Meredith Nash, Imelda Whelehan (Eds.) - Reading Lena Dunham’s Girls_ Feminism, Postfeminism, Authenticity and Gendered Performance in Contemporary Television-Palgrave Macmillan (2017)

Reading Lena Dunham’s Girls
“This collection takes a fresh approach to examining what is arguably one of the
most significant television dramas of the twenty-first century so far. The contribu-
tors pass an insightful gaze not only onto a plethora of postfeminist anxieties, but
also issues of production and reception in the context of television as a cultural
industry. Nash and Whelehan’s superb collection will prove to be of immense value
to scholars and students working within a number of diverse disciplines.”
— Joel Gwynne, Associate Professor of English and Cultural Studies, Nanyang
Technological University, Singapore
“With fifteen chapters ranging on topics from sex and bodies to masculinity and
music, Reading Girls comprehensively considers and engages with the myriad
debates about Lena Dunham’s show and her authorial identity . . . It is a book
anyone interested in twenty-first century television and gender must have.”
— Shelley Cobb, Associate Professor, Film University of Southampton, England
“With its provocative depiction of class, race, age, sexual and body politics, and
positioning at the interface between feminisms (both conventional and emergent)
and postfeminisms, Girls has proven itself a lightning rod for debates about gender
and generation in recent years. Nash and Whelehan have gathered together a set of
essays that move those debates substantially, and collectively illuminate a landmark
TV series.”
— Diane Negra, Professor of Film Studies and Screen Culture, University College
Dublin, Ireland
Meredith Nash • Imelda Whelehan
Editors
Reading Lena
Dunham’s Girls
Feminism, postfeminism, authenticity, and gendered
performance in contemporary television
Editors
Meredith Nash Imelda Whelehan
University of Tasmania Office of the Vice-Chancellor
Hobart, Tasmania, Australia The Australian National University
Canberra, Australia
ISBN 978-3-319-52970-7 ISBN 978-3-319-52971-4 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-52971-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017940048
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
MN: The idea for this book emerged in 2013 from work that I was
conducting with my student, Ruby Grant (who is now nearing comple-
tion of her PhD in Sociology). Ruby was examining Girls as part of an
undergraduate feminist reading course, so I had the great pleasure of
spending a semester with her discussing postfeminism in Girls and
whether the concept still ‘fits’ compared to shows like Sex and the
City. In 2014, we drew together our ideas in a paper entitled
‘Twenty-something Girls vs. thirty-something Sex and the City women:
Paving the way for “post? feminism”’ (published in Feminist Media
Studies in 2015). Around the same time, I started to chat about Girls
with Imelda, given her long-standing interest and scholarship in post-
feminism and popular television. Editing a collection of our own seemed
to be an ideal way for us to work together and to contribute to the
emerging body of Girls scholarship. Imelda is a wonderful friend and
mentor, so it goes without saying that it has been great fun to share this
editorial project with her, and I appreciate her time, dedication, and
intellectual generosity in developing this book.
IW: Meredith has been amazingly patient and tolerant over the past year.
She has kept this project on track in so many ways that I can’t even count
them all. So, big thanks to Meredith for hatching this project, steering it,
providing intellectual stimulation, and sharing laughs in-between. I am
also most grateful to Professor Brigid Heywood, Deputy Vice-Chancellor
Research at the University of Tasmania, who provided last-minute support
to get this project over the line. Special thanks to Miriam and Laurence
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Sadler for watching Girls with me and asking all the right questions. David
Sadler, as always, kept life on track in all those essential ways, and has my
eternal gratitude.
We would like to thank each of the authors for their unique contribu-
tions to this book. The editorial process was made much easier thanks to
their enthusiasm and commitment for the duration of this project.
We are extremely grateful to Susan Banks at the University of Tasmania
for her superior editing skills.
We would also like to thank the editors, staff, and reviewers from Palgrave
Macmillan. We are particularly grateful to Lina Aboujieb, Commissioning
Editor – Film and Television Studies, for believing in the value of this
project.
Finally, we are grateful to the publishers of the following articles and
figures, who granted permission to reproduce parts of them for this book:
Nash, M., & Grant, R., ‘Twenty-something Girls vs. thirty-something
Sex and the City women: Paving the way for “post? feminism”’, Feminist
Media Studies, 2015, reprinted by permission of the publisher (Taylor &
Francis Ltd, http://www.tandfonline.com)
San Filippo, M., ‘“Art porn provocauteurs’: Queer feminist perfor-
mance of embodiments in the work of Catherine Breillat and Lena
Dunham’, in The Velvet Light Trap, Volume 77, pp. 28–49. Copyright
©2016 by the University of Texas Press. All rights reserved.
CONTENTS
1 Why Girls? Why Now? 1

Meredith Nash and Imelda Whelehan
Part I Postfeminism(s)
2 ‘I Have Work . . . I Am Busy . . . Trying to Become

Who I Am’: Neoliberal Girls and Recessionary
Postfeminism 17
Stéphanie Genz
3 Hating Hannah: Or Learning to Love (Post)Feminist

Entitlement 31
Imelda Whelehan
4 Genres of Impasse: Postfeminism as a Relation of Cruel

Optimism in Girls 45
Catherine McDermott
5 From Sex and the City to Girls: Paving the Way for ‘Post?
Feminism’ 61
Ruby Grant and Meredith Nash
vii
viii CONTENTS
6 Bad Sex and the City? Feminist (Re)Awakenings in HBO’s

Girls 75
Melanie Waters
Part II Performing and Representing Millennial Identities
7 ‘A Voice of a Generation’: Girls and the Problem

of Representation 91
Hannah McCann
8 HBO’s Girls and Twenty-First-Century Education 105

Laura Witherington
9 Reading the Boys of Girls 121

Frederik Dhaenens
10 All Adventurous Women Sing: Articulating the Feminine

Through the Music of Girls 135
Alexander Sergeant
11 ‘Doing Her Best With What She’s Got’: Authorship,

Irony, and Mediating Feminist Identities
in Lena Dunham’s Girls 149
Wallis Seaton
Part III Sex, Sexuality, and Bodies
12 ‘Art Porn Provocauteurs’: Feminist Performances of

Embodiment in the Work of Catherine Breillat and Lena
Dunham 165
Maria San Filippo
13 ‘You Shouldn’t be Doing That Because You Haven’t Got

the Body for It’: Comment on Nudity in Girls 181
Deborah J. Thomas
CONTENTS ix
14 Sexual Perversity in New York? 197

Christopher Lloyd
15 All Postfeminist Women Do: Women’s Sexual

and Reproductive Health in Television Comedy 209
Elizabeth Arveda Kissling
16 Afterword: Girls: Notes on Authenticity,

Ambivalence and Imperfection 225
Rosalind Gill
Index 243
LIST OF FIGURES
Fig. 12.1 Distanciation merging with identification: Breillat’s use

of deep focus in Fat Girl shows Anaïs (Anaïs Reboux)
crying in the foreground as her sister loses her virginity
in the background 169
Fig. 12.2 Flaunting her bikini bod: Hannah (Lena Dunham) ejected
from a store for being unsuitably attired, in Girls 174
Fig. 13.1 Hannah and Jessa in the bath. Nudity is contextualised
in the familiar intimacy of female friendship 188
xi
CHAPTER 1
Why Girls? Why Now?
Meredith Nash and Imelda Whelehan
The landmark HBO series Girls, five seasons in and counting, has created
much controversy for a number of key reasons: first, because of pro-
gramme creator and lead actor Lena Dunham’s outspoken brand of
social-media friendly feminism and the interweaving of her own life
experiences with her politics. Second, the challenging representations
of young millennial lives on screen give pause for thought: are these
merely unlikeable hipster slackers, or is there a cogent socio-political
argument underpinning this ‘dramedy’? Third, frequent images of
Dunham’s nude or partially dressed body, lingered over by the camera,
remind us how acculturated we are to the lithe and airbrushed body, so
that reviewers find themselves ‘resistant to bodies that defy the conven-
tions of its own [the media’s] making’ (Watson et al., 2015, p. 4). While
the show may be nothing without its ur-texts (from Mary Tyler Moore
Show [1970–77] through to Sex and the City [1998–2004]), it is equally
nothing like them.
M. Nash (*)
School of Social Sciences, University of Tasmania, Tasmania, Australia
e-mail: meredith.nash@utas.edu.au
I. Whelehan
Office of the Vice-Chancellor, The Australian National University, Canberra,
Australia
e-mail: imelda.whelehan@anu.edu.au
© The Author(s) 2017 1

M. Nash, I. Whelehan (eds.), Reading Lena Dunham’s Girls,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-52971-4_1
2 M. NASH AND I. WHELEHAN
Hannah is the axis of the show, but, as she acknowledges in the pilot
episode, she is only ‘a voice of a generation’. The centring of the narrative
on Hannah’s search for self through memoir only emphasises the precarity
of experience as a measure of anything: her friends variously express
scepticism about her current literary achievements and whether she actu-
ally does have anything to say to her generation. Girls is a commentary on
such aimlessness, but also on the blurring of past certainties about profes-
sional and personal ambition and what we learn from experience. In
Hannah’s case, the creation of a memoir is also an enactment of lived
experience, as the pressure to write her memoir determines her quest to
manufacture or acquire experiences ‘for the story’ (Grdešić, 2013, p. 357).
While the earlier HBO woman-centred series Sex and the City attracted
critical scrutiny from some quarters because writer/producer Darren Starr
and director Michael Patrick King were perceived as shrouding the four
friends with a gay male sensibility (e.g. Gerhard, 2005), Dunham is
required by her sternest critics to produce the authentic ‘everywoman’
for contemporary society and is thus doomed to signally fail. It is a tough
brief to ‘live up to the task of being all things to all women’ for any work of
popular culture, and as Grdešić (2013, p. 355) avers, when it cannot
deliver on that promise ‘disappointment and criticism inevitably ensues’.
Dunham’s self-declared feminism may in part create the expectation of
authenticity in the representation of gender as it is negotiated in Girls, as it
is something of a tradition to lambast feminist artists who are not inclusive
in their representation of women’s lives. If Girls is intended as Dunham’s
feminist ‘mission statement’ in popular cultural terms, then legitimate
questions can be asked of its focus on white middle-class young women.
Certainly, Dunham’s project can be interpreted as a quest for new ways of
thinking about how women navigate female destiny in a post-recession
context where postfeminist choice narratives ring hollow.
As Fuller and Driscoll (2015, p. 254) note, ‘Girls was quickly incorpo-
rated into discourse on postfeminism’ both scholarly and popular, with the
result that it is inevitably read and compared to other women-positive TV
shows of the past and inscribed as the latest postfeminist text in the ever
evolving and contested (post)feminist TV canon. Representing feminism
in popular culture is a tricky project, as it suggests political and moral
obligations not compatible with the aesthetics of high production values
TV series. The four young white women at the centre of Girls are well
educated, but no more confident with their sexual identities than their
predecessors, and the rhetoric of ‘choice’ and ‘empowerment’ that has
WHY GIRLS? WHY NOW? 3
underpinned two decades of populist postfeminism poses continuing

murky contradictions for them in their personal lives. The men of their
acquaintance similarly struggle with a masculinity to match the times or,
like Adam, seek a retroactive model in the form of ‘honest’ manual labour.
In some ways, Girls has failed in representing the diversity of female
identity and experience that feminism attempted (and often failed) to
embrace, and, thus, like the shows which preceded it, it is found wanting
despite the self-evident truth that ‘this is not a standard to which all
television series are held’ (Fuller & Driscoll, 2015, p. 255).
Maybe there is complacency on Dunham’s part in the limited repre-
sentational range of Girls, coming as it does from a millennial generation
schooled in intersectional thinking – a feminist mode of understanding how
privilege and oppression intersect (Crenshaw, 1989) – and amidst a slew of
complaints about earlier ‘whitewashed’ TV shows (e.g. Ally McBeal – see
Ouellette, 2002). For instance, Jess Butler (2013) argues that rather than
continue to re-hash the well-worn feminist argument that postfeminism
privileges a white middle-class female subject (e.g. McRobbie, 2009), it is
perhaps more productive to adopt an intersectional postfeminist approach
by ‘explor[ing] how nonwhite and/or nonheterosexual women adopt,
internalize, negotiate, and challenge hegemonic postfeminist conceptions
of race, gender, and sexuality’ (Butler, 2013, p. 49; see also Springer,
2007). Similarly, as Watson remarks, ‘Not all college-educated, career-
seeking Hannah Horvaths or Lena Dunhams are white’ (2015, p. 150).
For Watson, Girls summons a ‘hipster racism’ which ‘frequently involves
blatantly racist comments under the assumption that they are outdated, thus
inoffensive, or comments made simply to be controversial and edgy’
(p. 153). Dunham’s defensiveness and occasional inconsistency on this
matter have intensified such criticisms – for instance, Dunham has justified
the lack of racial diversity on her show in the past but has questioned the
lack of racial diversity in other arenas more recently (e.g. the overrepresen-
tation of white actors in the 2016 Oscar nominations – see Beale, 2016).
In this way, Girls has a controversial edginess that intrigues and repels
in equal measure. Dunham’s presence as its creator and as a new kind of
millennial feminist maintains a broad critical interest in how the series
continues to develop. As one of HBO’s quality products, controversy is, in
any case, de rigueur, and Dunham’s public persona, co-producers Judd
Apatow and Jenni Konner, and the blurring of boundaries between crea-
tor and central character in reviews and criticism add further piquancy.
Perhaps Girls is sometimes reviled because it does not try too hard to
please. At different points across the five extant seasons, all of the four key
women characters are failing to grasp positive opportunities and instead
seem intent on wallowing in their peculiar brand of white millennial
melancholia as of itself profound. The men are often no more likeable,
though possibly sometimes evoking more audience sympathy: for instance
Charlie the too-perfect boyfriend who, in his devotion to Marnie in
Season 1, seems to enact the failed 1980s project of the ‘new man’;
Adam’s penchant for woodworking suggests a search for a more primitive
physical challenge to ground his masculine sense of self; by Season 4, Ray’s
sense of civic obligation qualifies him firmly as a ‘grown-up’.
Whatever identification the audience develops with the main cast of
characters, it is not won by triumph over adversity, but the insistent
centralisation of failure and disappointment characteristic of the post-
financial crisis era. For the cast of white Generation Y characters, ‘financial
melancholy’ (Lowrey, 2013) and limited employment opportunities visi-
bly stunt the transition to independent adulthood. Indeed, statistics from
the USA, Europe, and Australia reveal that achieving adult milestones for
this generation is costlier (literally and figuratively) and this has changed
the contemporary meaning of class and gender in key ways (McDowell,
2012). From another perspective, however, this generation is simulta-
neously culturally reviled for being lazy, entitled, ‘politically apathetic
narcissists’ (Lyons, 2016). At times, Dunham appears to be less sympa-
thetic to the millennial plight. As Katherine Bell (2013) suspects, ‘we may
find that Dunham is the sharpest, and ultimate, critic of these characters’
as postfeminist discourses are picked over in a televisual medium with an
ironic sense of self-deprecation (p. 363). As Bell implies, perhaps Dunham
invests heavily in a narrative of privileged young white lives to unpack the
shakiness of that privilege, depicting chaotic unscripted lives where
‘anxious self-absorption abounds’ (p. 364).
Girls expresses postfeminism’s focus on youthfulness, as well as the
seemingly ironic reclamation of a term excised during the height of
feminism for crystallising the ways in which women had been trivialised
and infantilised as unfit for adult decision making. In Girls, however, both
men and women suffer arrested development as adulthood becomes asso-
ciated with the lifestyles of those such as Hannah’s parents, whose solidly
middle-class existence remains unattainable to Hannah’s peers; their plea
for Hannah to stand on her own two feet in financial terms is woefully
unrealistic in the post-recession realities of New York metropolitan exis-
tence. Dunham’s youth also adds gloss to her success in securing a TV
show at the age of 26, casting her as the exception to these economic
realities, which proves the rule. Debate will continue about how well
Dunham exploits the opportunities to communicate her own brand of
popular cultural feminism, or whether she remains a cipher of a broad-
caster who need a ‘feminine’ show to garner another demographic.
Politics and popularity will always threaten to absorb each other.
Perhaps Dunham is treading on dangerous ground by offering popular
television as popular critique and more so when contested discourses around
feminism are brought into play. Is her feminism a thumbing of the nose at
the old guard, producing something hybrid to suit the current generation of
‘girls’? Or is it a dissection of contemporary postfeminism which exposes the
ills of society for a generation whose aspirations might need to be further
modified to fit post-recession realities? Dunham’s developing characterisa-
tions over the series suggest that she is not in the business of providing
answers, but instead charts trajectories that speak to contemporary anxieties
about social and economic precarity and the fate of those whose privilege is
not going to guarantee the sort of certainties that used to propel us forward
to adult responsibilities. The hybrid form of the ‘dramedy’, which broadly
describes the genre this show falls into, promises both a hint of social realism
and a less serious look at life. While some episodes leave us uncomfortably
pondering the highly complex sexual politics of this generation, others allow
us to laugh at the absurdities of contemporary individualism.
ORGANISATION OF THE VOLUME

As noted, since the airing of the first season of Girls in 2012, there has been a
wide and varied critical response to the show and to Lena Dunham in
popular culture (mainly in newspapers, blogs, and feminist websites).
Critical and spectatorial responses provoked by Girls have ranged from
plaudits for its accurate representation of post-millennial gender politics, to
revulsion and repugnance at depictions of the messiness and imperfections
of sex, embodiment, and social interactions. One of the first feminist scho-
larly examinations of Girls appeared as five short essays in the ‘Commentary
and Criticism’ section of Feminist Media Studies in 2013. These essays
sparked more substantive scholarly interest and there is now a growing
body of scholarship examining the show from feminist/gender studies
perspectives (e.g. Ford, 2016; Fuller & Driscoll, 2015; Woods, 2015).
This book contributes to the field by showcasing a range of new view-
points on the show from established and emerging scholars from around
the world. In order to help the reader navigate these perspectives, we have
organised the book into three sections that reflect the key themes we feel
are driving feminist scholarly interest and debate about Dunham and Girls:
(1) (post)feminisms; (2) performing and representing millennial identities
and (3) sex, sexuality, and bodies. Although the chapters are grouped into
sections for clarity, as the essays themselves demonstrate, the questions
raised by the show and by Dunham’s celebrity feminism require us to
think much more broadly across and beyond these divisions.
PART I: (POST)FEMINISMS
The chapters in this section interrogate the value and utility of ‘post-
feminism’ for examining Lena Dunham’s Girls. In particular, these
chapters reflect on the socio-historical context of Girls and the place of
work, feminism/postfeminism, and generational identity formation.
In Chapter 2, Stéphanie Genz examines the ways Girls can be analysed
in the context of postfeminism and neoliberalism. For Genz, Girls scruti-
nises and casts doubt on prevailing postfeminist/neoliberal tenets, whose
gendered optimism is overshadowed in an environment of economic
precarity. Yet Genz argues that the privileged protagonists of Girls still
adhere to a narcissistic individualism that asserts their right to be heard,
‘calling upon recession-weary individuals to make sense of and profit from
their own biography’ (Genz, this volume). The logic of this neoliberal
project of self-realisation in an era of austerity is that individuals lose their
sense of social obligation; and corporate, meritocratic ideals of success
(and intolerance of ‘failure’) take precedence. These characters cannot
emulate the Bridget Jones style of professional under-achievement in an
increasingly discerning workplace, yet cling to a neoliberal rhetoric of
entitlement that assures them of their continuing self-worth despite their
notable lack of hunger for professional success. As Genz concludes,
Hannah’s memoirs are potentially her own ‘self-brand’, which requires a
clever pitch to meet her publisher’s commercial imperatives, even though
her ‘authenticity’ is the most valuable commodity on sale.
Imelda Whelehan in Chapter 3 assesses how postfeminist narrative
expectations are set up and often thwarted in Girls. While female friend-
ship has long been at the heart of the postfeminist project, Whelehan
argues that repulsion and hatred are the feelings most actively prompted
by the series – not just for the spectator, but in the ways the four main
characters experience these friendships. As Whelehan suggests, perhaps
this denial of empathy and affectionate regard for the characters is one way
in which Dunham effects a distanciation which ensures our critical faculties
are kept to the fore. While many commentators, popular journalists and
scholars alike, have found much to criticise in Girls, it is just possible that
Dunham has already anticipated those criticisms as part of the development
of the complex character formation of Hannah Horvath.
Chapter 4 sees Catherine McDermott draw on Lauren Berlant’s germ-
inal framework of cruel optimism to examine the impact of postfeminism
on feminine subjectivity. Cruel optimism is about the attachment to ideals,
objects, and perceived social realities that will enable the ‘good life’ to be
lived by its aspirants, even while these fantasies seem increasingly unrea-
listic for the majority of people. The postfeminist project, in particular, has
laid out promises of gendered improvement that may largely be unattain-
able. By focusing her analysis on the ‘rom-com run’ trope, McDermott
explores how Girls constructs subjectivities that are oriented towards
postfeminist lifestyles, but constructed to thwart genre expectations. As
she says, referring to the seeming romantic closure of Season 2, ‘nothing
happens in Season 2 [ . . . ] There is turmoil and insecurity. There are shifts
and alterations, yet no discernible progress is ever being made’
(McDermott, this volume). For McDermott, this brief promise of romance
resolution is a dramatisation of a narrative impasse that postfeminist
narratives have heretofore obscured.
Through a comparative analysis of Girls and Sex and the City (SATC) in
Chapter 5, Ruby Grant and Meredith Nash argue that while both shows
exemplify postfeminist culture, they are inflected differently in relation to
the representation of sexualities, reproductive choice, and feminine embo-
diment, suggesting a shift towards a new kind of postfeminist narrative.
Compared to SATC, Girls arguably represents a novel approach to repre-
senting young women’s lives, re-articulating and re-mobilising previous
conceptualisations of postfeminism, with representations of awkward and
unfulfilling sex, and showing ‘the multiple and often contradictory ways
that young women experience “sexual empowerment”’ (Grant & Nash,
this volume). To mark this conceptual shift, Grant and Nash propose a
new term – ‘post? feminism’ – to describe the way Dunham opens up a
new representational space for exchange between second-wave feminism
and postfeminism for a millennial generation.
In Chapter 6, Melanie Waters avers that Girls deliberately resuscitates
second-wave debates about female sexual and reproductive autonomy
that ‘postfeminist’ fictions had once appeared to lay to rest, part of ‘a
“new” feminist zeitgeist’ (Waters, this volume). By asking what is at stake

in the show’s treatment of consent and abortion, this chapter not only
investigates the controversies that have arisen over Dunham’s reclamation
of feminism, but also argues that it is by identifying what distinguishes
Girls from a previous generation of female-centred fictions that we might
better understand the evolving currency of feminism in popular culture.
PART II: PERFORMING AND REPRESENTING

MILLENNIAL IDENTITIES
The second section of the book examines representations of millennial
femininities and masculinities respectively and how they together offer
exciting new reflections on how gender is performed and understood in
the show. In particular, these chapters tap into feminist critiques regarding
the erosion of gender binaries in the context of widespread shifts to
neoliberal approaches in economic and social policy in the industrialised
world. Several chapters take up the question of intersectionality and
problems of representation in the show. Chapters also assess the function
of Dunham as author/memoirist and performer to evaluate articulations
of the self across memoir, social media, and the TV show, tapping into
media obsessions with the gendered self as communicated by Dunham
and exploited in Girls.
In Chapter 7, Hannah McCann examines the representational politics
of Girls. In particular, she asks why viewers make demands about diverse
representation in the show, and what it is hoped this will achieve. McCann
also considers the context within which representations of diversity are
inserted, and the cruel promises for equality these engender. This chapter
suggests a rethinking of representational demands that better articulates
political demands to consider the underlying material inequalities that
give rise to concern for diversity in the first instance, and to acknowledge
that there may be an over-investment in the transformational power of
popular cultural representations.
Laura Witherington in Chapter 8 explores how Hannah and her friends’
higher education qualifications have not yielded the professional employ-
ment they might have expected. Instead, Witherington argues, they ‘linger
in a post-pubescent limbo’ as the title of the series suggests. Their experi-
ences of post-graduate employment undermine the (material and spiritual)
value invested in education (particularly for students of the Humanities) and
emphasise instead the cost to these individuals in terms of unrealised
opportunities and mounting debts. Most significantly for Witherington,

these young women’s elite educations have not eased the transition into
adult life choices or created a meaningful professional pathway: while
Hannah fantasises that her temporary career as a teacher might be life-
changing, in actuality, her qualifications only enable her to teach her social
peers in an elite private school.
Frederick Dhaenens, in Chapter 9, shifts the gender focus to the
representation of men and masculinities in Girls. Drawing on a range of
examples throughout the first two series, he argues that Girls both accom-
modates and challenges hegemonic masculinity through the characters of
Ray, Elijah, Adam, and Charlie. As he suggests, in a post-recession era ‘the
series represents men who are yet another step away from the patriarchal
breadwinner’ and the show catalogues their negotiation of various gender
discourses and their effects (Dhaenens, this volume). Dhaenens also
examines homosocial intimacies (e.g. between Ray and Adam), arguing
that these relationships demonstrate that men embodying different
masculinities can get along, but this co-existence is necessarily fragile in
continuing clashes with the hegemonic masculinity that frames inclusive
masculinities.
In Chapter 10, Alexander Sergeant builds on many of the arguments
about gender performance presented in this section by examining the
representation of gendered identities through song. Drawing on
Irigarayan perspectives, Sergeant catalogues the multiple ways in which
music is used as a ‘sensuous device’ to drive Girls’ engagement with
femininity and friendship in a postfeminist age and to attract the show’s
target demographic. From Robyn’s ‘Dancing on My Own’ to Kanye
West’s ‘Stronger’, Sergeant explores the gendered register of the songs
that shape each season and ‘privilege emotion over reason’. Song engages
the Girls audience in a wider exploration of female identity beyond that
which is possible through narrative and characterisation alone. In his
analysis of Marnie’s cover of West’s ‘Stronger’, Sergeant demonstrates
how the performance adds an extradiegetic reading of her character and
her as yet unformed musical voice, and emphasises the ‘gendered registers
of music itself.’
Wallis Seaton’s analysis in Chapter 11 shifts the focus to Lena Dunham
as a celebrity feminist, exploring the raced, classed, and gendered nature of
her creative outputs and social media engagements (e.g. Instagram, Lenny
Letter) and how these together communicate a feminist position. In addi-
tion, in focusing on the articulations between Dunham’s real and fictional
selves in Girls and elsewhere, Seaton importantly draws attention to her

