-girls-is-worth-th... I wonder how this will all shake out when Dunham's advice book (http://gawker.com/5966563/here-is-lena-dunhams-37-million-book-proposal) comes out.

The mirror Girls holds up is, perhaps, a speculum. There is something blithely confessional about the show that borders on shocking--hence the wave of critique that met it in 2012. I remember watching it the first time and being absolutely put off by Hannah's HPV-positivity, her joy at joining the society of "adventurous women" who all share the same viral badge of honor. The spread of HPV is presented, not as a public health issue, but as a rite of passage. But though the show does not contradict Hannah's celebratory response, it provides ample room for our reactions, be they horror or joining in Hannah's impromptu dance party. As Maria astutely observes, Hannah turns judgement first into recognition (it becomes an opportunity to confront old and current boyfriends), then admiration and celebration. The show seems to ask us, provocatively, What purpose would shame serve here? Is it just as valid a reaction to dance? Another notable moment in the show is when Hannah takes both the money her parents left for her AND for the hotel housekeeper. The show does not pause to condemn Hannah, nor does it return to her theft or its ramifications, but anyone with a conscience (or class consciousness) can interpret that action as wrong. Despite its title (which, as Dunham says in her 2012 Fresh Air interview, is the word most twenty-something women, in Dunham's experience, use to describe themselves), Girls presents itself to a viewership of adults. Its undidactic quality is, I think, what invites so much conversation and critique, and what makes it, quite simply, good TV.

Chizoba, I take the diversity criticism of Girls very seriously. I think it's on the money, I think critics have an ethical obligation to make it, and I think if more television shows were subject to the intensity of that critique, television as a whole would be better off. When I say "disproportionate," I mean exactly that. When Girls was released, the show was effusively praised—I think a little wrongly—as a generation-defining statement, and it was effusively criticized for its lack of racial diversity. Having watched the show and been struck by its sexual politics, I was surprised at how comparatively few pieces I read on that subject. The diversity criticism on a whole was not necessarily overstated, but there was simply way more of it than there was criticism about the show's feminist POV. I do think, however, that it's dangerous to identify Judd Apatow as "the hand behind Lena's hand" for Girls or the hand behind the Wiig for Bridesmaids. Regardless of whether or not you feel that the feminist politics of Girls is a new thing under the sun, Lena Dunham is, by my count, the only female showrunner on HBO. And she is one of a very small number in television generally. I think it's wrong to assume that Apatow is pulling the strings, especially because such an assumption implies that Dunham can't be pulling her own. Do people assume that Terence Winter is taking orders from Martin Scorsese on Boardwalk Empire? Or, if we are displacing Dunham's authorship, why not assume that Jenni Konner—another executive producer and collaborator on Girls—is the guiding hand? As I said in my earlier response, TV has a race problem and a misogyny problem. And I think it's important to see their structural similarities. (It's almost bizarre that Dunham can be so sensitive to sexual politics and turn such a blind eye to racial ones, for instance.) The arguments about race and Girls, like those about feminism, are about enfranchisement, about dominant and emergent voices, about creating art that is considered and progressive, and about not letting convention or—as today's post has it, "accident"—dictate what a show looks like. I think the question you bring up about "true authorship" is a good one—and one that's being addressed in today's post—and I hope we can continue having conversations about it over the next weeks. P.S. My post tomorrow talks a bit about Game of Thrones (the series), so I hope to meet you again in my own comments section soon!

Hi Karen, I agree. There is something intriguing going on with Girls that speaks to shifts in branding (I think) in the social media age. I suspect that part of what is going on is that Dunham-and HBO-are retooling the notion of quality to involve buzz and social media presence, middle and highbrow (including academic) critique of the show's representational politics, and other forms of intellectual commentary. Does Girls push back against masculinist notions of quality television? Yes. Is this oppositional position, at least in part, a shrewd strategy to ensure another modality of "refined" dialogue surrounding the show? Quite possibly. Is the whole endeavor earnest social commentary or cynical capitalism, or some combination? Hard to say. The rorschach test is a great analogy!