(re)negotiation of such mediated spaces, offering a revision of current
understandings of feminism as shaped by celebrity. In examining
Dunham’s proposition that ‘feminism is my work’, Seaton offers impor-
tant insights into the way Dunham blurs Lena/Hannah through creative
cross-fertilisation in her writing and performance across the ‘messy terrain(s)
of postfeminism’.
PART III: SEX, SEXUALITY, AND BODIES

The last section of the volume points to the diverse terrains upon which
sex, sexuality, and embodiment are being (re)defined in Girls.
In Chapter 12, Maria San Filippo explores the work of ‘art porn
provocauteurs’ Catherine Breillat and Lena Dunham – two women who
are recognised for pushing the definitional and representational bound-
aries of what is considered ‘feminist’ and ‘porn’. By critically examining
key examples from their respective bodies of film and television work, San
Filippo explores the ways in which each provocauteur draws on embodied
female performances of sex and sexuality as a means of revising hetero-
patriarchal uses of female nudity and sexuality. The effect of this, accord-
ing to San Filippo, is a hybridised, politicised mode of feminist ‘art porn’.
Deborah Thomas examines the postfeminist politics of Lena Dunham’s
nudity in Girls in Chapter 13. Dunham has attracted a range of reactions
in relation to her nudity on the show and in relation to her apparent refusal
to accommodate Western feminine norms for bodily comportment. In line
with arguments made by San Filippo in Chapter 12, Thomas similarly
suggests that Dunham’s nudity and the portrayal of sex in the show are
specifically aimed at provocation. In doing so, Thomas argues, the show
raises compelling questions surrounding the representation and consump-
tion of female nudity on the screen. Nudity also ‘functions in interesting
ways within the contingencies of the medium of television itself, and its
particular aesthetic, generic, and creative inclinations’ (Thomas, this
volume), and the second half of the chapter examines how this cultivates
productive tensions between realism, comedy, and authorship. As Thomas
notes, Dunham’s performance as Hannah summons the comedic trope of
the ‘unruly woman’ who refuses to comply as sexual spectacle and is a
signature representational dimension of her oeuvre.
Borrowing its title from David Mamet’s play, Chapter 14 draws on
queer and psychoanalytic theory to explore Girls through the lens of
sexuality and its ‘self-shattering’ effects. Following Linda Williams’s

notion of ‘screening’ sex on television and Berlant’s conceptualisation of
cruel optimism, Christopher Lloyd critically examines the ways in which
sex is seen as a mode of social and sensual attachment in Girls, as well as its
undoing, for the show’s privileged New York characters. The chapter
provides an entry point for thinking about the ways in which ‘disruptive,
queer sexualities make their way into the show’s representational practice’
(Lloyd, this volume).
Elizabeth Arveda Kissling in Chapter 15 explores the representation of
women’s sexual and reproductive health issues in Girls, The Mindy Project,
and 2 Broke Girls. Amidst frank portrayals of dating, sex, friendship, and
work, Kissling argues that each show traverses the female characters’
reproductive and sexual lives with plotlines surrounding contraception,
pregnancy scares, abortion, and tests for sexually transmitted infections.
Kissling examines the accuracy of the shows’ health claims with a view to
understanding whether there are educational effects for the mainly female
audience(s). Whilst the shows may arguably provide important baseline
health information, Kissling ultimately concludes that these programmes
reproduce the postfeminist sensibility of the late 1990s television pro-
gramming and inculcate the same neoliberal values in the viewers.
In Chapter 16, Rosalind Gill reflects on recent scholarly debates about
Girls and the precise nature of this volume’s contribution. As Gill
observes, the highly contested concept of postfeminism looms large in
this collection, applied to a range of issues, to the point that ‘if the term
didn’t exist it would have to be invented’ (Gill, this volume). While
boundaries blur in the deployment of ‘postfeminism’ in textual and poli-
tical critique, Gill is clear that her relationship to it is as an analyst of the
concept rather than a protagonist, an approach shared by a number of this
book’s contributors. The next challenge, then, is to approach postfemin-
ism from a vantage point of socio-historical specificity in such a way as to
take into account the inflection of class, race, age, nationality, and sexu-
ality. Gill notes the frequency with which issues of subjectivity are raised in
the essays collected here and argues for greater attention to the affective
features of postfeminism and the ways it shapes young women’s psychic
lives today: Girls, it is observed, allows for the manifestation of vulner-
ability, with Lena Dunham herself as the antithesis of the self-help guru.
However, when it comes to political issues of embodiment, Gill is more
cautious than other contributors who welcome the display of Dunham-as-
Hannah’s body as positive and challenging, noting that Dunham’s body is
not a world away from feminine ideals. Gill remains concerned that ‘the
sutures between feminism, postfeminism and neoliberalism deserve much
more attention’ (Gill, this volume) in order to deepen our understanding
of the extent of the contribution of Girls to contemporary feminist repre-
sentational strategies. This final piece in the collection is generous in its
identification of areas for further research into millennial femininities, as
well as suggesting future analyses of postfeminism, while Gill cautions
against the obvious pitfalls of drawing heavily on a concept which, like
feminism and neoliberalism, is overburdened with signification.
REFERENCES
Beale, C. (2016, January 29). Lena Dunham branded hypocrite for criticising
Hollywood’s lack of diversity when Girls has all-white leads. Independent.
Retrieved from http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/lena-dun
ham-branded-hypocrite-for-criticising-hollywoods-lack-of-diversity-
a6839136.html.
Bell, K. (2013). Obvie, we’re the ladies! Postfeminism, privilege, and HBO’s
newest Girls. Feminist Media Studies, 13(2), 363–366.
Butler, J. (2013). For white girls only? Postfeminism and the politics of inclusion.
Feminist Formations, 25(1), 35–58.
Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black
feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory, and antiracist
politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 139–67.
Ford, J. (2016). The ‘smart’ body politics of Lena Dunham’s Girls. Feminist
Media Studies, 16(6), 1029–1042.
Fuller, S., & Driscoll, C. (2015). HBO’s Girls: Gender, generation, and quality
television. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 29(2), 253–262.
Gerhard, J. (2005). Sex and the City: Carrie Bradshaw’s queer postfeminism.
Feminist Media Studies, 5(1), 37–49.
Grdešić, M. (2013). I’m not the ladies! Metatextual commentary in Girls. Feminist
Media Studies, 13(2), 355–358.
Lowrey, A. (2013, March 26). Do millennials stand a chance in the real world?
New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/
magazine/do-millennials-stand-a-chance-in-the-real-world.html?_r=0.
Lyons, K. (2016, March 7). Generation Y: A guide to a much-maligned demo-
graphic. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/
world/2016/mar/07/millennials-generation-y-guide-to-much-maligned-
demographic.
McDowell, L. (2012). Post-crisis, post-Ford and post-gender? Youth identities in
an era of austerity. Journal of Youth Studies, 15(5), 573–590.
McRobbie, A. (2009). The aftermath of feminism: Gender, culture and social

change. London: Sage.
Ouellette, L. (2002). Victims no more: Postfeminism, television, and Ally McBeal.
The Communication Review, 5(4), 315–335.
Springer, K. (2007). Divas, evil black bitches, and bitter black women: African
American women in postfeminist and post-civil-rights popular culture. In
Y. Tasker & D. Negra (Eds.), Interrogating postfeminism: Gender and the politics
of popular culture (pp. 249–277). Durham: Duke University Press.
Watson, E. (2015). Lena Dunham: The awkward/ambiguous politics of white
millennial feminism. In E. Watson, J. Mitchell, & M.E. Shaw (Eds.), HBO’s
Girls and the awkward politics of gender, race, and privilege (pp. 145–166).
Lanham: Lexington Books.
Watson, E., Mitchell, J., & Shaw, M.E. (2015). Introduction: Reading into Girls,
writing what we read. In E. Watson, J. Mitchell, & M.E. Shaw (Eds.), HBO’s
Girls and the awkward politics of gender, race, and privilege (pp. 1–8). Lanham:
Lexington Books.
Woods, F. (2015). Girls talk: Authorship and authenticity in the reception of Lena
Dunham’s Girls. Critical Studies in Television, 10(2), 37–54.
Meredith Nash is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Tasmania in

Australia. She is an interdisciplinary researcher with particular interest in the fields
of feminist sociology of the body, health sociology, and human geography. She is
the author of Making Postmodern Mothers: Pregnant Embodiment, Baby Bumps,
and Body Image (2012, Palgrave Macmillan) and the editor of Reframing
Reproduction: Conceiving Gendered Experiences (2014, Palgrave Macmillan).
Imelda Whelehan was Professor in the Faculty of Arts at the University of

Tasmania during the writing of this book, and is now at the Australian National
University in Australia. Her research is in the fields of women’s writing, feminism,
popular culture and literary adaptations. She is the author of Modern Feminist
Thought (1995), Overloaded (2000), Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary: A
Reader’s Guide (2002) and The Feminist Bestseller (2005). She is co-author of
Fifty Key Concepts in Gender Studies (with Jane Pilcher, 2004; revised 2017) and
Screen Adaptation: Impure Cinema (with Deborah Cartmell, 2010). She has co-
edited a number of collections and ongoing projects include work on post-war and
Australian adaptations.
PART I
Postfeminism(s)
CHAPTER 2
‘I Have Work . . . I Am Busy . . . Trying

to Become Who I Am’: Neoliberal Girls
and Recessionary Postfeminism
Stéphanie Genz
‘We live in a time of deep foreboding’, Henry Giroux asserts in his

scathing attack on neoliberal free-market fundamentalism that has given
rise to a survival-of-the-fittest world in which freedom and equality have
become unaffordable luxuries for the vast majority of the population
(2013, p. 257). Young people, in particular, are in danger of falling prey
to neoliberalism’s ‘disposability machine’ and being relegated to the posi-
tion of ‘the new precariat’ – a ‘zero generation’ that, in Zygmunt
Bauman’s words, is ‘cast in a condition of liminal drift, with no way of
knowing whether it is transitory or permanent’ (Giroux, 2013, p. 261;
Bauman, 2004, p. 76). Youth no longer occupies a privileged place but is
faced with an insecure and potentially bleak future, marred by the rollback
of opportunities and an overarching social climate of risk, suspicion, and
uncertainty. The recessionary moment is also complexly gendered, with
fears abounding that we are witnessing ‘the end of men’ and a concomi-
tant ‘rise of women’, a trend not borne out by economic reality and rising
numbers of unemployed women (Rosin, 2010; see also Barrow, 2012).
S. Genz (*)
Department of Media Studies, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK
e-mail: stephanie.genz@ntu.ac.uk

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-52971-4_2
18 S. GENZ
In this chapter, I investigate the complex interplay of economic inse-

curity and gender in the HBO ‘dramedy’ Girls that follows four 20-
something women as they confront post-recession/post-graduation job-
lessness and frustrated aspirations. The series can fruitfully be read within
the context of the cross-nurturing ideologies of postfeminism and neoli-
beralism, specifically with regard to notions of (female) entitlement,
autonomy, and choice that have been increasingly problematised – and
possibly invalidated – following the economic downturn. More broadly,
I suggest that the larger cultural climate and ethos of neoliberal postfe-
minism needs to be recalibrated and reassessed in the aftermath of the
boom-and-bust economic model. Certainly, if late twentieth and early
twenty-first-century postfeminism was marked by optimism, entitlement
and the opportunity of prosperity, such articulations have become more
doubtful and less celebratory in a post-2008 recessionary environment
where the neoliberal mantra of choice and self-determination is still pre-
sent but becomes inflected with the experiences of precarity, risk, and the
insistence on self-responsibilisation (Gilbert, 2013).
As I will discuss, the millennial girls on the show distance themselves
from the caricatures of white prosperity and hyper-stylised designer
femininity – variously referred to as ‘top girls’ (McRobbie, 2009),
‘can-do girls’ (Harris, 2004) and ‘sexual entrepreneurs’ (Gill & Scharff,
2011) – popularised during the late 1990s and early 2000s and epitomised
by the recession-triggering over-spenders of Sex and the City (1998–
2004). The HBO series scrutinises and casts doubt on prevailing post-
feminist/neoliberal tenets, particularly in relation to compulsory hetero-
sexiness and competitive and acquisitive modes of subjectivity that
promote the self-responsible and autonomous consumer-citizen. Yet
despite the series’ conscious criticality, the privileged protagonists of
Girls also stubbornly adhere to a narcissistic and self-important individu-
alism that authorises entitlement and self-absorption and insists on their
right to be heard and rewarded, most notably in the shape of a memoir
that narrativises the, at times purposefully objectifying and degrading,
experiences of the main character Hannah. Here, as I argue, the neolib-
eral reflexive ‘project of the self’ reasserts itself (Giddens, 2008), calling
upon recession-weary individuals to make sense of and profit from their
own biography by updating and upgrading the self. In the case of Girls,
this neoliberal logic takes on a specifically gendered, postfeminist form of
self-branding that promotes (sexual) authenticity as an affective commodity
in a dwindling, recessionary market (Genz, 2015), for example by acting out
‘I HAVE WORK . . . I AM BUSY . . . TRYING TO BECOME WHO I AM’… 19
pornographic scripts and capitalising on the productive misery of the prota-

gonists’ would-be bohemian lives. If ‘to truly understand and experience
the “authentic” self is to brand this self’ (Banet-Weiser, 2012, p. 61), then
these unambitious, unemployed girls can nonetheless be seen as postfemi-
nist enterprising subjects, claiming their neoliberal individualist privilege
while fulfilling their moral imperative to realise and brand their self as
‘authentic’. In this sense, in the face of its own failure, neoliberalism
might be ‘in crisis’ but, as Stuart Hall put it, ‘it keeps driving on’ (Hall,
2011, p. 728).
THE NEOLIBERAL LADDER AND GENERATION ME

Grounded in the idea of the ‘free, possessive individual’ and the ubiquitous
and all-encompassing character of ‘wealth’, neoliberal ideas represent a
widely circulating current that affects cultural practices of commodification,
production, and consumption (Hall, 2011). Propagated prominently by the
Thatcher and Reagan Regimes of the late 1970s and 1980s, neoliberal ideas,
policies and strategies have incrementally gained ground globally – ‘setting
the pace’, as Hall notes, by ‘re-defining the political, social and economic
models and governing strategies’ (2011, p. 708). Neoliberal hegemony
and rationality have become embedded beyond this macro-level through
cultural norms, values, and principles that have been naturalised
and internalised in daily life, turning a doctrine of political economy into
what McGuigan calls a ‘principle of civilisation’ that circumscribes the
meaning of everyday reality for people and shapes their socio-cultural
make-up (2014, p. 224). In this sense, neoliberalism comes to represent a
‘scheme for reordering the social’ as well as a ‘design for refashioning the
conduct of the self’ (p. 228), bringing about a transformation of subjectivity
that folds neoliberalism into the subject itself. In The Birth of Biopolitics
(2010), Michel Foucault terms this neoliberal self homo oeconomicus, a self-
governing and autonomous entrepreneur who invests in their own human
capital in order to realise their potential without the unnecessary interven-
tion of an oppressive government. Here, the neoliberal subject emerges as a
self-sufficient and entrepreneurial agent, responsible for their own perfor-
mance within the market and empowered by the expectation of self-govern-
ance. At the heart of this neoliberal transformation of the self is a distorted
notion of freedom and individualism that compels neoliberal consumer-
citizens to make marketised choices that will allow them to get ahead in
the ‘game of enterprises’ (Foucault, 2010, p. 173).
20 S. GENZ
Many commentators have criticised this neoliberal agenda that surren-

ders notions of the collective good and social responsibility to the brute
ethos of self-responsibilisation (see Fisher & Gilbert, 2013). In particular,
following the post-2008 economic crisis, neoliberalism’s commercial logic
appears less as an individual entitlement and more a corporate obligation
and institutionalised compulsion, requiring austerity-weary citizens to
climb the ladder of social mobility and build what former British prime
minister David Cameron referred to as an ‘Aspiration Nation’ (2013).1
Here, multiple strands of neoliberal politics and rhetoric converge as, on
the one hand, there is an individualist insistence that there can be singular
solutions to socially produced problems, followed by a meritocratic ideal
that those with skills will rise to the top. Synchronously, this neoliberal
ethos is also circumscribed by an inherently unequal power structure that
fuels competition and undermines the common idea that we live, or
should live, in a meritocratic age (see Littler, 2013). In this competitive
and linear model, more people are in danger of being left behind, unable
to maintain a secure foothold on the neoliberal ladder that penalises failure
and rewards acquisitive and enterprising self-interest. Henry Giroux is
perhaps most vehement here in his description of the neoliberal world as
a Darwinian shark tank that celebrates the survival of the fittest and
ruthlessly imposes a practice of disposability in which more groups are
relegated to ‘inhabiting zones of abandonment marked by deep inequal-
ities in power, wealth and income’ (Giroux, 2011).
Young people in particular are caught in the neoliberal trap, often
struggling to develop the selfish resourcefulness demanded of them to
counteract the threat of downward mobility. As Giroux warns, ‘nothing
has prepared this generation for the inhospitable and savage new world of
commodification, privatization, joblessness, frustrated hopes, surveillance
and stillborn projects’ (2011). Here, young people are viewed as poten-
tially dispensable, holding on to the meritocratic promise that talent and
ambition can be converted into economic capital, while simultaneously
facing an insecure future of increasing debt and itinerant internshipping.
Set in the market-driven metropolis of New York City, Girls highlights the
uncertain situation of a young middle-class generation setting out to
succeed in a highly competitive, (post-)recession workplace where perso-
nal initiative and enterprising creativity are at a premium. The series
centres on the work-related and personal mishaps of four privileged uni-
versity-educated white girls who are struggling to get by in contemporary
upscale Brooklyn, well aware that they are ‘all slaves to this place that
doesn’t even . . . want us’ (Season 1, Episode 6, ‘The return’). None has
managed to secure a full-time, viable job in the ‘real’ world and instead
they depend on the financial support of their (grand)parents in order to
fulfil their supposedly abundant potential. ‘I am so close to the life that I
want, the life that you want for me’, Hannah tells her parents in the pilot
episode as she tries to convince them to keep subsidising her career as an
aspiring yet unpaid writer. Drifting from one zero-hour contract to the
next, she embraces a life of ‘justified aimlessness’ (Fuller & Driscoll,
2015, p. 257), undeterred by her persistent failure to claim her place in
a world that, given her privileged background and education, should
rightfully be hers.
In Zygmunt Bauman’s words, Hannah is emblematic of a modern
‘disembedded’ individual, ‘constantly on the run and promising no rest
and no satisfaction of “arriving”, no comfort of reaching the destination
where one can disarm, relax and stop worrying’ (2001, p. 125). In this
context, identification is a never-ending, always incomplete and precarious
activity that transforms ‘identity’ from a ‘given’ into a ‘task’ (pp. 124,
129). As Bauman explains, ‘[n]eeding to become what one is is the feature
of modern living’ as ‘the quandary tormenting men and women [ . . . ] is
not so much how to obtain the identities of their choice [ . . . ] but which
identity to choose, and how best to keep alert and vigilant so that another
choice can be made in case the previously chosen identity is withdrawn
from the market or stripped of its seductive powers’ (pp. 124, 126). The
eponymous girls appear to be stuck in this endless state of becoming,
‘jitter[ing] [their] way through [their] twenties’ and struggling to ‘turn
this potential energy into connected energy’ (Season 1, Episode 6, ‘The
return’; Season 2, Episode 8, ‘It’s back’). As Marnie tells her ex-boyfriend
Charlie after losing her job: ‘I don’t even know what I want. Sometimes
I wish someone would tell me this is how you should spend your days, this
is how the rest of your life should look’ (Season 2, Episode 4, ‘It’s a shame
about Ray’). This is reinforced by the main character Hannah’s insistence
that ‘I am busy trying to become who I am’ (Season 1, Episode 1, ‘Pilot’),
followed by her anxious plea, ‘I’m more scared than most people are when
they say they’re scared’ (Season 1, Episode 10, ‘She did’).
Here, we can also interrogate the interplay of economic uncertainty
and gender that casts doubt on the discourses of self-regulating entre-
preneurship and choice that were the hallmark of 1990s celebratory
neoliberalism/postfeminism and that are embodied in the image of the
‘empowered, assertive, pleasure-seeking, “have-it-all” woman of sexual
22 S. GENZ
and financial agency’ (Chen, 2013, p. 441). For example, Lazar’s sugges-
tion that ‘the postfeminist subject [ . . . ] is entitled to be pampered and
pleasured’ needs to be problematised in the context of a post-recession
environment that no longer guarantees (economic) success and reward to
even most hard-working individuals (2009, p. 372). Despite their privi-
leged upbringing, Hannah and her friends are far removed from what
McRobbie calls ‘top girls’ characterised by ‘capacity, success, attainment,
enjoyment, entitlement, social mobility and participation’ (2009, p. 57).
As the series’ creator Lena Dunham has repeatedly stressed, despite the
obvious narrative similarities, Girls is not an updated version of Sex and
the City, undermining the link between individual empowerment and
gendered consumer practices, for example through the display of a
hyper-sexualised and commodified body and the performance of designer
femininity. These ‘can’t-do’ girls do not consume voraciously or engage in
endless shopping sprees funded by their glamorous yet curiously unde-
manding jobs, nor is their ‘failing’ represented as a virtue (McRobbie,
2009), as might have been the case with other postfeminist heroines like
Bridget Jones, typified by professional ineptness and persistent blunder-
ing. Under-achievement and incompetence are no longer endearing
signs of female identification and imperfection, but equivalent to eco-
nomic suicide as countless, qualified professionals compete in an ever
shrinking job market. In this sense, the prospect of prosperity and
entrepreneurship that might have been viewed with optimism in the
pre-recession decades comes to be seen as an institutionalised burden
that masks the roll-back of opportunities under the rhetorical guise of
necessity and self-responsibility.
At the same time, other central neoliberal strands reassert themselves, as
one cannot help reading the girls’ youthful restlessness and existential
anxiety refracted through the lens of a narcissistic and selfish kind of
individualism that legitimises an obsessive investment in self-interest. In
Shoshanna’s words, Hannah is a ‘fucking narcissist . . . who thinks her
own life is . . . fascinating’ (Season 3, Episode 7, ‘Beach house’) – despite
her proclaimed self-loathing and criticality.2 Instead of forging affective
female bonds that were a key marker of postfeminist texts like Sex and the
City, these recessionary neoliberal girls are in it mainly for themselves,
trying to outdo one another in their search for the most meaningful
(i.e. valuable) identity. Hannah clearly exhibits what Halpern calls a
‘Prima Donna mindset’ (2007, p. 197), constantly looking for the recog-
nition and admiration she thinks she deserves. In this sense, the ‘zero
jobs/zero future’ predicament of the new precariat (Giroux, 2013,

p. 261) morphs into the angst-ridden selfishness of what psychologist
Jean Twenge (2006) describes as ‘Gen Me’, the entitled generation of
millennials whose high self-esteem and self-worship have been encouraged
since childhood, and who end up disengaged, anxious, and self-absorbed
adults. Hannah and her friends stubbornly cling to a neoliberal/postfe-
minist rhetoric of entitlement, banking on the consumerist mantra that
they are clearly ‘worth it’ and the meritocratic promise that their ‘talent’
will eventually propel them to the top of the ladder. This allows them to
cultivate a lack of ambition and hedonistic laziness that are at odds with an
undeniably harsh economic climate – as Jessa neatly summarises her self-
imposed unemployability: ‘The weirdest part of having a job is . . . you
have to be there every day, even on the days you don’t feel like it’ (Season
1, Episode 4, ‘Hannah’s diary’); while Hannah flatly rejects the idea of
working at McDonalds because ‘I went to college’ (Season 1, Episode 1,
‘Pilot’). All four characters continue to make bad career decisions and
adopt inappropriate work conduct, from Hannah calling a potential
employer a rapist (Season 1, Episode 2, ‘Vagina panic’) and giving up
her place at graduate school (Season 4, Episode 4, ‘Cubbies’) to
Shoshanna arrogantly dismissing a successful job interview as a ‘trial . . .
to hone my skills’ (Season 4, Episode 3, ‘Female author’). As Bell
observes, such youthful and directionless indecision is a ‘luxury afforded
to those who have choices – who are socially mobile’ (2013, p. 364).
Despite their much touted ‘potential’, these workshy and entitled girls
lack the skills and determination needed in an unstable recessionary labour
market – as Hannah’s short-term employers tell her, she doesn’t ‘know
how to do anything’ (Season 1, Episode 5, ‘Hard being easy’) and is not
‘hungry enough [to] figure it out’ (Season 1, Episode 1, ‘Pilot’).
The pitfalls of the neoliberal contract are clearly apparent here as
Hannah and her friends hold on to a hyper-individualistic conception of
selfhood as the key to unlock human capital, despite the economic fact
that their respective self-commodities might not be as marketable and
saleable as they had been led to believe by a meritocratic, neoliberal
logic. While Hannah might not be ‘meant for a job in the traditional
sense’ (Season 1, Episode 5, ‘Hard being easy’), she is nonetheless
engaged in a continuous process of self-work, mining meaning (i.e.
value) from her unproductive artist’s life and theatrically staging a series
of (sexual) fantasies that can be exploited and narrativised for her memoir.
Everything that happens to Hannah – or, is choreographed to happen to
24 S. GENZ
her – becomes material for her book: as she tells her parents, she cannot
write more essays as she has to ‘live them first’ (Season 1, Episode 1,
‘Pilot’). Yet, her sheltered, middle-class life does not always yield enough
excitement and is constantly on the verge of wilting into egocentric and
dull introspection. As one of her short-lived boyfriends tells Hannah after
reading her story, ‘[n]othing was happening. . . . It felt like just waiting in
line and all the nonsense that goes through your brain when you are trying
to kill time’ (Season 2, Episode 2, ‘I get ideas’). Battling her own med-
iocrity, Hannah’s claim that ‘I may be the voice of my generation, or at
least a voice of a generation’ (Season 1, Episode 1, ‘Pilot’) becomes a
compelling and ironic reminder that ‘killing time’ may indeed be a shared
social condition affecting in particular young people looking for a sense of
self and purpose. As Zygmunt Bauman explains, ‘[i]f you cannot – or
don’t believe you can – do what truly matters, you turn to things which
matter less or perhaps not at all, but which you can do or believe you can;
and by turning your attention and energy to such things, you may even
make them matter, for a time at least’ (2001, p. 128). In this sense,
Hannah busies herself perfecting her own biography and posture of
millennial malaise, immersing herself in a number of self-directed and
orchestrated experiences that she hopes can be capitalised on.
SELF-BRANDING AND THE GENDERING OF AUTHENTICITY

Hannah’s biographical production can thus be read as part of neoliberal-
ism’s reflexive ‘project of the self’ that encourages individuals to become
the authors of their own life scripts and constantly work to update/
upgrade the self (Giddens, 2008). As she confidently declares, ‘I made a
promise . . . that I was gonna take in experiences, all of them so I could tell
the people about them’ (Season 2, Episode 5, ‘One man’s trash’). In
search of a good story, Hannah is willing to act out exploitative scenarios
and scripts of sexual surrender, including propositioning her employer
for sex after he harassed her (Season 1, Episode 5, ‘Hard being easy’),
enacting her boyfriend’s rape fantasies (Season 1, Episode 2, ‘Vagina
panic’) and taking drugs to advance her career – as her female boss tells
her, ‘do a whole bunch of coke, and just write about it’ (Season 2, Episode
3, ‘Bad friend’). At the same time, Hannah’s narcissistic narrativising of
her self has cultivated a stance of callous disconnection – or ‘sociopathic
detachment’ according to her co-worker Ray (Season 3, Episode 4, ‘Dead
inside’) – that manifests itself in an egotistic lack of interest in others: ‘I feel
nothing’, she admits after her editor dies (Season 3, Episode 4, ‘Dead
inside’). Refracting life’s offerings through a narrative lens, the millennial
girls have become performers in their own screenplay, evaluating events and
people for their inherent value and capital to enhance the commodity of the
self. This entails constructing a ‘“social relationship” with oneself, one of
innovation, production, and consumption’ (Banet-Weiser, 2012, p. 73). As
such, Hannah’s memoir can be seen as her main asset in the contemporary
‘experience economy’, where consumers no longer merely consume goods
and services but they are looking for memorable events that engage them in
a personal way (Pine & Gilmore, 1999). Her insistent question ‘Who am I?’
thus becomes translated into ‘How do I sell myself?’ as her self-work turns
into a branding exercise aiming to produce a saleable identity that can be
traded and consumed by others.
Here, we need to take into account the ‘affective relational’ quality – or,
experience – of brands that is maintained through personal narratives; in
Banet-Weiser’s words, ‘brands are actually a story told to the consumer’
and ‘the setting around which individuals weave their own stories’ (2012,
p. 4). More than just an economic capitalist strategy, ‘the process of
branding’, she argues, ‘impacts the way we understand who we are, how
we organize ourselves in the world, what stories we tell ourselves about
ourselves’ (p. 5). In the context of brand culture, individuals craft their
own identities as marketable products capable of generating demand and
attracting customers. In this instance, identity might be referred to more
accurately as a self-brand that ‘either consciously positions itself, or is
positioned by its context and use, as a site for the extraction of value’
(Hearn, 2008, pp. 164–5). In other words, identity becomes part of a
business context and market rationale that valorise both the subject and
the merchandising of it, highlighting the blurring of the individual and
commodity aspects of selfhood.
In Girls, the characters’ continuous becoming ‘who they truly are’ or
‘who they are meant to be’ can only be grasped and realised through a self-
branding framework that is set up by commercial culture. Hannah’s
publishers summarily reduce her painstakingly crafted memoir to a sales
pitch: ‘What’s your brand?’, ‘Who are we selling?’ (Season 3, Episode 5,
‘Only child’). Hannah’s brand chiefly revolves around the conscious
construction and narrativisation of herself as a struggling artist and sexual
libertine, offset by the creeping awareness that she might not live up to
this fictional type. Nor does Hannah prove fully capable of capitalising
on her identity project and straddling the slippery line between self-work
26 S. GENZ
and self-promotion – as her gauche, less market-savvy answer reveals,

‘My brand is Tombstone Pizza’ (Season 3, Episode 5, ‘Only child’). Her
self-production takes on specifically gendered dimensions as she weaves
stories of female (in)dependence and (dis)empowerment as part of her
narrative of the self. The unique selling point of her self-brand is its
perceived authenticity and honesty, as Hannah ‘put[s] [herself] out there’
(Season 1, Episode 8, ‘Weirdos need girlfriends too), ‘trying to take in all
these experiences for everybody, letting anyone say anything to me’
(Season 2, Episode 5, ‘One man’s trash’). This is reinforced by other
characters throughout the series – from Ray’s initial attraction to
Shoshanna because she is ‘so raw and open’ (Season 1, Episode 10, ‘She
did’) to Elijah’s insistence ‘I am my authentic self’ upon outing himself as
gay (Season 1, Episode 3, ‘All adventurous women do’) and Adam’s
justification for quitting his acting job, ‘[y]our integrity is all that matters’
(Season 1, Episode 8, ‘Weirdos need girlfriends too’). In this branded
environment, authenticity needs to be recognised as a ‘new consumer
sensibility’ (Pine & Gilmore, 1999) – endowing products with a kind of
‘commercial story telling’ that generates emotional content and desire
(Lewis & Bridger, 2000, p. 39). As Boyle (2003, p. 26) notes, ‘authenticity
is the benchmark against which all brands are now judged’.
In Hannah’s case, the authentic capital is also materialised in cor-
poreal form as she frequently flaunts her non-conforming naked body,
from taking baths with her female friends to engaging in non-stylised,
explicit and degrading sexual encounters. In effect, her body takes
centre stage in her production of authenticity, exposing its non-slender
and non-athletic flesh in a graphic, uninhibited, and at times comic
fashion. She directly relates her non-normative body to her refusal to
engage in self-disciplining and self-monitoring regimes of diet and
exercise – as she notes, ‘I have not tried a lot to lose weight. . . . I
have some other concerns in my life’ (Season 1, Episode 3, ‘All adven-
turous women do’). Exceeding the narrow boundaries of normative
femininity, Hannah’s body visibly escapes the tyranny of slenderness
and, in this sense, can be read as a symptom of her self-assumed
authenticity and criticality. In particular, what is being replayed here
is a well-rehearsed (feminist) critique of white, heterosexual, middle-
class norms of (feminine) beauty that result in a mainstreaming and
normalisation of female bodies – the type of conventionally attractive
bodies that are still present and visible in Girls in the shape of the all-
American beauty Marnie, and Jessa who has ‘the face of Brigitte Bardot
and the ass of Rhianna’ (Season 1, Episode 4, ‘Hannah’s diary’) (see

Bartky, 1997). Parading its own imperfection, Hannah’s body is
marked as ‘authentic’ in comparison and acquires a sense of ‘realness’
that can purposefully be exploited and narrativised in the service of her
own self-brand. Moreover, while her corporeal authenticity is linked to
sexual exposure, her body is not eroticised in a pornographic way, nor
does it exhibit a kind of obligatory heterosexiness that is a key characteristic
of the postfeminist ‘sexual entrepreneur’ who is always ‘up for it’ (Gill &
Scharff, 2011). In Girls, sex is not stylish and it is not always a source of
physical pleasure and individual fulfilment – on the contrary, it is often ugly,
awkward and discomforting, both for the characters themselves and for the
audience to watch.
In this respect, the series’ staging of sexual and bodily authenticity is
clearly in line with the brand requirements of HBO, dedicated to
creating ‘quality television’ and pushing boundaries, patently exempli-
fied by the network’s most popular drama, Game of Thrones (2011–),
replete with gore, graphic nudity and violence (see Genz, 2016). In its
pursuit of authentic female experiences, Girls is similarly devoted to a
kind of edgy controversy that appeals to our critical capacities by
foregrounding the self-aware artistry with which the female characters
approach their life projects. The series adopts a stance of implicit
criticality and self-reflexivity, often anticipating viewers’ frustrations
with the selfish individualism adopted by the main characters – audible,
for example, in Ray’s rejection of Hannah’s writing as trivial intimacy
compared to ‘real’ subjects, such as ‘racial profiling’, ‘cultural criticism’,
and ‘death’ (Season 1, Episode 9, ‘Leave me alone’). Yet, while we are
clearly interpellated as critical consumers, we are also confronted with
the limited scope and potency of that very critique. In this sense, the
girls’ bohemian posturing and their production of a ‘unique’ and
‘authentic’ identity might amount to no more than a ‘cool-capitalist’
stance that incorporates signs and symbols of disaffection to popular
and extremely profitable effect (McGuigan, 2009). As Hannah repeat-
edly discovers, her project of the self is fraught with tensions because,
in the end, it needs to be legible and marketable within the terms set
up by a recessionary brand culture that no longer rewards the imma-
terial labour that individuals invest to create their ‘authentic self’.
Hannah’s self-brand is thus in danger of remaining on the shelf as
others refuse to buy into her authenticity – as Jessa puts it, ‘this book
does not matter. It’s not going to matter to the people who read it or
28 S. GENZ
to you’ (Season 2, Episode 6, ‘Boys’). Ultimately, the girls might have

no option but to forgo their narcissistic authenticity in favour of a more
productive and lucrative brand of individualism and critical compliance,
symptomatic of a more intensified neoliberalism.
NOTES
1. As Cameron put it at the Conservative Party Spring Conference in March
2013: ‘We are building an Aspiration Nation. A country where it’s not who
you know, or where you’re from; but who you are and where you’re
determined to go. My dream for Britain is that opportunity is not an
accident of birth, but a birthright’ (Cameron, 2013).
2. As Banet-Weiser explains, ‘at its core, narcissism is about total self-impor-
tance, an importance that authorizes entitlement, self-absorption, lack of
personal accountability, and a whole host of other undesirable qualities.
[ . . . ] [T]he most substantial manifestation of this kind of narcissism is the
expectation and assumption of an audience, implying not simply the right to
speak but the right to be heard’ (2012, p. 87).
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liberalism and gender (a)politics in Game of Thrones. In R. Schubart & A.
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modern age. Cambridge: Polity.
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Gill, R., & Scharff, C. (Eds.) (2011). New femininities: Post-feminism, neoliberal-
ism and subjectivity. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
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30 S. GENZ
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Stéphanie Genz is Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at Nottingham Trent

University, UK. She specialises in contemporary gender and cultural theory. Her
book publications include Postfeminist Gothic: Critical Interventions in
Contemporary Culture, Postfeminism: Cultural Texts and Theories and
Postfemininities in Popular Culture. Stéphanie’s current work centres on sexist
liberalism/liberal sexism in post-recessionary culture that belies assumptions of
gender equality and sexual freedom.
CHAPTER 3
Hating Hannah: Or Learning to Love

(Post)Feminist Entitlement
Imelda Whelehan
My first introduction to Girls invoked instant revulsion for the central

character of Hannah Horvath, played by series creator Lena Dunham. In
that response I am not alone, as numerous commentaries and criticisms
attest that ‘Hannah Horvath [ . . . ] is one of the most disliked characters
on television’ (Whitney, 2014). My fellow viewers, two card-carrying
millennials (my 20- and 17-year-old children), also shared this response.
This initial repulsion is not about my failing to recognise myself in Hannah
or her friends; it is more about the distanciation effect caused by
Dunham’s creation of Hannah. It is also to do with the aesthetics and
tone of a show that prevents the easy categorisation of Girls as one more
quality postfeminist text, and makes the activity of feminist critique inter-
esting once more. Hannah is at once pivotal to the series as its emotional
and affective core, and yet she is its most disruptive narrative feature. In
her refusal to see herself through others’ eyes, there is little room for
audience empathy gained through Hannah learning to understand her
place in the post-recessionary New York milieu. Hannah defies the narra-
tive arc of chick flicks and TV, and, for much of the five seasons to date,
appears to learn nothing of value – if value is held to be attached to paid
I. Whelehan (*)
Office of the Vice-Chancellor, The Australian National University, Canberra,
Australia
e-mail: imelda.whelehan@anu.edu.au

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-52971-4_3
32 I. WHELEHAN
employment, responsible self-improving adult choices, and growth

towards domestic, romantic, and personal satisfaction.
This chapter is an attempt to rationalise my first impression of hating
Hannah and examines how, as the series develops, it is possible to under-
stand that she – a character at the fulcrum of a number of dysfunctional
friendships – challenges what has become the stock postfeminist trope: the
celebration of female friendship as necessarily nurturant and supportive,
and more essential to personal well-being than romance. Girls arguably
offers a more nuanced portrayal of millennial female friendships freighted
with complex changeable emotions, where the audience is often posi-
tioned in such a way as to empathise with Hannah’s friends or parents,
while simultaneously ‘hate-watching’ (to use a Girls-esque phrase)
Hannah closely. Hanna Rosin, in her book-length extension to her
Atlantic article on the end of men, calls Hannah ‘our era’s Portnoy,
entitled and narcissistic enough to obsess about precisely how she gets
off and how she will later write about it’ (2013, p. 44). Revisiting Naomi
Wolf’s concept of ‘power feminism’ from Fire with Fire (1993) and
asserting that there are unprecedented opportunities for women in the
feminised post-recession workplace, Rosin suggests that power is women’s
for the taking. For Rosin, Hannah’s narcissism diverts her from the rom-
com certainties of the chick flick to encourage us to care far more about
her writing career than we do about her relationships. More than that,
given the focus on the value (or not) of self-expression in the show
(writing, singing, truth telling), for Dunham herself and for other young
women celebrity memoirists, perhaps there is a wish to address harsh social
and economic realities through creative intervention.
The parallel Rosin makes with Philip Roth’s1 controversial fictional
character Alexander Portnoy (whose much-maligned sister is called
Hannah) is intriguing and is one that perhaps is deepened if we look for
the germs of Hannah in Dunham’s 2014 memoir Not That Kind of Girl,
and perceive the character to be an extension of Dunham’s memoir work.
Just as literary audiences of the 1960s were shocked by Portnoy’s obsessive
focus on masturbation and inappropriate desires, they are similarly
enthralled by Dunham’s candid vignettes in her memoir, which broached
a number of taboos, particularly around representational norms for writing
a woman’s life. Dunham’s previous creative work, her social media
presence, and her life-writing (the latter provoking mass media
controversy) set the tone for the popular critical reception of Girls.
Audiences are simultaneously repelled and mesmerised by the way ‘too
HATING HANNAH: OR LEARNING TO LOVE (POST)FEMINIST ENTITLEMENT 33
much information’ is communicated on-screen, particularly in the sex

scenes of the first season, but more generally as the character of Hannah
takes on greater substance while we watch her parade her insecurities
and absurdities and, more often than not, long to look away.
GIRLS AND CONTEMPORARY FEMINISM

The feminist commitment that Dunham invests in her artistic projects
further problematises the portrayal of Hannah and her friends, partly
because the blending of popular culture and politics is often viewed with
suspicion as innately incompatible and partly because Dunham’s feminism
is confidently declared as self-evident. While the characters in Girls might
be represented as living the contradictions of the postfeminist rhetoric of
freedom, choice, and empowerment, the narrative perspective, themes,
location, and the responses of secondary characters rupture and dislocate
seamless viewing pleasure in ways that may be interpreted as a form of
extended feminist critique, albeit a critique carried out on Dunham’s own
terms. How to read or reject this potential feminist content depends on
how we feel the series positions us as viewers: my argument would be that
our repugnance towards Hannah and her myriad narcissistic tendencies
(which extends to Marnie, Shoshanna, and Jessa at various points after
Season 1) is strategically maintained by having these characters persistently
fail. As several chapters in this volume discuss, ‘feminist’ topics are flagged
up variously, for example in an abortion clinic (Season 1, Episode 2,
‘Vagina panic’), through airing issues of workplace harassment (Season 1,
Episode 5, ‘Hard being easy’), a controversial possible ‘rape’ scene
involving Adam and Natalia (Season 2, Episode 9, ‘On all fours’), and
scenes of Hannah nude or semi-nude throughout (see especially Season 3,
Episode 7, ‘Beach house’). I have argued elsewhere that analysing the
postfeminist discourses of popular culture can rapidly become tedious
since the ‘message requires little unpacking and lies prominently on the
surface of these narratives’ (Whelehan, 2010, p. 159); but Girls, it seems,
plants an elusive surface reading which is critiqued and progressively under-
mined by the representational strategies deployed on-screen.
It is notoriously difficult to produce a popular feminist text in any era,
as that text will assume a number of implicit moral responsibilities, not
least the mission to represent women in a diverse and positive but realistic
light. Girls quite clearly refuses to be the moral core of millennial feminism
and instead follows a long tradition where memoir, fiction, and ‘real’ life
34 I. WHELEHAN
blur in Dunham’s playful channelling of Hannah’s unrealised writing

career through the metatextual positioning of herself as youthful, female,
stellar success story. While resisting the tendency to make any female-
centred text answer all the feminist questions of a generation, it must be
said straight away that Dunham’s representational range remains contro-
versially narrow, and other contributors to this volume have explored the
jarring whiteness of her show (see Chapters 7 and 8).
In Not That Kind of Girl, Dunham shows her understanding of the
ambivalent roots of contemporary feminism in the twin traditions of
feminism’s second wave, and one progenitor of postfeminist individual-
ism: Helen Gurley Brown, ‘the bane of both the women’s movement and
the smut-police’ (Dunham, 2014, p. xvi). It is worth remembering at this
current historical vantage point that Brown’s first self-help book, Sex and
the Single Girl (1962), develops a functional aspirational figure of the
career woman at a time of economic post-war boom, compared to the
fate of Dunham and her contemporaries who must navigate the vicissi-
tudes of post-recessionary life. Dunham, however, is drawn to Brown in
other ways because of the candid autobiographical experiences she weaves
into her self-help books, presenting herself as the unexpected heroine of
the piece, a plain ‘mouseburger’, an unprepossessing young woman who
used all her resources to enhance her attractiveness and professional
successes: ‘maybe, as Helen preached, a powerful, confident and, yes,
even sexy woman could be made, not born’ (Dunham, 2014, p. xvi). In
Hannah’s on-screen presence we arguably see the ‘mouseburger’ once
more personified; even as Dunham is criticised for the repeated display
of her ‘imperfect’ body, she emphatically insists it is ‘simply a tool to tell
the story’ (p. 102). In the section below, I will further explore the status
of Hannah’s body as narrative tool.
HANNAH’S BODY
Other commentators, such as TV critic Tim Malloy (2014), seem to hate
Hannah specifically for the amount of exposure her body gets, or question
the rationale for the number of times she is nude or scantily clad. Malloy
raised this issue with Dunham in this way:
I don’t get the purpose of all the nudity on the show. By you particularly.
I feel like I’m walking into a trap where you say no one complains about the
nudity on Game of Thrones, but I get why they’re doing it. They’re doing it
to be salacious. To titillate people. And your character is often naked at

random times for no reason.
Dunham’s response reasserts the realism of the scenes, adding, ‘If you are
not into me, that’s your problem’ (Malloy, 2014); and while Dunham
might be answering the implied subtext of Malloy’s question (Why are you
nude all the time when your body does not comply with the normal visual
standards of female attractiveness?), she might have added that the asser-
tive foregrounding of Hannah’s body, and the many lingering shots on
her wearing little or ‘inappropriate’ clothing for the occasion (such as the
green string bikini she wears for most of Episode 7, Season 3, ‘Beach
house’), invites the audience’s scopophilic gaze only to resist its appro-
priation by provoking physical recoil, either as channelled through other
characters’ responses (such as Marnie’s ‘That’s disgusting!’ on watching
Hannah in the above episode) or through the camera work and lingering
pauses. As Malloy (2014) puts it, Hannah is ‘naked at random times for no
reason’; this assertion assumes the only ‘good’ reason would be sexualised
titillation using the aesthetic norms which position and display appropriate
femininities. Yet as Jocelyn Bailey asserts, ‘Girls grants subjectivity to the
female body [ . . . ] and the issues of embodiment preoccupy many of
the show’s story lines’ (2015, p. 33). Dulled as we are to the exposure
of the nude female body on-screen, we sure as hell wake up when that
body doesn’t equate to the airbrushed and toned perfection we have come
to expect; and Hannah’s body is a significant visual feature of the show –
not just in the shots dwelling on her naked body in not always salubrious
encounters, but on her clothed body, too, where outfit choices are not
those which ‘flatter’ bodily imperfections but rather unsettle the viewer
into understanding the ways in which costuming generally flatters and
renders unremarkable the female sexualised body on-screen as always the
same (see also Chapter 13).
That Hannah’s bodily display invites emotions resembling repulsion
in some commentators makes more prominent questions of how far we
remain from ‘authentic’ mass media representations of the female body,
even in quality TV specifically geared to address a female audience
demographic. For Bailey, ‘Women may recognize themselves in Lena
Dunham’s body – in its shape, its movements, its triumphs and humilia-
tions – more so than in conventional television bodies’ (in 2015,
pp. 33–4), and that acknowledgement might involve a blend of recog-
nition and revulsion that those so-called imperfections are to be seen
36 I. WHELEHAN
on-screen when the mass media generally consigns such spectacles to the
realms of the abject or reality TV. In this aesthetic approach, ‘Dunham
joins in a tradition of female artists using nudity and graphic sexuality to
articulate a feminist politics of embodiment’ (San Filippo, 2015, p. 46),
a recognisable challenge in Dunham’s work but one she chooses not to
expand upon in her retort to Malloy above.
For those who get this, the effect is immediate and ‘reveal[s] as
beautiful the sort of female body that is seldom depicted in movies,
though lovers in real life know it to be beautiful’ (Brody, 2012). Lena
Dunham as auteur/actor navigates her own dual role, it seems, by making
her performance a feminist statement about unattainable standards of
female beauty and perfection on-screen; the effect is for many confronting
and at times offensive, but it is also sustained and persistent. While
Hannah may struggle to locate her authentic self in the narrative journey
across the seasons, her body invites viewers to consider ‘random’ naked-
ness as itself a feminist statement. In this way, as Ford remarks, ‘Hannah’s
body is a key site where the feminist and postfeminist politics of Girls
are negotiated and performed both textually and extra-textually’ (2016,
p. 1037).
HATING HANNAH
This chapter summons the concept of hate as a means to confront the
strong emotions that Girls has provoked. It is also the case that hatred is a
theme within the narrative, both in the volatile feelings the friends have for
each other and the glimpses we get of Hannah’s feelings about herself. In
‘Leave me alone’ (Season 1, Episode 9) Hannah angrily attends a rival’s
book launch and their exchange rapidly deteriorates into a passive-aggres-
sive competition to determine whose work is most authentic, as Tally
winningly but meaninglessly asserts, ‘I waterbirthed my truth’. Hannah
is frustrated with her own professional jealousy and the absurdity of
wishing for Tally’s life experiences (a boyfriend who killed himself) to
give her the creative edge she feels she lacks due to a paucity of her
own interesting life experiences. Later in this episode, having performed
at a reading where she changed her choice of story at the last moment
and regretted it, Hannah returns to her apartment seeking solace from
Marnie. Marnie instead decides it is an appropriate time to deliver some
home truths, which Hannah counters by insisting ‘no one could ever hate
me as much as I hate myself . . . any mean thing that someone’s gonna
think of to say about me I’ve already said to me, about me, probably in the
last half hour’.
A notable major showdown between the friends occurs in ‘Beach
house’ (Season 3, Episode 7) as they congregate at Marnie’s mother’s
friend’s luxury beach house, where Marnie has plans to devote the week-
end to reconciliation and reforging intimate connections in a manner
more reminiscent of a mainstream postfeminist text. This intimate girls’
reunion is quickly derailed by Hannah’s social gaucheness in inviting
Elijah and his friends back to crash the planned intimate dinner. This
attempt at bonding only seems to show how far apart the friends have
become, with Shoshanna emerging as the surprising deliverer of the
cruellest home truths, arguing that she has ‘a bunch of fucking whiny
nothings for friends’. The next morning, sobered up and waiting for the
bus to New York City, life returns to equilibrium, their bodies miming the
dance routine they drunkenly performed the night before as if their
physical synchronicity is the most significant connection they have. This
bust-up has no obvious catharsis, unlike chick TV precursors, and will not
deliver any valuable life lessons upon which the narrative will revolve. In
Girls it seems you are kind of stuck with the friends you made at college; as
Shoshanna’s outburst demonstrates, they can all itemise each other’s fail-
ings, but without really acting on their own. The focus on friendship as
emotional core, apparent in shows such as Sex and the City, seems passé
and forced when examined through the lens of Girls, where friends, like
social media ‘friends’, might just be a convenient, and empty, social label.
This lack of empathy, or rare concern for each other’s well-being, leads
to the chief impression of these characters as narcissistic and boorishly
privileged. Serena Daalmans is, like many, irked by the self-entitlement of
the women in Girls, especially in what she sees as their inability to define
themselves effectively outside their relationships with men (2013, p. 359);
it is also clear that her measure of success for the show would be an ability
to identify with characters like Hannah ‘who is supposed to represent my
generation’ (p. 359). Daalmans has high expectations of Girls, not least
that she should be able to find something of herself in it, that the show
should take the post-recessionary moment seriously and add something
profound to the debates about the social and economic realities facing the
millennial generation. In short, Daalmans is after social realism from a
‘dramedy’ that is more comfortable navigating its profundities through
alienation, parody, and farce. Daalmans itemises the many ways in Season
1 that Hannah is ridiculous – from attempting to proposition the boss who
38 I. WHELEHAN
has been touching her inappropriately, to her opium-fuelled speech to her

parents, arguing that in these moments ‘the show loses the grittiness and
realistic tones critics applaud’ (p. 360).
For Daalmans, ultimately, this show lacks resonance because the
‘millennial women on Girls are nothing like the millennial women
I know. The ones I know set goals and work hard, they are good friends
that do not fail to point out hard but necessary truths’. For that reason the
show ‘fails to actually step up to the plate as the televisual voice of my
generation’ (p. 361). In this formulation the obligations of the putative
feminist text are clear and rather narrow; but they actually have less to do
with social realism than reckless optimism. As Fuller and Driscoll note,
‘using “postfeminism” to dismiss Girls as offering only negative stories
about complicit fantasies locks the series into a story about feminist social
realism in which, paradoxically, all key girl characters should be role
models able to overcome the obstacles that pervade their everyday lives’
(2015, p. 261). Much of the negative critical response to Girls focuses on
what it lacks rather than what it possesses, and leads us down a path where
textual analysis amounts to reading through strong female characters to
find hopeful narrative solutions. But Dunham is not in this game and asks
us to ‘read against the grain’ of what her central characters seem to offer.
As Katherine Bell observes, ‘if we sit for a moment with what seem like the
most glib observations and revelations made in this show, we may find
Dunham is the sharpest, and ultimate, critic of these characters’ (2013,
p. 363) and that our inability to identify with them is precisely the point,
and an effect of Dunham’s own embedded narrative critique.
(POST)FEMINIST ENTITLEMENT IN AN ERA

OF SCARCE RESOURCES
For Negra and Tasker (2014, p. 1), ‘Postfeminist culture’s key tropes – a
preoccupation with self-fashioning and the makeover; women’s seeming
“choice” not to occupy high-status public roles; the celebration of sexual
expression and affluent femininities – are enabled by the optimism and
opportunity of prosperity (or the perception of it)’. A number of chapters
in Part I of this volume reflect on the fate of these tropes in an era of post-
recession, speculating about what kind of feminism is being promoted
here. If we take Bell’s (2013) observation further we might posit that the
characters are experimental case studies of postfeminism’s failure, as well as
an exposé of the fallacious confidence of popular commentators from
Naomi Wolf through to Hanna Rosin, who proclaim that women already
possess the means to dominate men in economic and political terms.
While all the main characters in Girls suffer from material constraints as
a feature of recession, employment choices are seen as explicitly gendered
as well as classed. Jessa’s babysitting/carer’s work is certainly a case
in point, as is Hannah’s office work, and while financial hardship is not
at the heart of the show, its effects frame the actions and ambitions of
the protagonists – from Hannah’s experiences of unpaid internships, to
Jessa’s job in an upscale childrenswear shop that has no customers, and
Shoshanna’s difficulties in finding a job she likes which matches her scant
qualifications. This is not to underestimate the way the characters’ class
and race privilege allow them to leverage better positions for themselves or
to ignore their crass acceptance of such privilege – most cringingly evident
in Jessa’s impassioned speech to her fellow childcare workers about starting
a union (Season 1, Episode 4, ‘Hannah’s diary’). This is a show where
the more fortunate baby boomer generation, the parents of these hapless
millennials, loom large, both sitting in judgment on their slacker children or
competing for the scarce resources left in the wake of recession – this is
particularly true of Tad and Loreen Horvath, whose generous support of
Hannah threatens their future retirement options.
Suzanne Leonard asserts that some of the most successful female-oriented
films of recent years – including Mamma Mia; Sex and the City I; Eat, Pray
Love; and I Don’t Know How She Does It – ‘script worlds without men’ (in
Negra &Tasker, 2014, p. 50), as do many TV shows of the last decade where
women are the chief breadwinners. Girls conversely is a world with men, as
Dunham’s feminism is fed by the inclusivity and iconoclasm initiated by
third-wave feminism. The key male characters – Adam, Ray, Charlie, Elijah,
Desi, Fran, and Tad – are themselves suffering identity crises in their attempts
to navigate appropriate masculinities in both their professional and emotional
lives. Tad, who comes out as gay in late middle-age, cannot simply shed his
identity and attachment as husband to Loreen; Charlie, whose grasp of his
masculinity is derided by Hannah in Season 1 (Episode 4, ‘Hannah’s diary’),
flirts with corporate success after the launch of his app, and then later appears
to have embraced a more retroactive masculine persona as a street drug dealer
(Season 5, Episode 6, ‘The panic in Central Park’). The show embraces the
potentiality of popular culture to tell us truths even if those truths are
distorted by the medium and its requirements (in this case ‘quality’ TV).
While as commercial TV it fits the broad ideological parameters of the form
(including its whitewashing) and genre, since part of the HBO brand is
40 I. WHELEHAN
to challenge and refresh, Girls disorients in its refusal to follow the most
familiar tropes provided by postfeminist media brand leaders and allow us to
settle into the comfort of the familiar – to engage in the game which
Shoshanna tries to play with her cousin Jessa in the Season 1 pilot when
she tries to link her with the most appropriate character from Sex and the City
and is horrified to learn that Jessa has never watched the show.
Not only is the show intertexually rich (if disrespectful of some of its
forebears, as in the example above), but as Maša Grdešić reminds us, ‘the
series is highly self-conscious and attuned to potential criticism, and
therefore deeply political as well’ (2013, p. 358). Whether Dunham’s
project here is a ‘political’ one may still be debatable, but it is tracking a
zeitgeist where popular articulations of feminism are rife among celebrity
women. For all the positive dimensions to having influential celebrity
women embracing feminism, the challenge for the feminist consumer is
to salvage some substance in the forms in which this feminism is pre-
sented. For Rosalind Gill this is evidence of a ‘cool-ing of feminism [ . . . ]
widespread across the media and celebrity culture more generally’ and
potentially without substance: ‘not just feminism-lite, but feminism-
weightless, unencumbered by the need to have a position on anything’
(2016, p. 618).
THE END OF FRIENDSHIP AND THE BEGINNING OF SELF-LOVE?

Throughout this chapter, I have argued that Girls is a self-consciously
contrary text that resists the forms of identification and coherent narrative
journeys that have become the trademark of postfeminist film and televi-
sion. Where the latter texts are more likely to provoke an affectionate
response to their hapless characters, the dominant response to Hannah,
Marnie, Jessa, and Shoshanna at various points across the five seasons to
date is repugnance and frustration. Hannah clearly provokes the strongest
and most divergent responses of all in that many of the episodes focus on
her self-obsession and its regrettable impact on those around her. One oft-
discussed example is when her editor dies suddenly and Hannah insists on
asking everyone about the fate of her contract, before the funeral has even
taken place (Season 3, Episode 4, ‘Dead inside’). Her only defence is that
‘it always takes me a while to process my emotions’. As Bell phrases it,
‘Hannah often only hears herself and anything that cannot be refracted
through her grammar of individualism remains on the periphery’ (2013,
p. 365). As she continues, the show ‘demonstrates promise and invites
dialogue’ in its moments of ‘parodic brilliance’ (p. 366). Whether or

not the invitation to dialogue provides the content that Gill (2016)
finds lacking in many such texts is a question for further study. Fuller
and Driscoll’s (2015) analysis of the text helpfully recontextualises the
necessary limitations to producing ‘postfeminist’ popular TV now,
while asserting the feminist activity associated with such a project.
Girls is a story about girls who are both products and the subjects of
feminism, incorporating validation, problematisation and critique of the
forms of education, work, sex and romance currently available to girls.
And it is a story about the important role played by popular culture in the
history of disseminating feminism and keeping it at the forefront of debating
our ‘contemporary anxieties’. (p. 261)
Hannah as portrait of the artist returns us to a familiar trope in women’s

writing where the narrative journey for the chief protagonist (like Isadora
Wing in Fear of Flying [1973]) is one of self-definition and, ultimately,
self-love. On this theme, the closing episodes of Season 5 are of especial
interest as, apart from the finale of Season 2, which ends on a romantic kiss
and Adam’s assertion after a dramatic FaceTime-accompanied dash across
the city that ‘I was always here’ (Episode 10, ‘Together’), closure or
resolution of any kind are ultimately thwarted. Season 5 charts Jessa and
Adam’s developing intimacy and anxiety about Hannah’s possible reac-
tion, and Hannah’s growing antagonism to her ‘safe’ relationship with
sensible and reliable Fran. From Episode 7 (‘Hello Kitty’) – when Hannah
watches Jessa watching Adam perform, and interprets Jessa’s gaze accord-
ingly – to the season finale, the show takes on a more reflective and
melancholy tone. In Episode 9, when Hannah encounters and spends
time with her former ‘frenemy’ Tally, her account of what has happened
since they last met in Season 1 is self-reflectively a summary of Hannah’s
story (and the show) to date. In the series finale (‘I love you baby’)
Hannah exorcises some of her demons in her successful participation in
The Moth story slam. Her narrative, ‘a classic tale of jealousy’, works
through her feelings after finding out about Jessa and Adam. The twist
in the tale, however, is directed at the series viewers rather than the
televised audience listening to this account, as Hannah concludes by
revealing that she has left a basket of fruit outside Adam’s apartment as a
final gesture of moving on, noting that ‘I can only control the mayhem
that I create around me’.
42 I. WHELEHAN
DUNHAM AS ARTIST IN THE POPULAR SETTING

Lena Dunham’s coup in getting an HBO series in her 20s has made her
subject to the kinds of negativity and suspicion that suggest nepotism or
collusion are the main reasons for her success. However one frames the
relationship between HBO and Dunham (or Dunham and Apatow), more
consideration needs to be given to the possibility that Dunham’s show can
be both mass media sell-out and a resistant text which constantly thwarts its
mainstream credentials. Just as Shoshanna in the penultimate episode of
Season 5 (‘Love stories’) gives Ray’s coffee shop a brand makeover by
dubbing it ‘a destination for the anti-hipster’, HBO’s output must thwart
and challenge its audience expectations and stay ahead of stale cycle trends
in an era where quality TV is itself, perversely, a genre. Sometimes, we as
viewers accustomed to the ways of postfeminist TV and film, may hate Girls
because it bucks the formulas, trends, and emotions of its screen forebears
and denies us some of the resolutions that provide pleasure and comfort.
We love it because it challenges us to rethink our comfortable relationship
to box-set consumption, not least given Dunham’s commitment to ending
the show before it becomes stale, because ‘We were always conscious,
especially because the show has been at times such a lightning rod, of
overstaying our welcome’ (Lewis, 2016). Whether Dunham avoids the
temptation to resolve these characters’ lives in some familiar, narratively
satisfying way remains to be seen, but looking back over the five seasons to
date we witness in Girls both estrangement – the distanciation or alienation
effect I have touched on throughout this chapter – and familiarity. Perhaps
in opposition to the concept of the haunting of popular texts with images
which suggest nostalgia for a past before second-wave feminism raised
uncomfortable questions about women’s unequal social position (see
Munford and Waters, 2014, pp. 17–36), Girls demands a renewed feminist
critique of the show itself as an antidote to the depoliticised and deeply
personalised accounts of their misfortunes that these characters tell each
other and themselves.
Five seasons in, it is impossible for me to hate Hannah without realising that
this ‘hatred’ is a narrative strategy that positions me appropriately in relation to
the unfolding and continuing ‘dramedy’ and possibly leaves me in Lena
Dunham and her co-writers’ authorial thrall. Season 5’s finale shows
Hannah’s self-love in the ascendant, as well as foregrounding her altruistic
love for her friends in the peace offering she leaves Adam and Jessa. While the
season more generally ended on a note of contentment or arrival, I am hopeful
that Dunham will redouble her efforts to nudge us out of any complacency that
we know, as we always know, how these stories end.
NOTE
1. In Season 5 (Episode 2, ‘Good man’) Hannah horrifies her headteacher by
setting Roth’s Goodbye Columbus (1959) as required reading for her high
school students.
REFERENCES
Bailey, J.L. (2015). ‘The body police’: Lena Dunham, Susan Bordo and HBO’s
Girls. In E. Watson, J. Mitchell, & M.E. Shaw (Eds.), HBO’s Girls and the
awkward politics of gender, race, and privilege (pp. 27–42). Lanham: Lexington
Books.
Bell, K. (2013). ‘Obvie, we’re the ladies!’ Postfeminism, privilege, and HBOs
Brody, R. (2012, April 3). ‘Girls’ talk’. New Yorker. Retrieved from http://www.
newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/girls-talk.
Brown, H. Gurley. (1962). Sex and the Single Girl. New York: Bernard Geiss
Associates.
Daalmans, S. (2013). ‘I’m busy trying to become who I am’: Self-entitlement and
the city in HBO’s Girls. Feminist Media Studies. 13(2), 359–362.
Dunham, L. (2014). Not that kind of girl: A young woman tells you what she’s
‘learned’. London: Fourth Estate.
Ford, J. (2016). The ‘smart’ body politics of Lena Dunham’s Girls. Feminist
Media Studies, 16(6), 1029–1042.
Gill, R. (2016). Post-postfeminism?: New feminist visibilities in postfeminist times.
Jong, E. (1973). Fear of Flying. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Lewis, H. (2016, January 22). Lena Dunham on ending Girls after season 6: ‘We
wanted to make sure we kept the momentum alive’. The Hollywood Reporter.
Retrieved from http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/lena-dunham-
ending-girls-season-858389.
Malloy, T. (2014, January 9). Judd Apatow and Lena Dunham get mad at me for
why she’s naked so much on Girls. The Wrap. Retrieved from http://www.
thewrap.com/judd-apatow-lena-dunham-get-mad-asking-shes-naked-much-
girls/Malloy.
44 I. WHELEHAN
Munford, R., & Waters, M. (2014). Feminism and popular culture: Investigating
the postfeminist mystique. London: I.B. Tauris.
Negra, D., & Tasker, Y. (2014). Gendering the recession: Media and culture in
an age of austerity. Durham: Duke University Press.
Rosin, H. (2013). The end of men: And the rise of women. New York: Riverhead
Books.
San Filippo, M. (2015). Owning her abjection: Lena Dunham’s feminist politics
of embodiment. In E. Watson, J. Mitchell, & M.E. Shaw (Eds.), HBO’s Girls
and the awkward politics of gender, race, and privilege (pp. 43–62). Lanham:
Lexington Books.
Whelehan, I. (2010). Remaking feminism: Or why is postfeminism so boring?
Nordic Journal of English Studies, 9(3), 155–172.
Whitney, E. (2014, March 25). Why we hate Hannah Horvath but love Larry
David. The Huffington Post. Retrieved from. http://www.huffingtonpost.com.
au/entry/hannah-girls-larry-david_n_5023921.
Wolf, N. (1993). Fire with Fire: The New Female Power and How it will Change the
21st Century. London: Chatto & Windus.
Imelda Whelehan was Professor in the Faculty of Arts at the University of

Tasmania during the writing of this book, and is now at the Australian National
University in Australia. Her research is in the fields of women’s writing, feminism,
popular culture and literary adaptations. She is the author of Modern Feminist
Thought (1995), Overloaded (2000), Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary: A
Reader’s Guide (2002) and The Feminist Bestseller (2005). She is co-author of Fifty
Key Concepts in Gender Studies (with Jane Pilcher, 2004; revised 2017) and Screen
Adaptation: Impure Cinema (with Deborah Cartmell, 2010). She has co-edited a
number of collections and ongoing projects include work on post-war and
Australian adaptations.
CHAPTER 4
Genres of Impasse: Postfeminism

as a Relation of Cruel Optimism in Girls
Catherine McDermott
The first episode of Girls introduces Hannah off-centre, occupying the far
right of the frame, eyes cast downward in concentration on a mouthful of
spaghetti threatening its escape. Nutritional sustenance is not the only
thing escaping Hannah; the parental financial support she has taken for
granted for two years post-college is next in line to be withdrawn. Her
parents have decided to fund her life in the city no longer. Hannah’s
consternation, and claim to continuing support, derives from being ‘so
close to the life that I want, to the life that you want for me’. As well as
establishing the central conflict of the series as Hannah’s struggle to
‘become who I am’, this scene also effectively communicates the disparity
between the life Hannah inhabits and the one she desires and feels entitled
to. The life Hannah anticipates is what Berlant terms ‘the good life’ (2011,
p. 2). In an attempt to capture and define the contemporary neoliberal
condition, Berlant explains how subjects form optimistic attachments to
ideals, objects, ideologies, and political or social promises believed to
enable the good life to materialise. The origin of such optimism is an
anachronistic social imaginary invested in the hope that the fantasies we
construct about our lives and the world will eventually ‘add up to
C. McDermott (*)
Department of English, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK
e-mail: c.mcdermott@mmu.ac.uk

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-52971-4_4
46 C. McDERMOTT
something’ tangible (p. 2). Berlant’s use of the term ‘fantasy’ points to the
vivid imaginaries individuals often construct about how our lives may
unfold, as well as drawing attention to their increasing unsustainability.
A small-scale example is the belief that conventional living (a steady job, a
traditional family) confers rewards such as access to basic requirements like
food and shelter, as well as more abstract rewards like happiness and
fulfilment (see Ahmed, 2010).
In the USA, conventional ways of living are inseparable from the perva-
sive fantasy of the American Dream of opportunity and prosperity, which
remains an alluring mythological narrative of progress, despite mounting
evidence to the contrary (Chafe, 2012; Lewis, 2012). Additional conven-
tional US fantasies outlined by Berlant include the promise that meritocracy,
upward mobility, and social equality will allow us to obtain and maintain a
good life (2011, p. 3). These good life ideals are bound up in the family, the
state, and public social institutions. Berlant details how such fantasies have
begun to wear out under the ascension of neoiberalism in the USA and
Europe. The term ‘neoliberalism’ is used in Berlant’s work mainly as a
heuristic for understanding the transformation of political and economic
norms of social reciprocity and meritocracy since the 1970s (p. 9). The good
life that once seemed achievable as long as one adhered to conventional
forms of living is now manifestly out of reach for increasing numbers of
people, in large part due to the destructive effects of neoiberalism.
Following Berlant’s (2011) methodology, I analyse Girls as a project
expressing a particular femininity born of a particular cultural moment.
Specifically, I argue that Girls belongs to an emerging genre navigating the
contradictions and complexities that coming of age in a primarily post-
feminist media era entails. Using ‘postfeminist’ as a heuristic that captures
the production and circulation of mutually constitutive fictional and lived
genres, I will analyse one particular example of how Girls is designed to
showcase subjectivities primed and oriented toward ways of living marked
by the generic conventions of postfeminism. My focus is on the ‘rom-com
run’, a convention found primarily in the romantic comedy genre. I argue
that Girls is an acute example of how maintaining optimistic faith in a
postfeminist promise of fulfilment develops into a relation of cruelty.
According to Girls, investment in postfeminist ways of living is far more
likely to thwart the fulfilment we desire.
The opening scene’s withdrawal of financial support disrupts Hannah’s
previously secure expectations of living and marks the first tacit reference
in Girls to the effects of neoiberalism on a once-protected middle-class
GENRES OF IMPASSE: POSTFEMINISM AS A RELATION OF CRUEL OPTIMISM… 47
population. Indeed, Hannah’s social class, secure American upbringing,

and her parents’ stable middle-class income are the main factors structur-
ing the life she expects to lead. Hannah’s relatively privileged subject
position is entwined with an implicit generational contract of progress.
An unspoken cultural narrative of continual progress promises each
generation an improvement in their living conditions as compared to
their parents. The restaurant in the opening scene features upscale décor,
which – in combination with the tastefully bland piano tones that score
their conversation – evokes the comfortable, cataclysm-proof middle-class
lifestyle to which Hannah’s parents are accustomed, and which Hannah
expects to inherit. The withdrawal of funds may not be entirely devastating
to someone in Hannah’s position. However, it indicates a breach of contract
and introduces Hannah’s first significant barrier to achieving a life similar to
or better than the one enjoyed by her parents. Hannah is therefore com-
pelled to make her recalcitrant entry into the middle-class precariat. Until the
fracturing moment of parental withdrawal, Hannah’s social circumstances
had implicitly promised her immunity from the precarious life she goes on to
inhabit throughout the series. Many critics have written on the subject of
Hannah’s ‘entitled’ response to her new-found precarity, in particular
noting that Hannah’s situation is more stable than that of many people
worldwide (e.g. Rowles, 2012). Although I remain sympathetic to this
criticism, I also consider Berlant’s (2011, p. 20) insight that:
people’s styles of response to crisis are powerfully related to the expectations

of the world they had to reconfigure in the face of tattering formal and
informal norms of social and institutional reciprocity.
In light of this observation, it is important to remember that Hannah’s

expectations dictate her style of response. Her family’s withdrawal of
reciprocity is a defining moment for Hannah, as she realises that the
norms underpinning her social contract have been shattered. The prior
security of Hannah’s social position is fundamental to her acute sense that
her protection from precarity has now been revoked, and with it her
anticipation of a good life.
Berlant’s (2011) central thesis is that ‘a relation of cruel optimism exists
when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing’
(p. 1). Cruel optimism is therefore an affective state in which the desired
object can appear to bring the individual closer to fulfilment or happiness,
yet also acts as an impediment to the realisation of that fantasy (p. 1). For
48 C. McDERMOTT
example, a desire for enduring and mutually supportive relations with

institutions or political systems is not inherently cruel. Our optimism
becomes cruel, according to Berlant, when the workings of an institution
or political system inhibit such a relationship from forming. In other
words, our optimism keeps us pointed in the direction of a promised
good life designed to remain out of reach.
As Berlant demonstrates, some fantasies in particular contribute to our
sense of self-continuity (p. 15). Subjectivity is often organised around
and in relation to such fantasies as a method of preserving our deeply held
beliefs about ourselves as well as our ways of being in the world.
Dunham’s vision of an extended contemporary American girlhood initi-
ally appears to portray a traditional version of the self, defined by auton-
omy and individualism (Sandywell, 1999, pp. 30–5; Weedon, 1987). The
traditional concept of selfhood envisages a trajectory culminating in
fulfilment or completion. Yet it becomes apparent that Girls takes place
not in relation to such a mythic upward arc, but in a neoliberalised world
in which the terms and conditions of reciprocity have shifted. In this
world, Hannah’s subjectivity is exposed to a refusal of completion,
closely connected to the problem of ‘self-actualisation’, which is begin-
ning to supplant more traditional notions of self-fulfilment. Self-actuali-
sation is becoming a key term in relation to contemporary postfeminist
subjectivities. Within such scholarship, self-actualisation is associated
with neoliberal individualism (Genz & Brabon, 2009), self-entrepre-
neurship, (Chen, 2010; Cronin, 2000), consumerism (Fradley, 2013),
authenticity (Dejmanee, 2016), and what Gwynne terms postfeminist
‘(self)objectification’ (2013, p. 79). The research suggests that self-
understanding and self-definition through processes of actualisation
mark a key shift in conceptions of selfhood, yet, so far, this particular
dynamic has not been explained in precise detail. A subject seeking self-
actualisation must make her self reality. Whereas traditional self-fulfilment is
constructed as an attainable fixed state of being in the world, self-actualisa-
tion is a never-ending process of iterative actions undertaken to establish
selfhood (Cronin, 2000, p. 276). Such actions can appear and feel like
fulfilment. To achieve self-actualisation, Hannah must embark on a continual
process of self-preparation and engagement in life-building activities. While
the search for self-fulfilment is geared toward eventual completion, a sub-
ject’s quest to self-actualise will always reach an impasse as its processes are
constructed as interminable and inconclusive, engaging a lifetime of work on
the self that forecloses arrival.
Hannah is deeply affected by the withdrawal of a good life she feels was
promised to her. Although the concept of the good life does not look or
feel the same for every subject, at its core exists a belief that compliance
with a particular set of normative imperatives will secure certain rewards.
Berlant describes this relation as ‘a cluster of promises we want someone or
something to make to us and make possible for us’ (2011, p. 23). As a
feminine subject, Hannah is hailed by a gendered promise of a good life,
instilled with postfeminist assurances of fulfilment for (some) women who
follow its catalogue of conventions.
EMERGING GENRES: NEGOTIATING POSTFEMINISM

Postfeminism has been theorised in many ways, most recently as a dis-
tinctly feminine manifestation of the neoliberal zeitgeist (e.g. Gill, 2007,
2008; Gill & Scharff, 2011; McRobbie, 2008). Although culturally ubi-
quitous, postfeminism should not be regarded as a totalising or panoptic
political trap from which there is no escape. Postfeminism is certainly not
the only women’s discourse in cultural circulation (Retallack et al., 2016),
even though postfeminism undoubtedly dominates the media archives
available to women and girls over the last 30 years.
In the broadest critical terms, a postfeminist text embodies and/or
advocates the view that because the crucial but arduous labour of feminism
is completed, women can now concentrate their efforts on enjoying
themselves and ‘having it all’ (should they so choose). The only drawback
is that the terms of enjoyment remain defined and limited by patriarchal
perspectives on feminine desirability. The impact of postfeminism as a
culturally dominant discourse is only now beginning to crystallise, coin-
ciding with a media resurgence of multiple new strands of feminism, as
well as what Negra and Tasker (2013) term the ‘recession-era’ in the
aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. To analyse postfeminism as a relation
of cruel optimism, I will make use of Berlant’s conceptualisation of ‘genre’
as an evolutionary multiplicity (2008, p. 4). Berlant argues that genres
work as conceptual and structural conventions that evolve and mutate in
relation to changing social and historical conditions. Berlant seeks to
understand the kinds of genres that emerge in our contemporary present
under an oppressive neoliberal social imaginary (2011, p. 9).
Berlant describes genre as ‘a loose affectively-invested zone of expecta-
tions about the narrative shape a situation will take’ (p. 2). Our relation-
ship to genre, therefore, is what constructs our expectations and
50 C. McDERMOTT
experiences when watching an event unfold, whether in fictional narrative

or in the immediacy of our own lived realities. We are heavily invested in
our expectations, both in fiction and in our lives. Thumim describes
fictional genres as maintaining a ‘tacit understanding between producer
and audience’ (2012, p. 163). Berlant’s (2011) and Thumim’s (2012)
ideas enable us to consider ‘genres of living’ (Duschinsky & Wilson,
2015), a phrase that implies an especially fluid contract, or relation.
Within this paradigm, it matters who or what produces such a genre,
and who is the presumed audience for its implicit advice on how to live.
How and between whom are the terms and conditions of such a contract
drawn up? In other words, where do our ideas about how to live our lives
come from?
Anderson (2015) writes that ‘genre primes us and orients us toward a
mode of apprehending things according to its own determinations. We
don’t know what to make of something that hasn’t come with the meta-
data of genre affiliations; often we don’t even know what to desire’.
According to Anderson, genres are capable of orienting us toward desiring
particular kinds of lives; in fact, without the guidance of genre, we have
little concept of how to build our lives at all. If genres provide us with
conceptual structuring principles for how our lives are most likely to
unfold, we can begin to understand how a subject like Hannah comes to
assume that an imprecise yet affectively intelligible promise of a good life
has been made to her. It is through genre, then, that complex affective
structures like postfeminism offer subjects ways of living in which they are
invited to invest their subjectivity.
Fictional and lived genres are intricately interwoven, each informing
and maintaining the other’s construction. As Modleski argues, ‘in our
culture all women imbibe romance fantasies from a variety of sources’
(1999, p. 48). Such fantasies are the staple of the romantic comedy, a
genre promoting a particular variant on how to live a good life – not just
any good life, but a uniquely gendered promise extended exclusively to
feminine subjects. This promise is organised around resolutions to ques-
tions relating to the quest for ‘the one’, often combined in contemporary
romantic comedies with the perennial feminine conundrum of how to
‘have it all’. Sex and the City (1998–2004) promises to deliver a pithy and
sexually explicit exploration of these questions, by conveying an aspira-
tional feel-good experience of postfeminism in which agency, sexual
autonomy and empowerment via consumerism are unproblematically
endorsed, valorised, and, most importantly, enjoyed (Arthurs, 2003;
Gerhard, 2005). The series is now widely agreed to have been instrumen-
tal in defining the genre expectations of postfeminism that weigh heavily
on the contemporary feminine condition explored in Girls. As Grant and
Nash’s analysis of both series in Chapter 5 illuminates, Girls questions and
complicates the notion that the postfeminist pleasures experienced by
Carrie and her friends continue to be attainable by today’s young
women. Considering postfeminism as a relation of cruel optimism high-
lights Dunham’s exploration of ambivalent attachments to a style of
femininity that has failed to provide fulfilment. According to Berlant
(2011), once an attachment is formed to a promise of fulfilment, relin-
quishing it comes close to losing the anchor for living itself. Remaining
wedded to postfeminism may be the source of their unhappiness, but
without its promises, Hannah and her friends stand to lose the very
possibility of feminine fulfilment itself. However subjects proceed,
Berlant argues, ‘massive loss is inevitable’ (2012, p. 1).
Girls illuminates what it feels like to live the contradictions of the
postfeminist promise. Dunham’s generation retains the influence of sec-
ond-wave feminism, has grown up in a postfeminist media age, and is
living through a resurgence of updated feminist politics. Above all, Girls
details what it feels like to be stuck between these genres of living,
unable to conceive of new attachments or genres that might actually
satisfy. As old genres prove unreliable and in the absence of new ones
that could viably guide the way, subjectivity is unable to ground itself. It
is this disparity between the postfeminist promise of personal and
professional fulfilment and its lived reality that elicits what Berlant
terms ‘impasse’ (2011, pp. 4–5). Impasse is a cul-de-sac in which ‘one
keeps moving, but one moves paradoxically, in the same space’ (p. 199).
This definition opens up the spatial implications of our attachments to
good-life promises. Impasse for Berlant is not a static subject position
but a state of momentum with confined spatial boundaries. When we
reach impasse, we keep moving, but there are limits to where or how far
we can go.
THE ROM-COM RUN

Girls produces a type of storytelling that does not comply with traditional
narrative convention. The circularity of the series contravenes the most
fundamental narrative arc; the three-act structure that traces a path from
initial problem to climax, before eventual resolution. The final episode of
52 C. McDERMOTT
the second season culminates with an updated version of the ‘rom-com

run’ trope, a crucial sequence in which the male lead rushes across city
streets (typically New York, the quintessential romantic-comedy locale) to
demonstrate his love for the female lead and prove himself worthy of hers.
While seemingly aspiring to this kind of neat emotional resolution,
Girls inserts narrative indicators that serve to undermine such a happy
reading. The sequence begins with Adam, alone in his apartment, demon-
strating his inclination toward anger and destruction as he tears down the
project he has been working on. Adam’s actions are in response to some-
thing that happened in the previous episode (Season 2, Episode 9, ‘On all
fours’), which sparked a debate among commentators as to whether a
scene between Adam and his then-girlfriend Natalia depicted rape, or was
merely an example of unpleasant sexual conduct (e.g. Hess, 2013; Lyons,
2013). By no means is this the typical context or catalyst for a romantic
reconciliation. Although the romantic comedy structure hinges upon a
hitch or obstacle that threatens the burgeoning romance of its protago-
nists, this typically takes the form of a miscommunication between the
two, or a failure of the leading man to fully commit. Unlike these exam-
ples, which are usually played for comedic effect, Adam’s character from
the outset jeopardises the very notion of his viability as a leading man.
Adam answers a video call from a distraught Hannah who cannot – or is
perhaps opting not to – conceal the physical symptoms of her rapidly
deteriorating mental health. Hannah fears that she is ‘unravelling’
(Season 2, Episode 10, ‘Together’). In response, Adam sprints across
New York streets, narrowly avoiding collision with oncoming traffic
while reassuring Hannah that despite her unconvincing objections, he is
coming for her. Adam tears down Hannah’s door. The camera follows him
into her bedroom as the music slows and he lifts Hannah from beneath her
covers. They kiss as the camera slowly retreats and the screen fades to
black. This is the final vision of Season 2.
Is this final episode of Season 2 the Girls version of ‘happily ever
after’? The scene is certainly shot and scored to evoke such an initial
response. The choice of dark streets, dynamic succession of rapid cuts,
and directional right framing closely emulate the lighting, editing, and
framing choices at work in a corresponding scene in Rob Reiner’s rom-
com classic When Harry Met Sally (1989), to name but one example.
Furthermore, the surges of a mawkish instrumental soundtrack elicit the
requisite emotional response in the viewer. Though Adam’s character
may not physically or emotionally resemble his romantic predecessors, he
becomes affectively linked with them in undertaking this now-iconic

heroic journey. The apparent sincerity of the rom-com run disturbs the
established rhythm of Girls’ cynically pragmatic sexual politics. Adam is
also constructed as the figurative ‘knight in shining armour’, thereby
appearing to cast Hannah as the archetypal damsel awaiting his entrance.
Certainly, Hannah is in distress, but more importantly she is stuck in
impasse. Hannah’s state of distress is a form of momentary pain or anxiety
that can be alleviated, while the symptoms of impasse are substantially
more difficult to treat.
POSTFEMINIST IMPASSE
If impasse is indeed ‘a space of time lived without a narrative genre’
(Berlant, 2011, p. 199), then this implies an unmooring from the anchors
of living that genre provides us with. Impasse is therefore a space in which
we learn to adjust to the loss of a fantasy (p. 11). Girls explores this loss by
constructing Hannah’s impasse. Estranged from her parents, her friends
and even the downstairs neighbour who is infatuated with her, Hannah
finds herself confronting the re-emergence of her obsessive-compulsive
disorder and unable to meet a crucial deadline. Hannah’s sporadic sexual
relationships following her break-up with Adam haven’t worked out. In
this moment, Hannah’s vision of her awaited good life seems further than
ever from her lived reality. Adam’s arrival therefore represents to Hannah
the very possibility of happiness itself, despite her knowledge that their
previous attempts at a relationship were not fulfilling. Another role played
by genre is that it guides us toward an expected conclusion. To live
without a genre means living without a clear idea of how a situation is
likely to unfold and, importantly, end.
The dynamic on-screen spectacle of the run itself appears to signal a
forward momentum, presenting Hannah with an escape from impasse. Yet
it is Adam who runs, away from his own impasse, and toward Hannah’s.
While Adam runs Hannah is waiting, suspended in impasse. When moving
forwards tends to simply return you to a situation you have already tried to
leave behind, waiting in impasse is bound to feel more reassuring than
reeling between one failed promise and another that is scarcely conceiva-
ble. Hannah’s distress call triggers Adam’s responsive run. When Adam
arrives, the camera holds a tightly framed close-up of Hannah as she says to
him, simply, ‘you’re here’. Adam replies, ‘I was always here’. Significantly,
it is not only Adam who arrives, as he carries with him an entire genre of
54 C. McDERMOTT
romantic expectations and disappointments, a genre that was ‘always

here’, awaiting Hannah’s call. Yet the apparent forward momentum har-
bours another false promise of escape. By the end of Season 2, as Hannah
finds herself without a viable new genre to hold onto, she makes the
inevitable turn back to the one that has already failed her.
Hannah’s anxiety signals that she is ‘unravelling’, which in this context
signifies not only an undoing affecting Hannah’s subjectivity but also the
coherence of the text itself. As the narrative reaches a loose end, what
better way to resolve the distress of our damsel than a timeless romantic
dash across New York streets? The rom-com run trope appears to both
resolve the season narrative in Girls while simultaneously undoing the
rom-com genre. Typically, the decisive act that signals a clear outcome
of narrative and character completion, in Girls the run, instead of herald-
ing the resolution anticipated by the viewer, exposes impasse. A closer
look at the actual state of play reveals narrative stagnation. Nothing
happens in Season 2 (a widespread critique of Girls in general). There is
turmoil and insecurity. There are shifts and adaptations, yet no discernible
progress is ever being made.
Girls displays an increasing awareness that postfeminist genres do not
deliver on their promises, that following their lines will not map a path
toward fulfilment. However, the rom-com run also reflects that although
Hannah and her friends no longer entirely believe they will find fulfilment
in such worn-out generic promises, the longing for them to succeed
persists. Adjustment for Hannah means further entrenching her commit-
ment to a promise she knows isn’t working. Meanwhile, adjustment for
the series per se resides in the creation of a new genre of impasse articulat-
ing the inherent difficulties of detaching from the postfeminist promise.
The postfeminist genre, much like Adam, runs its course; it even arrives.
Ultimately, however, postfeminism finds no foothold in Girls, as it is
usurped by the new contemporary genre of impasse, which finds it cannot
accommodate the happy couple.
INCONVENIENT CONVENTIONS
Berlant (2012) argues that the function of cultural and societal conven-
tions can be reduced to disciplinary measures seemingly intended to direct
a populace toward cruelly optimistic genres of living. On-screen, the
repeated mediation of such conventions often manifests as a simplistic
or derivative cliché. Yet Berlant also accounts for the appeal of norms,
and our fascination with convention as being a kind of ‘aspirational

anchor’, a way of tethering ourselves to the world (p. 3). Consequently,
the rom-com run can at once retain its outdated gender politics and
function as an aspirational image of femininity that points in the direction
of familiarity, stability, and flourishing (p. 3). Subjects can desire post-
feminist normativity, even as it inflicts suffering on the desiring subject.
Or, as Berlant attests, ‘it is awkward and it is threatening to detach from
what is already not working’ (2011, p. 263). Falling for a false promise is
not only inconvenient, it is embarrassing. To acknowledge that we have
misplaced our optimism feels less like genre’s failure to live up to and fulfil
our expectations than our own failure to reap the rewards promised by
genre. Perhaps the promise was never valid or viable in the first place. Still,
losing hold of the fantasy that fulfilment resides in postfeminist genres has
the capacity to devastate the sense of self-continuity that is derived from
our attachments to genre (p. 24). Dunham shows us that the rom-com
run doesn’t lead to the happy ending hoped for, yet she reproduces it all
the same. Cutting loose from a genre of living that is not working becomes
especially difficult in the absence of alternatives. As Hannah learns, Adam
may not be the saviour she requires to deliver her from impasse but at least
he is familiar, a point of stability in her fragile world. This rom-com
run sequence in Girls, then, expresses a particularly complicated and contra-
dictory set of genre pleasures. As Berlant (2013) observes, ‘aesthetics is one
of the few places we learn to recognize our emotions as trained and not
natural’. Personally speaking, upon viewing the scene for the first time,
I found myself in the uneasy position of recognising that I am aesthetically
trained to find relief in the powerful image of a woman saved by a man,
despite the fact that I believe myself to be firmly aligned with a feminism
profoundly critical of both the desire and the image. Girls’ repetition of the
romantic comedy staple establishes a sense of self-continuity that imparts an
assuring recognition of femininity while placing postfeminist pleasure in
immediate conflict with feminist critique. While it would be easy to dismiss
this tension, a more nuanced understanding can be derived from the insight
that in repeating postfeminist tropes, Girls does not ‘become’ a romantic
comedy. Rather, Girls deploys and subsumes the romantic comedy into its
own uncomfortably stretched out genre of impasse, painfully detailing the
present condition of femininity.
Adam’s grand heroic gesture simply returns both characters to where
they have already been. This is no conventional happy ending, merely
another cyclical lurch of the impasse. The romantic comedy model teaches
56 C. McDERMOTT
us to accept the run as signifying both ‘happiness’ and ‘resolution’, neither

of which is present in Girls. Expectations remain unsatisfied and fulfilment
out of reach. Moreover, viewers are very well aware that as one season
ends, another commences. Instead of finite closure, the loop begins anew.
There is no ending, no climax, only false respite. Where the romantic
comedy film concludes, Girls exploits its televisual medium by allowing
the narrative to circle back into the incessant processes of self-actualisa-
tion. Like Berlant, Girls tracks an extended ‘crisis ordinariness’ (2011,
p. 10), or an unremarkable, ongoing absorption of catastrophe into the
everyday. There is a pervasive sense in Girls that something unintelligible
has gone terribly wrong. That something, which remains imperceptible to
the characters in Girls, is expressed affectively to the viewer by Dunham’s
televisual mediation of the overwhelming impact of postfeminist genres on
Hannah and her peers. The rom-com run is no longer a singular, excep-
tional event that ruptures the ordinary, or a symbol of ultimate romantic
love, as Girls distends the moment of completion into a quotidian
stretched out shape of the ‘usual’ (p. 58).
To conclude, I would like to reiterate that articulating the ways that
specific tropes deviate from precedents that work within a particular
tradition enables us to be, according to Berlant, ‘reflexive about con-
temporary historicity as one lives it’ (p. 5). Stacey (2015, p. 252) inter-
prets contemporary historicity as a feeling that occurs when the subject is
unable to respond to an event using ‘existing affective genres’. The
present, according to Stacey, ‘becomes most visible when it fails to live
up to its promises (in which we had invested so much, psychically and
economically)’ (p. 252). I argued at the beginning of this chapter that
Girls is constructed in relation to and as a response to the dominance of
postfeminist cultural discourses. Rather than dismiss such normative
investments as simply ‘bad objects’, my consideration of postfeminism
as a relation of cruel optimism proves a fruitful method for engaging with
the hopeful pleasures, ambivalent desires, and conflicts arising from our
fascination with and aspirations toward convention. Girls’ meticulous
enactment and unravelling of conventional postfeminist fantasies offers an
important cultural understanding of the cruel hopes that direct feminine
desires toward patently false promises.
When Girls finds that femininity is no longer intelligible through the
lens of the romantic comedy, it is compelled to find new methods of sense-
making. The calculated rearticulation of the rom-com run functions to
unfold the boundaries of the romantic-comedy genre, thereby creating its

own entirely new genre, which assumes shape through its deviations from
the normative model. In turn, the creation of the new genre expands the
potential of the old. As Girls repeats and exposes its genre mechanics, it
begins to dawn on us that the romantic comedy as a dominant postfeminist
narrative masks impasse.
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Cat McDermott is an AHRC-funded PhD student in English at Manchester

Metropolitan University in the UK. Initially inspired by research highlighting
the intersections between neoliberal and postfeminist subjectivities, Cat’s research
develops and contextualises these interests using affect theory to inform her
analysis of how popular media fictions construct contemporary femininities. Her
research is predominantly exploring the manifold impacts of postfeminist cultural
discourses on contemporary feminine/feminist aesthetics. Cat’s primary motiva-
tion remains her continuing commitment to and enthusiasm for feminist politics
and theoretical perspectives. Further areas of interest include self-mediation, new
media and queer theory.
CHAPTER 5
From Sex and the City to Girls: Paving

the Way for ‘Post? Feminism’
Ruby Grant and Meredith Nash
In 1994, McRobbie flagged a desire for a diverse feminist politics in

response to a burgeoning postfeminist culture. For twenty years, feminists
have explored postfeminist texts and experiences, debating the meaning
and deployment of postfeminism. However, they continue to identify an
impasse in terms of feminist engagement with the concept. In this chapter,
we address this impasse through a comparative analysis of two postfeminist
US television series: Sex and the City (SATC) (1998–2004) and Girls
(2012–). Through this analysis, we explore how postfeminist discourses
are deployed through Girls, focusing on key themes of sexuality,
reproductive choice, and embodiment.
In light of SATC’s influence on contemporary postfeminist dramas, we
wonder how the characters of Girls relate to their SATC precursors. We
also question what kind of feminist narrative defines Girls. Is postfeminism
useful in this analysis? We argue that SATC’s postfeminist legacy ‘lurks on
the periphery’ of Girls, moulding it into a ‘new’ kind of postfeminist
narrative (Whelehan, 2010, p. 161). From the inter-textual nod of the
SATC poster on Shoshanna’s bedroom wall in the pilot episode, to the
ways in which the characters navigate sexuality and relationships, Lena
R. Grant (*) M. Nash

Department of Sociology, University of Tasmania, Tasmania, Australia
e-mail: rfgrant@utas.edu.au; meredith.nash@utas.edu.au

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-52971-4_5
62 R. GRANT AND M. NASH
Dunham cannot ignore SATC as a formative cultural text while simulta-

neously railing against it. By questioning and challenging its influences
from earlier generations of second-wave feminism and postfeminism, we
argue that Girls allows for a re-articulation of postfeminism for a millennial
generation. Given this generational shift from SATC’s postfeminism,
we suggest the term ‘post? feminism’ as a means of theorising the ‘new’
postfeminist narratives being deployed in Girls.
20-SOMETHING GIRLS VS 30-SOMETHING WOMEN

Feminist scholars have regarded SATC as a cultural text that ‘shadow-
boxes’ with second-wave feminism (Gerhard, 2005, p. 37). SATC chroni-
cles the lives of Manhattan sex columnist Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica
Parker) and her friends Charlotte (Kristin Davis), Miranda (Cynthia
Nixon), and Samantha (Kim Cattrall). The show became a cult hit,
unprecedentedly presenting frank, taboo-breaking discussions of sex and
femininity. Feminist scholars have since described it as a postfeminist
narrative par excellence given its direct engagement with women’s
negotiations of sexual empowerment, choice, mobility, and consumption
(Adriaens & Van Bauwel, 2014).
Although SATC constructs Carrie and her friends as ‘empowered’
single women independently navigating love, sex, and dating in New
York, it does this through a heteronormative, white, privileged lens that
‘ventriloquizes’ feminism as outdated common sense (Whelehan, 2010,
pp. 162–3). In the show, feminism is presented as a series of individual
‘choices’ with no political agenda (Henry, 2004). Indeed, the first season
of SATC aired in June 1998 just weeks before the publication of the Time
magazine cover asking ‘Is feminism dead?’ (p. 65). For instance, in ‘Time
and punishment’ (Season 4, Episode 7), Charlotte positions her ‘choice’
to quit her job to try to get pregnant as a validation of ‘choices’ available to
her because of ‘the women’s movement’. As Gill (2011, p. 64) observes,
postfeminist ‘women are offered particular kinds of freedom, empower-
ment and choice in exchange or as a kind of substitute for real feminist
politics and transformation’. However, as Gerhard (2005, p. 37) argues,
second-wave feminist discourses are never entirely abandoned in SATC,
and the show is ‘haunted’ by a feminist consciousness (Whelehan, 2010,
p. 161). The show reflexively evaluates the feminist legacy of ‘choices’.
When Charlotte presents her ‘choice’ to quit her job to her friends,
FROM SEX AND THE CITY TO GIRLS: PAVING THE WAY FOR ‘POST? FEMINISM’ 63
Samantha reminds her of the effect that this could have on her ability to
return to the workforce: ‘Be damn sure before you get off the Ferris wheel,
because the women waiting to get on are 22, perky and ruthless’ (Season
4, Episode 7, ‘Time and punishment’). As Samantha’s observation indi-
cates, the legacy of second-wave feminism imbues postfeminist texts with a
feminist consciousness, and exemplifies the generational divide forged
between women of the feminist and postfeminist eras. This feminist
conscience prompts postfeminist women to evaluate their ‘choices’ and
relationships, and to reflect on what has really been gained through
‘empowerment’.
If second-wave feminism haunts SATC as a postfeminist text, then what
kind of feminist discourse haunts Girls? Girls prompts us to question the
legacy of ‘empowerment’ by following the lives of aspiring writer Hannah
Horvath (played by Dunham) and her friends Marnie (Allison Williams),
Jessa (Jemima Kirke), and Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet) as they muddle
through their 20s. Like SATC, Girls evokes the postfeminist archetype
of the modern ‘girl’, a term popularised in Sex and the Single Girl (1962)
which introduced the concept of an independent, urban, reflexive, and
sexually active modern woman. In using ‘Girls’ as the title for a show,
Dunham is arguably perpetuating the postfeminist ‘girlification’ of adult
women in which women are infantilised and pre-adolescent girls are sex-
ualised (Gill, 2007). Yet Girls taps into the connotations of the word that
‘summon[s] up memories of choice and relative freedom before the
travails of womanhood set in’ (Whelehan, 2000, p. 39). Compared to
SATC, the show is a coming-of-age story with the characters awkwardly
hovering between adolescence and adulthood – one gets the sense that the
characters are not even sure that they would refer to themselves as
‘women’. Although the title symbolises a postfeminist sensibility, its
appearance in the opening credits in bold uppercase lettering subverts
the pejorative nature of the word ‘girl’ and demonstrates a knowing
irony that permeates the narrative and perhaps an unwillingness to leave
feminism behind so easily (Danes, 2012).
THEORISING POSTFEMINISM
As discussed throughout this book, postfeminism is a complex concept
with multiple, contested interpretations. The arguments for and against
postfeminism are well rehearsed and have been outlined substantively in
many other places (e.g. Gill, 2011; Tasker & Negra, 2007), so we will
highlight only a few key points as they relate to our arguments. The ‘post’
prefix in postfeminism has been seen to represent the idea that feminism is
‘dead’ but also as ‘an emerging culture and ideology that simultaneously
incorporates, revises, and de-politicizes many of the fundamental issues
advanced by feminism’ (Rosenfelt & Stacey, 1990, p. 549). Scholars have
also argued that the ‘post’ prefix may symbolise a positive association – an
‘in relation to’ rather than a ‘split from’ earlier feminist movements
(Adriaens & Van Bauwel, 2014, p. 175). Brooks (1997, p. 4) operationa-
lises this as a critical re-theorisation of feminist conceptual and theoretical
agendas. For Gill (2008, p. 442) postfeminism is a distinctively new
‘sensibility’ that distances itself from pre-feminist and feminist construc-
tions of gender, while actively responding to both, ‘entangling feminist
and antifeminist discourses’. Gill’s (2007, p. 147) postfeminist sensibility
in media texts involves an intersection of individualism, choice, feminine
self-surveillance, and body management, the ‘makeover paradigm’, and a
shift from sexual objectification to ‘subjectification’. Thus, postfeminism
is positioned as part of a contemporary neoliberal refashioning of
femininity in which women escape traditional boundaries of femininity
through a continual reworking of subjectivity as subjects and objects of
commodification and consumerism.
Feminist scholars have argued that although postfeminism is framed
as universally ‘empowering’, it primarily describes a white, economically
successful, young, attractive, (hetero)sexual, female subject (e.g.
McRobbie, 2009). This depoliticised female subject has translated
especially well on television shows like SATC and Girls where white
women explore their ‘independence’ (Adriaens & Van Bauwel, 2014).
As a result, postfeminism is criticised for excluding women of colour
(e.g. McRobbie, 2009). While an in-depth discussion of this is beyond
the scope of this chapter, it is worth pointing out that the cultural
conversations about the lack of racial diversity in SATC and Girls flag
the complex terrain of contemporary postfeminism and the relations of
power that produce postfeminist discourses. If postfeminism has
become merely an ‘empty signifier’ that is ‘overburdened’ with mean-
ing (Whelehan 2010, p. 161), we argue that a comparison of SATC
and Girls presents an opportunity to further clarify the meaning of
the term. Is postfeminism still relevant in relation to analyses of
contemporary woman-centred television? How should/could the term
be deployed now?
SEXUALITY
One of the most notable aspects of SATC was the open ‘sex talk’ and the
characters’ breaching of traditional female sexual scripts (Markle, 2008),
such as Miranda’s urgent query, ‘If he goes up your butt, will he respect
you more or respect you less?’ (Season 1, Episode 4, ‘Valley of the twenty-
something guys’) All of the characters had sex with a variety of men in
defiance of cultural messages that discourage women from having multiple
sexual partners (Gagnon & Simon, 1973). SATC women, in many ways,
embodied Gill’s (2008) media archetype of the ‘midriff’, a woman who
finds pleasure and empowerment in self-objectification and sexual agency.
To illustrate, in the pilot episode, Carrie attempts to ‘have sex like a man’,
an experience for pleasure only, and without feeling or commitment.
Similarly, the women experiment with sex toys, and Charlotte has a sexual
awakening thanks to her new vibrator, ‘the rabbit’ (Season 1, Episode 9,
‘The turtle and the hare’). Sexuality is presented as part of a consumer
lifestyle – sexual relationships, fashion, and entertainment are the primary
drivers.
SATC introduced ‘awkward’ sex into the televisual realm through its
storylines built around everything from ‘golden showers’ (e.g. Season 3,
Episode 2, ‘Politically erect’) to ‘funky tasting spunk’ (Season 3, Episode
9, ‘Easy come, easy go’). While female viewers cringed at these moments
in recognition, sexual ‘awkwardness’ was mainly attributed to men. For a
show that was more accurately representing single women, viewers rarely
saw the women fumble in the bedroom. Viewers never saw bodily fluids,
stained sheets, or genitals. The women always remained perfectly posed
and sexually desirable. Sexual ‘awkwardness’ also rarely involved Carrie – a
key difference between SATC and Girls. Carrie never used vulgar lan-
guage, was never naked or engaged in explicit sexual acts on-screen due to
a clause in Sarah Jessica Parker’s contract (Nussbaum, 2008). Parker was
only filmed from the waist up in sex scenes and she was always wearing a
bra, resulting in a more sanitised portrayal of Carrie’s sexuality.
SATC women were always in control of when sex occurred. In a
content analysis of episodes over six seasons, Markle (2008, p. 54) found
that SATC characters had sex more often than they declined sex.
However, when the women did decline sex there were no repercussions.
Men never forced SATC women to have sex, and men only expressed
‘mild disappointment’ when their advances were rebuffed (p. 54). While
this representation conforms to feminist/cultural messages that promote
women’s sexual empowerment, it is unrealistic that viewers never see the

characters in an uncomfortable sexual situation or expressing feelings of
ambivalence or guilt about declining sex, given the number of men that
the women have sex with each season (at least five men per character). The
show’s portrayal of female sexual negotiation runs counter to feminist
research which reveals that US women often consent to unwanted sex
because they are pressured by men or to maintain intimate relationships
(Morgan & Zurbriggan, 2007).
Thus, the ability of SATC women to transgress social norms without
consequences is central to the show’s popularity among Western women.
Samantha, in particular, is represented as being unabashed in her desire for
recreational sex, announcing ‘I’m a trisexual – I’ll try anything once’
(Season 3, Episode 4, ‘Boy girl, boy girl’). Samantha’s vivid sexuality is a
key aspect of her character and this is often used comically in a similar way
to Hannah’s nudity and awkward sex scenes in Girls. The ‘postfeminist
irony’ is that SATC is meant to provide an alternative, ‘empowering’ view
of female sexuality; however, the characters continually return to the safety
of normative femininity (Arthurs, 2003, p. 87). Although the women are
shown with multiple boyfriends/sexual partners, ultimately, the series
reinforces social norms via their ongoing search for ‘The One’. By Season
6, the women abandon their need to have sex ‘like a man’ and all four
characters end up in committed relationships (Episode 13, ‘Let there be
light’; Episode 20, An American girl in Paris [Part deux]) (Markle, 2008).
Dunham’s Girls are not wholly positioned as active, confident sexual
subjects. Arguably, one of the strengths of Girls is Dunham’s attention to
the emotional and experiential sexual fumbling of 20-something Hannah’s
sex scenes with her boyfriend Adam (played by Adam Driver). These are not
the idealised acts of ‘empowered’ SATC women. Hannah’s sexual encoun-
ters are often awkward and, at times, unwatchable; for example, as she
exhales ‘I almost came . . . ’ after unsatisfying sex with Adam (Season 1,
Episode 6, ‘The return’). Furthermore, Hannah externalises her anxieties
about sex to Adam (e.g. ‘Is this position comfortable? Are you wearing a
condom?’) and Googles ‘the stuff that gets up around the sides of condoms’
when she is convinced that she has a sexually transmitted infection (STI)
(Season 1, Episode 3, ‘All adventurous women do’). Hannah’s relationship
with and knowledge of her body is at odds with the postfeminist figurehead
of the modern, sexually subjectified ‘Can-do girl,’ like SATC ’s Samantha,
who reaped the benefits of second-wave feminist health movements (Harris,
2004, pp. 16–17).
Girls complicates postfeminist notions of feminine sexuality in its repre-

sentation of a subset of millennial women whose primary source of knowl-
edge, and experience of their bodies seems to come from the Internet.
With the proliferation of online knowledge and identities, women of
Dunham’s generation experience and understand their bodies more
ambivalently (Shaw, 2010). Thus, in sex scenes, Hannah is naked and
viewers see her body wobbling in relatively unflattering ways. Dunham
claims that her approach to representing sex on the show is led by a feeling
of disillusionment with stylised Hollywood depictions of sexuality and
‘sex-in-a-bra type characters’ (e.g. Carrie Bradshaw) (Heller, 2014).
The nuanced representation of ‘awkward’ sex, sexual failure, and issues
of sexual intimacy in Girls is an acknowledgement that such things happen
in women’s lives and are worthy of consideration. For Dunham, ‘awk-
ward’ sex is not just a comedic source – it is also a compass for a character’s
emotional state. For instance, in Season 2, Marnie becomes infatuated
with experimental artist Booth Jonathon, and her interactions with him
provide a glimpse into young women’s negotiations of ‘awkward’ sex
(Episode 3, ‘Bad friend’). In Season 1 (Episode 3, ‘All adventurous
women do’), Booth delivers this ‘pick-up’ line to Marnie: ‘The first time
I fuck you, I might scare you a little. Because I’m a man, and I know how
to do things’. As it turns out, Booth does not live up to this claim. In
Season 2 (Episode 3, ‘Bad friend’), Booth’s idea of foreplay involves
imprisoning Marnie in one of his art installations (a chamber of TVs
showing disgusting footage) and then having sex with her in a ‘starfish’
position against the backdrop of a blood-smeared dollhouse. Marnie goes
along with this for the sake of a potential relationship. Although
she laughs hysterically at the end of the scene, Marnie does not call
Booth out for his sexual shortcomings because she is desperate to have a
relationship with a ‘real’ man.
The sexual objectification/subjectification of women in Girls is more
complex than in SATC as the postfeminist notions of ‘choice’ and sexual
‘empowerment’ are juxtaposed with male-defined sexual encounters. The
inclusion of a scene wherein sex is not clearly consensual (Season 2,
Episode 9, ‘On all fours’) is notable in light of our earlier point about
the lack of consequences associated with sex in SATC. Although a pre-
vious sexual encounter between Adam and his new girlfriend Natalia was
fun and consensual, in a subsequent encounter, he commands her to crawl
on all fours into his bedroom. He has sex with her without any concern
for her enjoyment or willing participation. The scene ends with him
ejaculating onto her chest and Natalia saying ‘I don’t think I like that . . .
I, like, really didn’t like that’. As several authors in this volume observe,
whether one believes that the scene depicts rape or not, this episode breaks
new ground when it comes to dealing with the unspoken realities of
women’s sexual experiences. This scene shows the blurred boundaries of
consent and that women are not always sure themselves whether a rape
has occurred. It also shows us that rapists are not necessarily predatory
strangers but can be men that women know and trust.
These examples showcase Dunham’s ability to reveal the multiple
and often contradictory ways that young women experience ‘sexual
empowerment’ compared to SATC, which is more akin to fantasy
fiction. Furthermore, the embodiment of feminine heterosexuality in
Girls is experienced as an endless negotiation of objectification and
subjectification that perhaps more closely reflects the experiences of
young Western women.
REPRODUCTIVE ‘CHOICES’
I don’t like women telling other women what to do, or how to do it, or
when to do it. Every time I have sex it’s my choice. (Season 1, Episode 2,
‘Vagina panic’)
As Jessa’s remark makes apparent, second-wave feminist notions of sexual

‘choice’ and liberation are experienced as a given for the privileged char-
acters of Girls, with previously politicised issues such as abortion and STIs
being solved by ‘the all-purpose postfeminist answer that [women] have a
right to choose’ (Whelehan, 2010, p. 161). However, the narrativisation
of reproductive ‘choice’ in Girls subverts postfeminist discourses. An
example of this is when Jessa is thrown an ‘abortion party’ by her friends,
who openly discuss the pregnancy termination in the first season (Episode
2, ‘Vagina panic’). As a demonstration of this ‘openness’, the word ‘abor-
tion’ is used eleven times in the episode. Unlike many earlier representa-
tions of abortion in television, Jessa’s abortion narrative is emotionally
complex – Hannah is uncertain about whether having an abortion is a ‘big
issue’, Adam sees it as a ‘heavy fucking situation’, while Jessa seems upset
but also strangely ambivalent about her situation.
This ambivalence, coupled with a willingness to openly discuss abor-
tion, is contrasted with the handling of unwanted pregnancy a decade
earlier in Season 4 of SATC (Episode 11, ‘Coulda woulda shoulda’) when
Miranda finds herself pregnant. Miranda’s ‘choice’ to terminate her preg-

nancy converges around the reproductive ‘choices’ of Charlotte (who is
desperate to become a mother but faces the shock of infertility) and Carrie
(who ruminates over whether to tell her boyfriend that she had an abor-
tion at 22). ‘Abortion’ is only uttered three times during the episode, even
though both Carrie and Samantha had ‘at least one’ as younger women.
Miranda’s deliberation over her abortion centres on her struggle to
‘have it all’. Faced with Charlotte’s meagre ‘15 per cent chance of ever
getting pregnant’, Miranda weighs the pros and cons of motherhood. By
the end of the episode, she fulfils the cultural expectation that, as a woman
in her late 30s, she should opt in to motherhood because this may be her
only chance. Jessa, in her early 20s, in contrast, is removed from the
burden of these questions. In the middle of hooking up with a stranger
in a pub bathroom, she gets her period (or conveniently miscarries),
freeing her from making a ‘choice’ altogether. Upon seeing her blood
on the man’s fingers, the relief on Jessa’s face is evident but it is a strange,
sad scene that effectively demonstrates the ambivalent emotions that
often surround abortion for many young women.
Jessa’s ‘choice’ could be read as evidence of feminist progress in des-
tigmatising abortion, compared to SATC, where abortion must be
laboured over. Yet the age gap between Jessa and Miranda is a key
distinction between the shows that allows Girls to avoid the ‘time anxiety’
around female life stages (e.g. marriage, career, motherhood) and a
staple of postfeminist representational culture (Negra, 2009, p. 47).
While Miranda falls into a life stage paradigm consistent with postfemi-
nist feminine archetypes, Jessa is neither celebrated nor castigated for
‘failing’ to become a mother. In not conforming to postfeminist logic,
the Girls episode confirms that motherhood does not have be a site of
‘authentic’ feminine subjectivity. However, in challenging the ‘rules’,
the episode is also an exception that ‘proves the rule when it comes to
the strict ideological control postfeminism seeks to maintain over the
female lifecycle’ (p. 85).
FEMININE EMBODIMENT AND BODILY MANAGEMENT

For Gill (2007, p. 149), postfeminist ‘femininity is defined as a bodily
property rather than a social, structural or psychological one [ . . . ] In
today’s media, possession of a “sexy body” is presented as a woman’s
key source of identity’. This takes the form of beauty, fashion, fitness,
and dieting regimes common in postfeminist popular cultural texts,

where women are portrayed as always engaging in the process of bodily
management (McRobbie, 2009). SATC characters are often shown
exercising (e.g. training for a marathon), purchasing beauty products,
and visiting plastic surgeons. For instance, Samantha’s obsession with
physical perfection is played out in Season 4 (Episode 2, ‘The real me’)
when she goes on a diet for a nude photo shoot, and again in Season 5
(Episode 5, ‘Plus one is the loneliest number’) when she gets a chemical
peel to erase the signs of ageing. Although the show, to a certain extent,
reveals taboos surrounding (ageing) women’s bodies, the show is primarily
a celebration of normative feminine bodies used to attract men.
Though women’s naked bodies are featured on Girls, they often do not
conform to heteronormative, feminine beauty ideals, and body work is not
a primary focus for the characters. Unlike Samantha, who actively pursues
bodily control, Hannah is featured as sweaty and exhausted while attempt-
ing to exercise, binge eating, and dancing wildly (Perkins, 2014). Yet
Hannah’s lack of bodily control is complicated by her desires to be con-
trolled. In a telling scene, Adam pinches her ‘fat’ and asks her why she has
so many tattoos. Hannah admits that she had this ‘Riot Grrl’ idea and got
tattoos to reclaim control over her body after gaining weight when she was
younger (Season 1, Episode 3, ‘All adventurous women do’). The ‘girl
power’ of the Riot Grrl movement encouraged young women to see
themselves as the producers of knowledge with diverse embodied experi-
ences. Hannah’s commentary evidences her engagement with the cultural
representation of women’s bodies and her own appearance, which
diverges from SATC’s postfeminist ‘self-fashioning’
Dunham’s intention is to represent women’s bodies more realistically,
as ‘a way of saying, with these bodies, you know: don’t silence them’
(Goldsworthy, 2013, p. 59), and this is political. The frequent exposure of
Dunham’s naked body has sparked much discussion in terms of her sub-
version of dominant norms of feminine ‘sexiness’. Both within and beyond
the show, the consumption, criticism, and metatextual discussion of
Dunham’s body flag lingering sexist cultural attitudes. A primary example
of this occurs in Season 2 (Episode 5, ‘One man’s trash’) when Hannah
spends a weekend with an attractive older man (played by Patrick Wilson).
Critics argued that a woman with a body like Dunham’s would never ‘get’
a man as attractive as Wilson (Morrissey, 2013). This exchange reflects the
male-defined representation of women’s bodies that Dunham subverts by
allowing women’s bodies to ‘speak’ for themselves.
TOWARDS POST? FEMINISM?

Although Girls and SATC are broadly ‘postfeminist’ and similarly focus on
life, love, and friendships of privileged white women, we have proposed
that the shows’ differences are equally significant. In this chapter we have
discussed how, unlike the ‘empowered’, upwardly mobile postfeminist
women of SATC, Dunham constructs a less optimistic vision of ‘empow-
erment’ for her characters in Girls. Thus, although SATC and Girls are
clearly postfeminist cultural texts, they are inflected differently. In Girls,
‘discourses of postfeminism and privilege are called up, largely to be
scrutinised’ (Bell, 2013, p. 363).
Through an analysis of the presentation of sexuality, reproductive
‘choices’, and feminine embodiment, we demonstrate that the women in
Girls experience ‘empowerment’ in new, arguably more complex ways.
Thus, we posit that Girls embodies a distinctive postfeminist sensibility by
re-articulating existing notions of postfeminism and by mobilising femi-
ninities and feminist attitudes in nuanced ways. This re-articulation builds
an argument for the continuing relevance of postfeminism and flags the
necessity of identifying ‘moments of rupture and refusal [ . . . ]’ (Gill,
2011, p. 64).
We propose that the term ‘post? feminism’ may be used to describe a
revised postfeminist sensibility. Rather than rejecting postfeminism, we
include a question mark to provide a focal point for questioning and re-
articulating the meaning, usage, and constituencies of postfeminism
today. For instance, ‘post? feminism’ is potentially useful in enabling a
dialogue around the challenges faced by a generation of young women
who are trying to position themselves between second-wave feminism and
postfeminism and in changed social, economic, and political contexts
(Baumgardner & Richards, 2000). The addition of the question mark
symbolises that feminist engagement with postfeminism is multiple and
shifting and that the breadth of issues involved in feminist identification is
much more complex today.
Is a post? feminist consciousness apolitical? Dunham shows that post-
feminism does not have to be apolitical and can be a site for critical
resistance (Adriaens, 2009). Dunham demonstrates that television can
advance the feminist adage that the ‘personal is political’ via her position
as an influential cultural figure. The show is a kind of millennial conscious-
ness-raising tool, and the addition of the question mark identifies the
generative potential of popular cultural forms like Girls and the
importance of articulating the ‘personal’ and ‘political’ in different ways,

as opposed to assuming that they are political or not, which is less
productive given the ‘plurality of positions and issues that constitute
feminisms today’ (Braithwaite, 2002, p. 342).
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Ruby Grant is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Tasmania in

Australia. Her research interests include gender, sexuality, and sociology of tech-
nology and the body.
Meredith Nash is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Tasmania in

Australia. She is an interdisciplinary researcher with particular interest in the fields
of feminist sociology of the body, health sociology, and human geography. She is
the author of Making Postmodern Mothers: Pregnant Embodiment, Baby Bumps,
and Body Image (2012, Palgrave Macmillan) and the editor of Reframing
Reproduction: Conceiving Gendered Experiences (2014, Palgrave Macmillan).
CHAPTER 6
Bad Sex and the City? Feminist

(Re)Awakenings in HBO’s Girls
Melanie Waters
In October 2015, it was announced that Lena Dunham was set to shoot
a comedy pilot for HBO about 1960s feminism. Only a few years ago,
the idea of a premium channel commissioning a show about feminism
would have been singularly unlikely, but now ‘feminism is suddenly hot’
(Morgan, 2014). With the success of feminist campaigns targeting
images of violence against women on Facebook, as well as a suite of
celebrity endorsements from Beyoncé and Jennifer Lawrence, media
speculation about the ‘death of feminism’ seems to be contradicted by
an emergent political mood. No longer dead or dying, feminism has
been hailed as entering a ‘new phase’, a ‘fourth wave’, reinvigorated by
the opportunities for political engagement, critique, and activism pre-
sented by the widespread accessibility of new online technologies and
social media (Cochrane, 2013).
When Girls premiered on HBO in March 2012 it was instantly hitched
to this ‘new’ feminist zeitgeist. The show was heralded by the Los Angeles
Times as ‘nothing short of revolutionary’ (McNamara, 2012). Dunham
was garlanded as feminism’s new poster girl, the ‘icon du jour’ set to ‘save
a generation’ (O’Porter, 2012). Freighted with such hefty cultural
M. Waters (*)
Department of Humanities, Northumbria University, Newcastle, UK
e-mail: melanie.waters@northumbria.ac.uk

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-52971-4_6
76 M. WATERS
significance, both Dunham and Girls became lightning rods for debates
about feminism, accumulating praise and censure in equal measure.
Much of the commentary generated by Girls has focused on the show’s
candid and controversial treatment of sex. Early reviews honed in on the
spectacle of Hannah (Dunham), whose ‘chubby’ body is subject to fre-
quent exposure, but many were equally preoccupied by the dynamics of
the sex itself, and by one now-notorious sex scene in which Hannah’s
boyfriend Adam (Adam Driver) imagines a bewildered-but-compliant
Hannah as an 11-year-old junkie-prostitute with a ‘Cabbage Patch lunch-
box’, whom he vows to send home to her parents ‘covered in cum’
(Season 1, Episode 2, ‘Vagina panic’). Reflecting on Hannah’s role as a
‘fleshy canvas’ for Adam’s ‘highly specific’ role-play fantasies, Bruni
(2012) queries the show’s feminist commitments, asking whether
‘Gloria Steinem went to the barricades for this?’ Talbot (2012), mean-
while, finds in Girls a reminder ‘that the sexual revolution is a done deal’,
as well as an important recognition that the freedoms associated with this
revolution – which include ‘solipsistic niche sex that takes its expectations
from porn’ – are not synonymous with a proportional increase in women’s
sexual pleasure or personal safety.
In this chapter, I analyse Girls’ investment in exploring the ‘gray areas’
of (hetero)sexuality that postfeminist texts – including the risqué Sex and
the City (1998–2004) – once glossed over or elided. Querying what is at
stake in this renewed frankness about sex and reproductive politics, I argue
that it is by identifying what distinguishes Girls from a previous generation
of female-centred fictions that we might better understand the evolving
currency of feminism in popular culture. Through reference to Berlant’s
work on the ‘intimate public sphere’ and its conceptual ‘rezoning’ of
‘public’ and ‘private’ (1997, p. 4), as well as to various media controversies
over Dunham’s ‘imperfect feminism’ (Valentini, 2015), I will sketch a
peculiar scenario in which Girls operates as a proxy site for unfinished
debates about gender inequality in which we are returned, once more, to
the abandoned battlegrounds of the feminist ‘sex wars’.
GIRLS
Feminist scholarship has dedicated many thousands of words to anatomis-
ing the figure of the girl in order to fathom her pervasive cultural influ-
ence. The girl is routinely instrumentalised within critical discourse as a
pulsating, inchoate embodiment of past, present and future: she is the
BAD SEX AND THE CITY? FEMINIST (RE)AWAKENINGS IN HBO’S GIRLS 77
offspring of past achievements, a ‘sign of the times’ and, simultaneously,

the mercurial symbol of feminist futurity, poised to capitalise on, or reject,
the feminist gains of previous generations. Driscoll explores the girl in
terms of this unique relationship to time, noting that ‘the feminine ado-
lescent has no past identity as herself and her future identity is divorced
from what she presently is; her historical identity is thus not ordered in
terms of duration’ (2002, p. 57). The status of the girl as a site of volatile
temporality is foregrounded by Hannah in the pilot episode when she
snaps at her parents: ‘I’m busy trying to become who I am’. By identifying
herself as a transitional subject, oscillating between an array of present and
future selves, each contingent and provisional, Hannah clarifies that the
business of being a girl is the business of change.
It is the ontological openness of the girl that makes her an ideal figure
through which to explore the conflicts and contradictions of second-wave
feminism and address its unfinished business. As an unfinished business
herself, the girl can explore ideas and experiences without committing to a
fixed understanding of what they mean. Through its female protagonists,
Girls investigates the legacies of controversial feminist debates about sex-
ual consent and abortion, which are, simultaneously, catalysts for femin-
ism’s most sustained campaigning and Girls’ most discussed storylines. In
doing so, it returns to arguments about the relationship between the
personal and the political, and to the impasse created by the oppositional
logic of ‘victim’ and ‘power’ feminisms. It does this, however, in a way
that is consistent with the girl’s symbolic openness: by orienting its repre-
sentations of sexual consent and abortion towards a re-ignition of debates
that prioritise the generation of questions over answers.
‘GRAY AREAS’ AND BAD NIGHTS

A structuring principle of Berlant’s thought is that ‘there is no public
sphere in the contemporary United States, no context of communication
and debate that makes ordinary citizens feel that they have a common
public culture, or influence on a state that holds itself accountable to their
opinions’ (1997, p. 3). The public sphere – evoked by Habermas as a
privileged zone between the private realm and the state where enfran-
chised citizens would once debate the political matters of the day (1991,
p. 30) – has been supplanted by an ‘intimate public sphere’, which
‘flourishes as a porous, affective scene of identification among strangers
that promises a certain experience of belonging’ (Berlant, 2008, p. viii).
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Describing the ‘national culture’ as one in which ‘intimate things’, includ-

ing pornography, sexuality, abortion, and reproduction, tend to ‘flash in
people’s faces’ (1997, p. 1), Berlant argues that there has been a ‘rezon-
ing’ of ‘public’ and ‘private’ in which the ‘transgressive logic’ of second-
wave feminism’s rallying cry, ‘the personal is the political’, has been
‘reversed and redeployed’ as ‘the political is the personal’ (pp. 177–8).
In this scenario, the space reserved for political debate is instead taken up
by scrutiny of what is otherwise deemed ‘personal’: ‘the core context of
politics’ being reduced to ‘the sphere of private life’ (p. 3).
Girls’ distinctive staging of intimacy confirms and complicates the
relationship between the personal and the political. On the one hand, its
(hetero)sexual optic is characterised by transparency: nudity and sex – with
jiggling flesh and synthetic effluvia – figure significantly in several episodes.
This putative aesthetic transparency is, however, countervailed by the
opacity of the politics. It is a show that seems to withhold the secret of
what these scenes mean. In other words, Girls is a series that seems to
show us a lot, but (riskily) resists classifying what it is we have – or think we
have – seen.
This idea is illuminated through reference to the show’s engagement
with sexual consent, which has been an important, if contentious, site of
affective identification within North American feminism. Enshrined in law
as the burden of responsibility that is placed on the victim of a crime,
consent – what it is and how it is signalled – is an emotive issue. As
Brownmiller (1976) explains, victims of sexual assault, unlike victims of
any other crime, need to prove that ‘they resisted, that they didn’t con-
sent, that their will was overcome by overwhelming force and fear’ because
‘the law has never been able to satisfactorily distinguish an act of mutually
desired sexual union from an act of forced, criminal sexual aggression’
(p. 384). Brownmiller’s logic patterns that of other path-breaking second-
wave works such as Millett’s Sexual Politics (2000 [1970]) and Dworkin’s
Intercourse (2007 [1987]), which query women’s ability to engage freely
in sex with men in a society where consent is obtained ‘through the
“socialization” of both sexes to basic patriarchal polities’ (Millett, 2000
[1970], p. 26). For MacKinnon, moreover, ‘the legal standard for [con-
sent] is so passive, so acquiescent, that a woman can be dead and have
consented under it’ (1991, p. 150).
It is around the problem of consent that second-wave feminism and
postfeminism came into contact in the early 1990s. For postfeminist
writers such as Roiphe (1994), Dworkin et al. are scaremongering
‘rape-crisis feminists’ who ‘reinforce traditional views about the fragility

of the female body and will’ through their ‘anachronistic’ figurations of
sex and power (pp. 71, 66). Pointing to a ‘gray area in which someone’s
rape may be another person’s bad night’, Roiphe complains that ‘we are a
culture infatuated with the idea of consent’, and that rape ‘has become a
catch-all expression, a word used to define everything that is unpleasant
and disturbing about relations between the sexes’ (pp. 54, xiv, 80).
The openness of consent to personal, public and judicial (mis)interpre-
tation means that questions about how best to codify, signal, obtain, and
recognise sexual consent remain urgent. It is precisely the elevated emo-
tional pitch of discussions about consent that makes its treatment in Girls
compelling. When, in the pilot episode, Hannah has sex with Adam, her
consent is implicit. She initiates physical contact when she kisses and
straddles Adam, but he controls how, where and when the sex happens.
Just as Hannah’s relationship with Adam is ill-defined, so is the nature of
her role in his erotic fantasies. His greeting of Hannah, with the words
‘Hey, doll’, is imbued with a magical performative energy that governs
how the ensuing sexual encounter unfolds. This encounter is choreo-
graphed by Adam: he poses Hannah’s limbs, removes her clothes, and
asks her to ‘play the quiet game’ when her chatter disrupts the verisimili-
tude of the erotic fantasy he is playing out using her body. Adam also
attempts to have anal sex with Hannah, much to her surprise. While
Hannah does vocalise her objections, which Adam respects, she is nervous
and apologetic about ‘only’ agreeing to vaginal intercourse. Her remain-
ing stipulation is that Adam wears a condom. The shadow of pornography
hangs over this scene, and over portrayals of heterosexual sex in the series
generally; the kind of sex Adam wants to have is more important than
the girl with whom he is having it, whose sexual desires remain unspoken
and (presumably) unfulfilled (Season 1, Episode 1, ‘Pilot’).
YES MEANS YES

With the recent introduction of affirmative consent – or ‘yes means yes’ –
legislation, designed to combat the ‘epidemic’ of campus sexual assault,
many US colleges require that an ‘affirmative, conscious and voluntary
agreement’ is made between individuals wishing ‘to engage in sexual
activity’ (Mendelson, 2014). As California Senate Bill 967 (2014) makes
clear, the standard of consent is high: ‘lack of protest or resistance does not
mean consent, nor does silence mean consent. Affirmative consent must
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be ongoing throughout a sexual activity and can be revoked at any time’.

By these standards, the sex between Adam and Natalia (Shiri Appleby) is a
model of good practice. Natalia – whom Adam dates briefly after his split
from Hannah – vocalises the terms of her consent unambiguously. Sitting
on the bed in her apartment, Natalia informs a surprised Adam that she is
‘ready to have sex now’. She sets out the parameters for the prospective
(consensual) sexual encounter in advance and without equivocation: ‘I’m
on the pill, but will you come outside of me just in case? And I don’t like
to be on top that much or soft touching, because it tickles me and takes
me out of the moment, but everything else is okay’ (Season 2, Episode 9,
‘On all fours’). Adam adheres to Natalia’s requests. When he tells her he
‘like[s] how clear’ she is with him, she responds incredulously: ‘What
other way is there?’ Adam and Natalia are not college students, and the
sex that they have does not take place on a university campus, but if
affirmative consent legislation sets the standard for consensual sex, then
it would seem that the standard would be met here. In Natalia’s ‘clear’
approach to sex, Girls self-consciously internalises the scripted model of
consent set out in legislation. What becomes apparent in later scenes,
however, is that no amount of verbal clarity can protect individuals
from the fuzzy kinetics of sex, or from sexual encounters that might be
identified as anything from confusing to criminal.
This first sexual encounter between Adam and Natalia provides the
viewer with a context for understanding the next. Considered alongside
one another, these scenes reveal the contingency, provisionality, and
temporariness of consent. When Adam and Natalia have sex a second
time, it is very different. Adam, a recovering alcoholic, has been drinking
at a party where he inadvertently encountered Hannah, and it is to his
darkly eccentric workshop-apartment, and not to Natalia’s cosy home,
that the pair returns. From the shadowy recesses of his ‘depressing’
home, Adam instructs Natalia to ‘[g]et on all fours’. When she asks,
incredulously, ‘And what?’, Adam repeats his demand emphatically: ‘Get
ON all fours’. The close-up of Adam’s darkened face, swallowing awk-
wardly, captures a flicker of regret as he commands Natalia to ‘crawl to
[his] bedroom’ and watches her acquiesce, dropping to her knees and
moving through the ‘nails and shit’ that litter the floor. Adam swoops
down and grabs Natalia, picks her up and throws her on the bed, explain-
ing that he wants to ‘fuck [her] from behind’. Natalia is evidently
surprised, but says this is ‘okay’. When Adam licks her from behind,
however, a close-up of Natalia’s face – visible to the viewer, but
inaccessible to Adam – suggests that this is not ‘okay’. In the space of a few
seconds, her face registers a spectrum of emotions, encompassing surprise
and discomfort, hesitancy and resignation. Natalia does say ‘no’, explain-
ing that she ‘didn’t take a shower today’, but Adam seems to interpret this
‘no’ as an apology, reassuring her ‘that’s fine’; in rapid succession he has
sex with her, pulls out, pushes her onto her back, masturbates, ejaculates
on her breasts (but only after Natalia exclaims, ‘No, no, not over my
dress’), and mops up the semen with an oafish wipe of his t-shirt (Season
2, Episode 9, ‘On all fours’). At least as messy as Adam’s apartment and
the sex itself, this scene’s politics are stubbornly resistant to tidying. The
question of what happened, and why it happened, is left unanswered
within the episode, but is available for discussion beyond the confines of
the small screen.
As Larcombe notes, consent is an especially fraught subject for law, in
part because the sexual act cannot be made available for retrospective
witnessing (2005, p. 5). Advice to prosecutors issued in a report on the
Model Penal Code, which is quoted by Freedman, states that women’s
testimony ought to be considered ‘in view of the emotional involvement
of the witness and the difficulty of determining the truth with respect to
alleged sexual activities carried out in private’ (2015, p. 274). The barriers
to sexual witnessing that frustrate lines of judicial investigation are con-
veniently set aside in television fictions. In Girls, the viewer becomes a
witness to intimacy: Dunham presents a scene that would usually be
expected to reveal the ‘truth’ of a contentious sexual encounter. Even
equipped with this privileged insight, however, the viewer is faced with the
‘difficulty of determining’ what happened, at least beyond any reasonable
doubt. The responses of Adam and Natalia acknowledge that a violation
has taken place. ‘I don’t think I like that’, Natalia divulges, before correct-
ing herself: ‘I really didn’t like that’. Adam’s clumsy apology, ‘I’m so
sorry, I don’t know what came over me’, makes clear that he knows he
has done something wrong – or at least that he knows he should act as if
he has done something wrong (Season 2, Episode 9, ‘On all fours’).
Again, lingering close-up shots of Adam and Natalia imply an awkward
discontinuity between what they say and what they feel. Adam’s affectless
apology and feigned ignorance about what ‘came over’ him are at odds
with his haunted expression, while Natalia’s attempt to control her trem-
bling lip suggests that she ‘did not like’ the sex more than she is able or
willing to articulate. While the series seems to shore this incident up in the
‘private’ zone of Adam’s bedroom, its lingering effects are hinted at in a
82 M. WATERS
scene from the subsequent season, in which Adam is confronted by Natalia

and her friend Angie (Amy Schumer). ‘Look what you did to her’, Angie
challenges. ‘She’s changed.’ If the dialogue is designed to imply that
Natalia has confided in Angie about why she might have ‘changed’, it
becomes apparent that this is not the case. What happened in Adam’s
room remains unspoken, but as Natalia gets angrier her rejoinders come to
focus exclusively on his sexual habits: ‘So you know what you have on your
hands here, right?’, an enraged Natalia warns Hannah. ‘You know that you
have an off-the-wagon Neanderthal sex addict sociopath who’s going to
fuck you like he’s never met you, and as if he doesn’t love his own
mother?’ (Season 3, Episode 1, ‘Females only’)
It is a testament to the secrecy and shame that swirls around sexual
assault that what happens between Adam and Natalia is never named: it is –
to appropriate the language Dunham used in relation to her own sexual
assault – a species of violation that ‘no one can classify properly’ (2014,
p. 64). The problem of defining Adam’s behaviour is reflected in the
speculative tenor of media reactions to the scene: ‘Was that a rape scene
in Girls?’ ran the headline of Slate (2013). Dunham (quoted in Whipp,
2013) acknowledged the controversy; first identifying herself as a ‘rabid
feminist’, she recognises that ‘no woman should ever be placed in a sexual
situation that leaves her feeling degraded or compromised’. She notes that
Adam is not a ‘villain’ and he ‘would be unable to live’ if ‘he thought he
had even touched the R-word’. ‘To me’, she concludes, ‘it seemed like a
terrible miscommunication between two people who didn’t know what
they really wanted’. Through this attentiveness to the unspoken, Girls
emphasises the importance of clear, synchronised verbal and non-verbal
signalling to the avoidance of sexual ‘miscommunication’, but it raises a
broader, structural question about why words spoken by some people (in
this case Adam’s sexual orders) are invested with greater authority than
those spoken by others (Natalia’s ‘no’).
As the volume and pitch of discussions about Girls attests, it – like Sex
and the City before it – operates as a ‘porous, affective scene of identifica-
tion among strangers’ that promises ‘a certain experience of belonging’ to
those whom it engages (Berlant, 2008, p. viii). The show’s emotiveness,
moreover, is attendant on its representation of ‘intimate things’ (Berlant,
1997, p. 1) – including nudity, masturbation, sex, cunnilingus, analingus,
erotic role-play, bodily fluids, gynaecological examinations, abortion –
through which it upholds the second wave’s abiding tenet that ‘the
personal is the political’. However, the scope of the show’s politics is
routinely undermined by media attacks on Dunham, whose private life is

invoked to damage the credibility of the (feminist) position she adopts.
Dunham’s implication in the insidious privatised politics that Berlant
(2008) identifies is evident in the controversy sparked by a ‘confession’
in her memoir that, as a 7-year old, she once ‘carefully spread open’ her
younger sister’s vagina to look inside (2014, p. 121). Labelled a ‘child
abuser’ and ‘rapist’, Dunham was the target of a vitriolic Twitter cam-
paign, #DropDunham, aiming to end her partnership with Planned
Parenthood and discredit her feminist politics. Dunham was exposed to
more criticism when, in the same memoir, she described a sexual assault
suffered while attending Oberlin College. Seizing on her own public
dismissal as a ‘rape hoaxer’ (Nolte, 2015), Dunham spoke out in support
of women who had been similarly denounced, including Emma
Sulkowicz, the Columbia University student whose alleged attacker
escaped punishment. If Dunham’s personal and political openness helps
to drag feminist issues into the spotlight, then there is also a sense in which
her revelations are mobilised against her to minimise or dismiss debates
around these issues. While Dunham’s provocative representation of con-
sent in Girls touches on larger questions about how structural inequalities
and the ‘pornification’ of Western culture might generate an environment
in which sexual misconduct is tolerated, the focus on Dunham and the
analysis of isolated, individual scenarios creates a situation in which these
more wide-ranging debates are endlessly deferred.
CHOOSING (THE RIGHT) CHOICE

If Dunham’s strategy for exploring consent in Girls hinges on the pre-
sentation of provocative scenarios that fuel debate outside of the show,
then her approach to abortion is directed towards bringing the debate to
the small screen. From the opening scene of Girls, in which Hannah makes
passing reference to a friend who had ‘two abortions, right in a row’
(Season 1, Episode 1, ‘Pilot’), to the blithe admission of Mimi-Rose
(Gillian Jacobs) to Adam that she ‘had an abortion’ the previous day
(Season 4, Episode 6, ‘Close up’), the series repeatedly breaks a silence
on abortion that we might now, with hindsight, regard as characteristic of
postfeminist culture in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
As Munford and I argue elsewhere (2013), abortion – though not entirely
absent from unwanted pregnancy plotlines in shows like Beverly Hills
90210 (1990–2000) and Desperate Housewives (2004–12) – is invoked
84 M. WATERS
specifically in order to be dismissed. In these fictions, which ‘seem to

valorize women who choose not to have abortions’, choice ‘is instrumen-
talized [ . . . ] as part of the discussion that takes place around unwanted
pregnancy’, before being redeployed ‘in ways that empty that rhetoric of
its original political import’ (p. 150). If abortion is a choice, it is not a real
possibility – at least for any sympathetic female character. Conversely, Girls
presents abortion as an option that is ‘real’, but also ‘realistic’.
The framing of abortion in Girls betrays a debt to feminist campaigns
for women’s access to free, safe and legal abortion, which have tended to
orbit acts of public sharing. From the Redstockings’ abortion speak-outs
in New York in 1969 to recent social media campaigns such as
#ShoutYourAbortion, women’s testimonies have figured prominently in
‘pro-choice’ discourses. By humanising abortion and allowing women to
explore the feelings to which it gives rise, ‘speaking out’ also assists in
efforts to de-stigmatise abortion. For Dunham, it is important that Girls
contributes to this effort: ‘it’s not just about making sure that abortion is
legal, it’s about making sure that abortion is without stigma and is not
something that women feel like they have to apologize for’ (HBO, 2015).
The show repeatedly places abortion within the range of normal female
experience and mentions it alongside other issues relating to women’s
reproductive health.
When, in the second episode of Girls, Hannah informs Adam that she
will be ‘accompanying a friend [Jessa] to her abortion’, he responds in a
way that reflects the overall tenor of abortion debates, that it is ‘kind of a
heavy fucking situation’. Hannah, however, refuses to accept Adam’s
dramatic rendering, asking ‘Is it really? I feel like people say that it’s a
huge deal, but how big a deal are these things actually? [ . . . ] I just mean,
what was she gonna do, have a baby and, you know, take it to her
babysitting job? It’s just not realistic’ (Season 1, Episode 2, ‘Vagina
panic’). Through this exchange, Dunham, who wrote the episode, begins
the process of querying the entrenched, oppositional thinking that stymies
real-world abortion debates. As the episode develops, she shatters taboos
around abortion. Not only does she take the sexual health clinic as the
episode’s primary venue, she insistently uses the word ‘abortion’ (often
euphemised or avoided entirely in television fictions) and emphasises
repeatedly that having an abortion might not be a ‘heavy fucking situa-
tion’, or, as Marnie (Allison Williams) puts it, ‘the most traumatic that can
ever happen to a woman’. As Jessa’s friends wait for her to arrive at the
clinic for ‘the beautiful abortion [Marnie] threw’, Jessa (Jemima Kirke) is
drinking at a bar, where – during a sexual interlude with a man she meets
there – she begins to bleed, making her appointment unnecessary. While,
at a narrative level, the unwanted pregnancy plotline (and deus-ex-
machina period) might initially seem to follow the evasive model of earlier
television fictions, the treatment of the topic does not. The fact that Jessa
does not have the abortion is almost incidental; her pregnancy functions as
an impetus for debate. It enables the series to establish a position on
abortion that will be developed in provocative ways across subsequent
seasons.
The importance of thinking about abortion in ‘realistic’ terms is sus-
tained in later episodes, and the procedure is consistently imagined in
relation to its alternatives. Just as Hannah imagined Jessa lugging a baby
to her babysitting job, Mimi-Rose challenges Adam to consider a hypothe-
tical world in which they had a baby: ‘Okay, so we should have the baby
and put it in your toolbox as a cradle and feed it sardines and tell it that
you don’t know my middle name?’ If images of babies accompanying their
mothers on babysitting jobs and taking naps in toolboxes conjure face-
tiously with the alternatives to abortion, then a rather darker alternative is
figured through Adam’s sister Caroline (Gaby Hoffman), who is so over-
whelmed by parenthood that she leaves her partner (Jon Glaser) and baby
daughter, explaining in a note that her ‘mind has been infected by hor-
rendous thoughts’ and ‘the best thing for everyone’ is for her to leave
(Season 5, Episode 8, ‘Homeward bound’). By accounting for what is
realistic, rather than idealistic, Girls rehabilitates the concept of choice in a
context where the hard-won legal victory of Roe vs. Wade (1973) is
consistently imperilled by conservative political forces intent on eroding
women’s reproductive freedoms.
As Franklin observes, the contemporary anti-abortion movement is
entangled with a ‘specific construction of fetal personhood’ predicated
on an emotive ‘visual discourse of fetal autonomy’ (1991, p. 196). For
Petchesky, the best way to counter the anti-choice discourse of foetal
personhood is ‘to restore women to a central place in the pregnancy
scene by creating ‘new images’ that place the foetus ‘back in the uterus,
and the uterus back into the woman’s body, and her body back into its
social space’ (1987, p. 287). The attempt to ‘restore women to a
central place in the pregnancy scene’ is a salient feature of representa-
tions of abortion in Girls, not least in ‘Close-up’, an episode in which
Mimi-Rose explains to Adam that she ‘can’t go for a run’ because she
‘had an abortion yesterday’. Adam, who in this scene ventriloquises
86 M. WATERS
aspects of anti-abortion discourses, demands to know who ‘aborted’

her. When Mimi-Rose replies, she deftly alters the semantic terms of
the conversation, stating that the ‘procedure’ was performed by ‘a
doctor named Guneta’, who delivered her cousin’s baby. Through
this casual detail, Mimi-Rose places abortion in proximity to childbirth,
implying that both are valid choices and exist within the range of
normal female experience. Undeterred, Adam then asks ‘Was it a boy
or a girl?’ Mimi-Rose’s disingenuous misrecognition of the object of
Adam’s question exposes an important distinction between a foetus and
a baby. Answering that her ‘cousin’s baby is a girl’, Mimi-Rose fore-
closes Adam’s attempt to position an embryo as a human: ‘It was a ball
of cells. It was smaller than a seed pearl. It didn’t have a penis or a
vagina’. In the seed pearl, Mimi-Rose furnishes Adam with an image
that runs counter to the visual discourse of foetal independence. The
seed pearl is used as a means of stressing the accidental nature of life, as
well as the pearl/embryo’s lack of autonomy and reliance on another
living organism for its own existence. Through Mimi-Rose, Dunham
recuperates the maternal body to debates about abortion and also
confronts the viewer with a creative, intelligent, successful woman
who exercises her ‘right to choose’, and does so independently.
While Dunham is routinely criticised for her feminism, analyses of Girls’
feminist credentials – whether arguing that the show is too feminist or not
feminist enough – seem to miss the point. As I have suggested, the show’s
power lies in its willingness to embrace the idea of an ‘imperfect feminism’
and to foreground the kinds of conflicts and contradictions by which
women and girls are perpetually confronted. By presenting the viewer
with scenarios in which feminism’s messiness is writ large, Dunham stres-
ses Girls’ powerful investment in questions and debate over answers and
consensus, continually reminding her audience that the greatest threat to
feminism lies not in criticism, but in silence.
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Melanie Waters is a Senior Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature at

Northumbria University in the UK. She is the co-author of Feminism and Popular
Culture: Investigating the Postfeminist Mystique (2013), the editor of Women on
Screen: Feminism and Femininity in Visual Culture (2011) and the co-editor of
Poetry and Autobiography (2011). She has also published essays on feminist theory,
the contemporary Gothic and twentieth-century women’s poetry.
PART II
Performing and Representing Millennial

Identities
CHAPTER 7
‘A Voice of a Generation’: Girls

and the Problem of Representation
Hannah McCann
Girls has garnered both praise and criticism since its inception in 2012.
Despite its relatively small US audience, Girls gained disproportionate
attention from feminist and media scholars, as well as popular media
commentators (Weitz, 2016, p. 218). This focus on Girls is seen in large
part as owing to its creation by a female auteur (Lena Dunham), a fact that
remains unusual in Hollywood (Nygaard, 2013; Woods, 2015). However,
as Woods argues, rather than being viewed as a particular take on the life
and times of young millennials in New York City, Girls has become under-
stood much more broadly as ‘a generational document’ (2015, p. 38). This
is despite the fact that the show’s creator, Dunham, self-reflexively high-
lights in the pilot episode that she is merely one voice among many.
Dunham’s character Hannah remarks, with some arrogance, ‘I think that
I may be the voice of my generation’, but then quickly adds, ‘Or at least a
voice of a generation’. Indeed Dunham has since commented on this issue:
‘It is a little challenging to me [the idea of being the voice of a generation],
because I’m so not representative of everyone in my generation’ (Kearney,
2012). However, it is the idea of being the generational voice that has been
adopted and assumed by media and many academic analyses covering Girls.
H. McCann (*)
Lecturer in Gender Studies, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
e-mail: hannah.mccann@unimelb.edu.au

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-52971-4_7
92 H. McCANN
The question that remains here is why Girls is seen as the ‘voice of a
generation’ despite Dunham’s suggestion that she is merely ‘a’ voice.
If we position Dunham as just one voice, and acknowledge the show’s
attempts to reflect upon the criticisms it has encountered, we might
wonder whether Girls carries more perceived cultural significance and
burden of failure in representing diversity than it deserves. We might
also wonder why Girls suffers for not exhaustively breaking down norma-
tive representational paradigms, when there are arguably other shows on
television that do not even go part of the way. The demands placed on
Dunham may be influenced by the fact that the show uniquely involves a
young woman creating stories about young women. She is not one among
many, but rather, one of the few female millennial voices on television.
Ironically, it may be because Dunham challenges some norms in the land-
scape of contemporary television, that there are greater expectations placed
upon her to critique other dominant norms reproduced in popular culture.
Further, as Nash and Grant (2015, p. 979) suggest, it is Dunham’s very
reflection on having anxiety about her voice that positions the show as
echoing the concerns of ‘a subset of millennial women’. Elevating the
importance of the show in this way means that both praise and criticism
levelled at the show infuse it with broad-reaching significance.
Here we see that Girls is stuck in a representational bind: not only is it
seen to epitomise a generation of girls of today – showing a bleak post-
feminist state of affairs according to many commentators (Bell, 2013;
Decarvalho, 2013) – but it also appears to fail at adequate representation
of the multitude of identities to be found in the real cosmopolitan world
(Daalmans, 2013). For the most part, Girls focuses on white, middle-class,
able-bodied, heterosexual women, and much criticism of the show has
focused specifically on the monoculturalism of the show. As Woods
(2015, pp. 44–5) outlines:
The early hype and critical discourse positioned Girls as an authentic,

original vision of young womanhood, yet voices emerged problematising
this idea [ . . . ] noting that its world seemed starkly familiar. The much-
vaunted display of disruptive, unruly femininity was wrapped up in a safe
white, upper-middle class, heterosexual milieu.
Criticisms of the show focus on whom Girls represents, or rather, doesn’t

make visible from Dunham’s generation. However, reflecting upon these
questions opens up a space for considering why we might make demands
GIRLS AND THE PROBLEM OF REPRESENTATION 93
about diverse representation in the first instance, and what we hope this
might achieve. Although Dunham has been responsive to her critics and
has integrated greater ‘diversity’ into her later series, on the whole the
show does not engage with critiquing the dominant ideological frame-
work of late capitalism, that positions white middle-class status as the
desirable yet unmarked norm. Here the issue is not only one of whom
the show represents, but also considering what contextual space ‘diversity’
appears within, and what narratives – and promises – are on offer. While
exercising care and recognising the disproportionate criticism Dunham
has received perhaps because she is a woman is important, this does not
mean the narrowness of the world of Girls should be ignored. The
abundance of criticism of Girls indicates a need to look more closely at
the general question of what representation can do. This leads to a
consideration of how to best articulate political demands in relation to
this space in order to effect transformation of the underlying issues of
inequality that give rise to concern for diversity in the first instance.
THE CASE FOR GIRLS

Arguably, there are some aspects to Girls that challenge the representation
of women that is expected on Western television. Girls negotiates space for
representing severe mental illness, enjoying male domination and female
submissiveness in sex, and offers a central protagonist who does not con-
form to feminine beauty standards around weight, dieting, and exercise.
Unlike its predecessor Sex and the City (SATC), which is overtly refer-
enced in the show, Girls involves female characters who are ‘similarly white
and entitled but unambitious, mostly unemployed, and financially
unstable’ (Nash & Grant, 2015, p. 979). Many popular media commen-
tators first praised the show for opening up conversations about sex,
bodies, and young people in contemporary society. For example, early
on in the show’s run there was a glowing review in Vanity Fair stating,
‘surely no one will chronicle these twentysomethings with the unsparing
intimacy and sympathy of Dunham’ (Oates, 2013). The New York Review
of Books described the sex scenes in Girls as ‘intelligent’, ‘astonishing’, and
‘exhilarating’ (Blair, 2012, p. 8). Reuters reported that ‘[Girls] is being
applauded as the most realistic portrait yet of young women, sex and
femininity’ (Kearney, 2012). Similarly, The Atlantic claimed ‘Girls offers
up a proposition that’s still audacious given our calcified ideas about
gender, body image, and age: that a girl with stomach fat and an STD,
94 H. McCANN
who is “unfit for any and all paying jobs” and has epically disastrous taste
in men, could turn out to be the voice of her generation’ (Rosenberg,
2012). We see most clearly in this last analysis from Rosenberg that the
positive reviews of Girls emphasise its representation of identity, specifi-
cally one previously unseen or marginalised on television: a young, over-
weight, sexually active woman with mental health issues, who is also the
hero of the piece. As several authors in this volume similarly suggest, Girls
appears to present a version of femininity that breaks down at least some of
the norms we have come to expect in mainstream viewing, offering them
in fresh combination and from the perspective of a young woman herself.
In contrast, academic commentary – even when reflecting positively on
the show – has focused very little on these ‘affirmative’ representational
aspects. This is despite the fact that one might expect these to be given
attention, given the long feminist tradition of critiquing norms of femi-
ninity with regard to bodies, health, appearance, and sexuality. Much of
the positive academic reflection on Girls has been created solely in defence
of the show against the specific complaints of its detractors, rather than
looking foremost to the unique or dynamic aspects the show might have
to offer (with the exception of, for example, Perkins, 2014; Weitz, 2016).
These reflections tend to preface their consideration with the disclaimer
that Girls does indeed fail at representation. For example, Bell states that
‘it is indisputable that more diversity would enrich and enhance Girls’
(2013, p. 363), though she goes on to provide an account of the feminist
aspects of the show. In response, some commentators have pointed out a
double standard between analyses of Girls versus shows that focus on
masculinity. As Fuller and Driscoll argue, ‘Girls is criticised for imperfectly
representing girls and their diversity, or for offering poor role models’,
while other shows face no such scrutiny (2015, p. 256). Here we are
reminded of the difficulty Dunham faces, as a voice that is not one
among many. While there is broader systemic failure in popular culture
in drawing from a diversity of voices, in opening up some space Dunham’s
text has become a focal point for criticism.
Fuller and Driscoll (2015) further point out the unachievable expecta-
tion placed on Girls by some critics: to be representatively exhaustive and
to be both diverse and show characters successful and positive in all
imaginable ways. Indeed, if we assume Girls actually ought to aim to
represent ‘everygirl’ (p. 255), then it fails for representing them as mono-
cultural and flawed women. However, we might consider how the possi-
bility of Girls achieving authentic (rather than tokenistic) and far-reaching
representation is a limited task from the outset. This is not only because
the demand is in itself inadequate – representation must be wholly
diverse, or avoid trying altogether – but because underlying the demand
are broader structural issues around racial and economic inequality that
cannot be entirely solved via representation.
THE PROBLEM WITH GIRLS

To understand the bind of the representational demands placed on Girls,
it is important to look at specific critiques circulating in both popular and
academic realms. These coalesce around two central concerns alluded to
already: Girls as monocultural – that is, misrepresentatively white and
middle-class – and Girls as depicting flawed women – that is, as portraying
anti- or postfeminist heroes.
The critique of Girls as postfeminist (e.g. Decarvalho, 2013) has been
addressed in detail by Fuller and Driscoll (2015, p. 261), who make the
persuasive case about the show that:
If its postfeminist context generates much of Girls’ most compelling narra-

tive content, using ‘postfeminism’ to dismiss Girls as offering only negative
stories about complicit fantasies locks the series into a story about feminist
social realism in which, paradoxically, all key girl characters should be role
models able to overcome the obstacles that pervade their everyday lives.
Here the point about the reductiveness of the demand for ‘feminist social
realism’ is that it would bind the show into only representing a very
narrow version of ‘successful’ or ‘good’ feminists, rather than complex
human beings who do not necessarily live up to such moral imperatives.
Dunham’s experience shows that this demand seems particularly aimed at
those who foreground their feminism. However, moving this critique of
‘social realism’ to the other major representational concern around
issues of race and class does not apply so neatly. Here we need to look
more closely to understand the specifics of the evaluation of Girls as
monocultural in order to comprehend why the demands for more diverse
representation in the show are: (a) understandable; but (b) limited given
the outcomes they seek to achieve.
The main concern to address here is that Girls shows a lack of diversity
in representing ‘real’ girls, focusing on white, upper-middle-class, young
women who do not reflect the multicultural population of the USA, or the
96 H. McCANN
financial struggles experienced by the majority in post-financial-crisis

times. Considering the realities of the socio-historical context in which
Girls is operating, these critiques, and the vehemence with which they
have been expressed, are understandable. For example, from 2009 to
2012, 34.5% of the US population experienced a period of poverty lasting
two months or longer (DeNavas-Walt & Proctor, 2015, p. 4). The 2010
US Census also revealed that at least 27.6% of the total population did not
identify as ‘white’ and that in New York, where Girls is set, this figure is as
high as 41.7% (Humes et al., 2011, pp. 4, 18). As such, the main cast of
four, white, middle-class, affluent girls (who are able to afford to live, love,
and have fun in New York despite their precarity), seems wildly divergent
from the reality of life for the majority in the USA. Girls presents itself as a
story of white women finding success despite the odds; they are flawed,
but they remain mobile.
In Season 2, Dunham responded to criticisms levelled around race by
adapting some of the show’s content. She introduces an African American
man, Sandy, as a love interest for Hannah. However, he is soon gone, and
Hannah continues finding her way despite being mostly unemployed, still
able to maintain living in New York. Unlike SATC, which is understood as
a pre-crisis fantasy seemingly lifted off the pages of Vogue, Girls is viewed
as a more realistic generational document, and is therefore expected to
present a grittier slice of New York life during darker times. However,
understanding the racial and financial aspects of American life that Girls
largely fails to represent, we see that it isn’t a radical divergence from
SATC after all. Girls also presents a fantasy out of reach of the majority of
the population.
If we understand Girls as fantasy rather than social realism, perhaps we
need not judge its failure to reflect the realities of life. However, while
Dunham has defended her representational choices on the basis that she is
merely reflecting the world she knows, this is a flawed response insofar as it
suggests that one can only speak from one’s own identity position. As
Alcoff (1992) suggests, it is not enough to simply avoid discussing identity
positions which are not one’s own, as this does not adequately confront
the issues that may arise in speaking on behalf of others. Rather, we must
speak with others, and engage in meaningful dialogue to address the issue
of speaking. Indeed, as Holmes (2012) points out, Dunham’s failure to
engage with questions of race isn’t just an issue of general ‘whitewashing’,
but also involves gross caricatures, such as the only black person included
in the first season playing a homeless man. Holmes (2012) writes: ‘I think
that what Dunham owes her audience, first and foremost, is not the fully
accurate representation of others’ experiences but the commitment to
avoid offering up crass stereotypes of anyone who doesn’t look like her’.
With this in mind, we ought not to defend Dunham on the basis that a
white privileged world is all that she knows.
However, we might pause here to consider what we are hoping to
achieve in demanding greater representational diversity from the show.
If we are hoping for a more accurate reflection of life to address the
inequitable racialised and classed dimensions of the real world – that is,
not just the inequities reproduced in the fantasy world of television – we
may have a problem. The concern about representation at all reflects the
idea that it can have real effects. As such, we need to consider the real-term
effects of being ‘erased from a narrative’ (James, 2012), one of the central
critiques made about the show.
Feminism has long been challenged for the experiences it has erased
during its various formulations. For example, in her germinal text,
Mohanty (1988, p. 80) importantly highlights that ‘homogenizing and
systematizing the experiences of different groups of women, erases all
marginal and resistant modes of experiences’. More recent attempts to
‘decolonise’ feminism have involved challenging the knowledge systems
that feminist theory has traditionally relied on, which have often particu-
larly overlooked the perspectives of people of colour, queer, and trans-
gender people (Hunt & Holmes, 2015, p. 159). The effect of erasure in
this sense is the suppression of diverse perspectives, such that what we
‘know’ and the politics that are formulated rely only on a very narrow set
of cultural voices. Further, Butler (1993, p. xiii) has argued that what is
absent or unthinkable is also what is cast out and made ‘unlivable’.
According to this perspective, impossible subject positions make norma-
tive subject positions possible because they constitute the inside/outside
of what is liveable. This is reflected in the popular idea that ‘you cannot be
what you cannot see’ (Faragher, 2016). Dunham attempts to ironically
engage with these kinds of issues from Girls’ second season onward,
revealing that at the very least – whether dealt with successfully or not –
these critiques have a cultural potency that cannot be ignored.
In all of these terms, it is possible to see why there is the sense that to be
left out of narrative is perceived as a dangerous act. Monoculturalism in
Girls perpetuates the dominant paradigm, continues processes of coloni-
sation, and marks what is not shown as radically unthinkable and therefore
unliveable. Here, narrative is seen to perpetuate dominant and thus
98 H. McCANN
life-limiting structures that carry over from fantasy to real life. This perspective
is exemplified in one of the strongest critiques of Girls titled ‘Dear Lena
Dunham: I exist’ (James, 2012), highlighting the perception of narrative
monoculturalism as a threat to survival. Here we must reformulate this
investigation to consider how changing representation makes life more ‘liva-
ble’. That is to say, we need to examine the demand that representations be
more representative on the basis of what kinds of outcomes may be achieved
through this avenue. While representations in popular culture may have real
effects, these effects may be more limited than the desired outcomes.
Changing representation may not address many of the dynamics of racial
and economic inequality which are in need of urgent social transformation.
However, if threats to one’s material existence occurring outside of the arena
of popular culture also compound the horror of representational erasure, this
indicates a need to widen our political demands and overall approach.
THE LIMITS OF REPRESENTATIONAL DEMANDS

Fraser (2005) tracks a shift in feminism in recent decades away from
politics concerned with redistribution – in terms of things such as material
wealth – to a politics of recognition – concerned particularly with empha-
sising differences of identity. As Fraser (1995, 1999, 2005) highlights, this
shift has involved a turn away from demands for equality of wealth and
public services, toward breaking down destructive and limiting cultural
norms. Fraser does not argue that the attention to recognition is in itself
problematic. Rather, she argues that it is myopic to focus only on repre-
sentation without concern also for redistribution. Rather than ‘deepening’
the feminist project, the focus on recognition has led to a thinning out, a
concentration on surface rather than depth (2005, p. 299). Fraser writes
that as feminist analyses began to change, even those attempting to engage
with both aspects often fell short:
subordination was construed as a problem of culture and dissociated from

political economy. The effect was to leave us defenseless against free-market
fundamentalism, which had meanwhile become hegemonic (p. 299).
Butler’s (1993) views concerning erasure and liveability go to the heart of

the new politics of recognition: acknowledgement of unique identity
positions is seen as key to being able to exist, to live in the world in the
position that one recognises oneself to be in. However, as Fraser (2005)
discusses, the demand for greater recognition does not engage with
questions of redistribution and the material circumstances of US wealth
disparity and racial discrimination. These underlying issues may be rele-
gated to the side in the popular focus on, and demand for, greater
representation. In the case of Girls, this demand is specifically around
visual representation on-screen. That is, recognition in popular culture is
seen as central to legitimating identity.
However, further to Fraser’s (2005) position, one might understand
how achieving more minority representation might obscure or deepen
underlying issues of inequality if diversity is forced into a fantasy world
rather than something that reflects social realities. This may engender what
Berlant (2011, p. 1) terms ‘cruel optimism’ or those positive ideas of the
future which human beings hold on to – promises of hope, attachment to
notions of the ‘good life’ particularly connected to late capitalism and
neoliberal ideology – which are in actuality antithetical to ‘flourishing’.
From this perspective, it is possible to understand how some stories in
popular culture contribute to the perpetuation of cruel myths of hope-
fulness, stories crucial to maintaining consent within an inequitable frame-
work. As Berlant (2011, p. 185) writes:
The hegemonic is, after all, not merely domination dressed more beco-
mingly – it is a metastructure of consent. To see hegemony as domination
and subordination is to disavow how much of dependable life relies on the
sheerly optimistic formalism of attachment. As citizens of the promise of
hegemonic sociability we have consented to consent to a story about the
potentialities of the good life around which people execute all sorts of
collateral agreement.
From this angle we can re-examine James’s (2012) critique of Girls,

which focuses on how black people are ‘erased from a narrative’, to
look more closely at what the dimensions of the ‘narrative’ are in the
first instance. We may find that to insert black characters into
Dunham’s story of white success despite the odds would merely com-
pound the cruel optimism already circulating in the show. The fantasy
of mobility presented by the show is intensified through the addition of
a racial element that suggests – with false hopefulness – ‘you too can
succeed against the odds!’
Indeed, this is what is presented in Season 2 (Episode 1, ‘It’s about
time’) with the introduction of the first, black, central character. Sandy is a
100 H. McCANN
Republican, a factor that later causes Hannah to part ways with him. His
Republican status reinforces that idea that ‘anyone’ can be a successful
middle-class conservative. Hannah and Sandy argue about race in their
final scene together, and viewers are exposed to blatant commentary from
Dunham on the issue of representing race, as she responds through her
character to the racial critiques directed at the show. With open irony
revealing Dunham’s engagement with the critique of race, Hannah com-
ments to Sandy, ‘The joke’s on you, because you know what? I never
thought about the fact that you were black once’. Though this scene
might be cringe-inducing as we see Dunham/Hannah clumsily negotiat-
ing the issue of race, the inclusion of the character Sandy also (perhaps
inadvertently) reveals the limitations of representation for effecting trans-
formation. Inserting a black character into the world of privilege and
mobility enjoyed in Girls doesn’t solve any ‘real-world’ issues of inequal-
ity. If anything, this scene throws into sharper relief the difficulty of
effectively grappling with questions of inequality within a broader context
of representational fantasy and hopefulness.
Hunt and Ramon (2015, p. 2) note that between 2012 and 2013, black
men were over-represented, relative to proportion of the population, in
broadcast and cable scripted shows, and that racial stereotypes in repre-
sentations of diversity were largely absent. Yet, as the US National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People attests, ‘one in
three black males born today can expect to spend time in prison during
his lifetime’ (2016). While we cannot draw a direct link between incar-
ceration rates and the representation of black men, putting these figures
alongside each other suggests that what is happening on-screen is not
necessarily connected with what is happening for people in real terms.
Perhaps Girls has faced such intense criticism over its lack of racial diversity
because the screen – here, a nominally ‘progressive’ television series –
seems like such a relatively simple realm within which to address inequality
around issues of race, when circumstances off-screen are so dire. In other
words, some may feel that although problems of redistribution and mate-
rial inequality may be too difficult to readily overcome, popular culture
appears to be a space that can be transformed simply by including a greater
range of people. Indeed, this realm is often understood as the key to
redressing inequality, leaving aside discussion of material inequality alto-
gether. For example, Hunt and Ramon (2015, p. 46) claim that ‘Given
that our society is becoming more diverse with each passing day, media
images that work against diversity also undermine the democracy we claim
to be’. From these perspectives, links are drawn that directly connect
democracy with representation. However, working from the basis of
Fraser’s critiques of recognition, this is an association one should be
more sceptical about, in terms of what can actually be delivered through
this medium. All of this is not to deny the effects that diverse representa-
tion might engender, particularly for individuals who can find themselves
reflected and thus legitimated through texts. However, it is to heed
warnings about the potentially cruel promises that may be propagated
through popular representations, and the material inequalities that may
be concealed in this process.
CONCLUSION: SIGNIFICATION/SIGNIFICANCE
As suggested at the beginning of this chapter, the central critiques of Girls
focus on whom it fails to represent. The focus here is on absence, who
cannot be imagined within the world presented, and why representation
ought to be diversified. As discussed, representation is seen as a vital part
of the politics of recognition. From this basis we can better understand
why Girls, painted as the holistically demonstrative ‘voice of a generation’,
is criticised so heavily for not exhaustively representing diversity. Girls is
expected to represent the realities of life for young people today. As
Wortham (2012) wrote in the widely circulated piece ‘Where (my) girls
at?’, after the first episode aired, ‘They are us but they are not us. They are
me but they are not me’. While Girls breaks down some representational
norms in terms of body shape and sexual enjoyment, the characters’
storylines largely do not reflect the racial and economic dimensions of
life experienced by the majority of Americans in post-financial-crisis times.
As Daalmans writes, in the ‘recessionary era [ . . . ] it fails to actually step up
to the plate as the televisual voice of my generation’ (2013, p. 361).
The demand for shows such as Girls to be more realistically repre-
sentative needs to be interrogated further because the level of political
significance invested in the stories we tell warrants careful considera-
tion. While Dunham may have been wise to more thoroughly engage
with questions of representation rather than dismiss them as tangential
to her experience, we might also keep in mind why and how Dunham
has been particularly targeted as ‘the’ voice of a generation. Focusing
on Girls without looking at the wider picture of US popular culture,
and indeed systemic inequalities broadly, misses the deeper underlying
issues. The cruel optimism produced within popular culture more
102 H. McCANN
generally deserves attention, wherein we must consider not only whom

is being represented but within what broader narrative they are being
inserted and what effects this might produce outside of a representa-
tional realm. This is not to make a case for arguing against diverse
representation per se, but rather suggests attending more closely to
demands around representation, which texts are imbued with a high
level of significance, and what it is hoped they might achieve. This
ought not to absolve Girls from critical analysis in terms of its depic-
tions, but instead might force closer examination of Western cultural
narratives of success and mobility. Here one can see shows like Girls as
specific reflections of a cruelly optimistic world, and in a more tem-
pered way understand the representation of what is imaginable in this
context. What lies at the heart of demand for recognition, and what the
real effects of representation are in terms of making life more liveable,
remain pressing questions.
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Oates, J.C. (2013). Lena Dunham. Vanity Fair. Retrieved from http://www.
vanityfair.com/hollywood/2013/02/joyce-carol-oates-lena-dunham.
Studies in Television, 9(3), 33–43.
Rosenberg, A. (2012, April 11). Girls: A frank, funny look at 20-somethings,
genital warts and all. The Atlantic. Retrieved from http://www.theatlantic.
com/entertainment/archive/2012/04/girls-a-frank-funny-look-at-20-some
things-genital-warts-and-all/255744/.
Weitz, R. (2016). Feminism, post-feminism, and young women’s reactions to
Lena Dunham’s Girls. Gender Issues, 33(3), 218–234.
104 H. McCANN
Wortham, J. (2012, April 16). Where (my) girls at? The Hairpin. Retrieved from
http://thehairpin.com/2012/04/where-my-girls-at/.
Hannah McCann is a Lecturer in Gender Studies at the University of

Melbourne in Australia. She completed her doctoral work as the Inaugural
Gender Institute PhD Scholar at the Australian National University. Her research
explores feminine gender presentation as represented in feminist discourse
and in queer femme LGBTQ communities. She has published in the Australian
Humanities Review, Australian Feminist Studies, Women’s Studies Quarterly, and
on The Conversation, writing on topics including postfeminism, affect theory,
queer femininity, and Fifty Shades of Grey. In 2015 her comic explainers Judith
Butler Explained with Cats and Foucault Explained with Hipsters were exhibited
in the German Historical Museum show “Homosexuality_ies” in Berlin.
CHAPTER 8
HBO’s Girls and Twenty-First-Century

Education
Laura Witherington
Although Girls (2012– ) protagonist Hannah Horvath (Lena Dunham)

does not return to graduate school until the fourth season, the first three
seasons find Hannah and her friends discussing their educational pedi-
grees, their academic credentials, and their expectations that will yield
both intellectually satisfying and financially rewarding professional
employment. Yet despite impressive academic accomplishments, the
women in Girls linger in a post-pubescent limbo as flagged by the series
title. The series explores education as part of its investigation of millennial
bildungsroman whereby the characters grapple with the realisation that
time spent at prestigious universities has not contributed toward their
personal growth or job opportunities.
Hannah and her friends (Marnie Michaels, Shoshanna Shapiro, and Jessa
Johansson) stall in their progress toward professional goals. Their profes-
sional inertia, coupled with the series’ title, suggests they are trapped by
their immaturity, and their insistence on nostalgically citing their university
accolades as proof of former accomplishments implicates tertiary education
as complicit in their stunted growth. Their university experiences have not
prepared them for successful adulthood, yet, although they are bereft of the
L. Witherington (*)
Department of English, University of Arkansas - Fort Smith, Fort Smith,
Arkansas, US
e-mail: laura.witherington@uafs.edu

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-52971-4_8
106 L. WITHERINGTON
sort of skills that translate into steady compensation, they seem to have
acquired other less tangible (or marketable) skills. Several critics have noted
that Girls seeks to comment on a particular millennial mindset, or a zeitgeist
of youth in the early twenty-first century (e.g. Daggett, 2014; Lehman,
2014). Beyond criticising humanities-educated millennial idealism and
over-confidence, the series comments on education bureaucracy, education
ethics, and the education profession.
A viewer who finds the characters’ over-confidence off-putting is not
alone. As several other authors in this volume have noted, since its first
season, Girls has been criticised for its superficiality and its unlikeable
characters. Rowles (2012) writes, ‘the problems of these women are not
something with which I can relate. They’re not just First World Problems:
They’re Rich People Problems, and the 99 per cent has serious resentment
for rich white people, and the kind of entitlement endemic to the women
of Girls is even more problematic than the fat cats, Wall Street brokers, and
CEOs we typically associate with wealth’. However, instead of inviting us
to like the characters, the series actually asks its audience to recognise their
flaws, and posturing about university credentials invites audience censure.
Watson (2015, p. 2) describes Girls as ‘awkward’ and ‘divisive’ because it
attempts to ‘surpass aesthetic norms into uncharted dramatic territory’.
Hannah’s elitist perspective on higher education cannot be conflated with
the show’s perspective, just as narrator, character, and author should not
be conflated. The viewer’s narrative alienation from Hannah’s character
allows the audience to criticise her arrogance and examine our own
responses to shifting the cultural artefacts into a hegemonic structure
that privileges some universities above others.
The context for the consideration of education in Girls is complex.
Every aspect of twenty-first-century US education from birth through
doctoral studies is politicised, debated, critiqued, documented, assessed,
and analysed in popular media and scholarly studies. Primary and secondary
education (grades K–12) have not necessarily prepared students sufficiently
for the workforce. For instance, a New York Times assessment of 2013
Labor Department statistics highlighted that ‘Americans with four-year
college degrees made 98 per cent more per hour on average [ . . . ] than
people without a degree’ (Leonhardt, 2014). This suggests that a US high
school education is unlikely to yield the standard of living to which most
millennials aspire. Additionally, the current growth in student debt and the
loan default rate has drawn public attention to the role, not just the quality,
of higher education. The humanities and social sciences, in particular, have
HBO’S GIRLS AND TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY EDUCATION 107
drawn fire for failing to prepare university graduates to enter productive

professions. For example, Inside Higher Ed reports that 2016 presidential
candidate Jeb Bush suggested that a psychology (or philosophy) major is
likely to put a graduate behind the counter at a fast food restaurant, while
Florida governor Rick Scott criticised the numbers of anthropology majors
and exhorted universities to address the problem (Logue, 2016).
In this chapter, I argue that Girls enters these debates through its student-
centric, graduate-centric portrayal of highly educated young adults whose
majors in the humanities have left them lost and disillusioned, under-
employed, and frustrated. In particular, I am interested in the ways Girls
critiques white academic privilege and the concomitant assumption that
credentials from highly ranked universities will provide access to professional
success without additional sacrifice, compromise, and investment. Through
an examination of the effects of education, Girls asserts that the purpose of
education is to guide students in establishing an adult identity detached from
parental authority, but the education systems have failed, in part, because the
characters’ white privilege handicaps their learning and maturity.
PEDAGOGY OF THE PRIVILEGED

The concept of privilege is germane to a discussion of higher education
through the class signifiers that characters leverage. The white privilege in
Girls reifies McIntosh’s (1989, p. 1) metaphorical ‘invisible backpack’ of
unearned advantages that can include ‘assurances, tools, maps, guides,
codebooks, passports, visas, clothes, compass, emergency gear, and blank
checks’. Dialogue in Girls often centres on university credentials which the
characters hope will act as passports into the realm of professional success.
The US Census Bureau (2015) reports that in 2014, 28.8 per centof the
nation’s population aged 25 and older had obtained a bachelor’s degree.
This figure is more revealing when race is accounted for: 36 per cent of
whites, 22 per cent of African Americans, and only 15 per cent of Hispanic
Americans hold bachelor’s degrees. Girls’ focused attention on higher
education establishes a separate stratum of privilege that falls along racial
divides, especially since the universities named are real ones, whose non-
fictional ranking and cultural capital register with a particular class of US
viewers who themselves must possess the requisite cultural capital to inter-
pret the implied rankings. Included in the list of universities attended by
characters are Oberlin College and the University of Iowa, Hannah’s under-
graduate and (brief) graduate school homes. Others include Harvard
108 L. WITHERINGTON
University, Columbia University, Barnard College, New York University

(NYU), City University of New York system (CUNY), Rhode Island School
of Design, Michigan State University, and Iowa State University. For the
purposes of this discussion, it is important to note that the demographic
profiles of the institutions that dominate the series, Oberlin and University
of Iowa, are 70 per cent white, making them part of the system that further
stratifies races by educational attainment (Collegefactual.com, 2016).
Girls assigns each mentioned university a place in an heuristic of aca-
demic distinction so that characters’ association with the institutions can
reveal their privileged biases. As Bourdieu (1984) explains, all cultural
products ‘yield a profit in distinction proportionate to the rarity of the
means required to appropriate them, and a profit in legitimacy, the profit
par excellence, which consists of the fact of feeling justified in being (what
one is), being what it is right to be’ (p. 228). Oberlin’s acceptance rate of
around 30 per cent belies the challenge of paying its steep tuition costs,
near USD$50,000 a year (US News and World Report, 2016). The com-
bination of selectivity and cost create an aura of exclusivity compounded
by its emphasis on humanities, not workforce preparation. As I will discuss
later, university study of the liberal arts is branded in Girls as a luxury
available only to the leisure class. Instead of elevating the thinking of all
university students, humanities and liberal arts represent the vain interest
of rarefied navel gazing. Oberlin’s liberal arts emphasis along with its cost
and selective admission process connote Hannah’s, Marnie’s (Allison
Williams), and Jessa’s (Jemima Kirke) class (and the class of their some-
time boyfriends Charlie [Christopher Abbott] and Elijah [Andrew
Rannells]) and previous academic preparation.
Similarly, Hannah’s admission to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in
Season 3 signals her access to levels of support that many adults lack.
When she announces to Marnie that she has been accepted, Marnie
replies, ‘Oh my god! Are you . . . oh my god! This is the best . . . .
That’s the best MFA program in the world!’ (Episode 13, ‘Two plane
rides’). Marnie’s instant recognition of Iowa’s eminence in US graduate
writing programmes communicates different understandings to different
audiences: to those uninitiated in the complexities of higher education
ranking, Marnie’s exclamation is exposition. To the initiated, her quick
assessment of Iowa’s distinction and status bestows upon Marnie member-
ship of the group who understands the signifiers of not just university
rankings, but programme rankings. Marnie’s preoccupation with pro-
gramme status, not the opportunities afforded Hannah, demonstrates
that she has the luxury of prioritising rank above actual potential results of
Hannah’s attendance there.
These two universities are the most significant to the action of Girls,
but the long list of other institutions changes the landscape of under-
standing with each addition. Bourdieu writes: ‘Thus the tastes actually
realized depend on the state of the system of goods offered; every change
in the system of goods induces a change in tastes’ (1984, p. 231).
Following this, the universities mentioned can be sorted into two groups:
those that imbue status, and those that imply a certain failure or lacking. In
terms of status and international recognition, the higher ranking group
includes Harvard, Columbia, Barnard, NYU, and Rhode Island School of
Design (RISD). For example, in ‘Role – play’ (Season 3, Episode 10),
Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet) tricks Jasper (Richard E. Grant) and Jessa into a
dinner with Jasper’s estranged daughter in an attempt to re-engage Jasper
in his former life so he will leave Jessa and Shoshanna in peace. The
daughter Dottie (Felicity Jones) reminds Jasper of his better, sober self,
and Shoshanna bolsters her argument by bragging about Jasper’s innate
fathering skills: ‘Seriously, Dottie graduated cum laude from Barnard’.
Shoshanna’s argument could be interpreted as self-interested, as she believes
ridding Jessa of Jasper will make the shared apartment calmer, but her
expression seems genuine, as if she truly believes Dottie’s university
accomplishments reflect successful parenting from Jasper.
Another example of the impact of university distinction is Hannah’s
stalker-ish research of Mimi-Rose Howard (Gillian Jacobs), the girlfriend
Hannah discovers living with Adam when she drops out of the Iowa
Writers’ Workshop (Season 4, Episode 4, ‘Cubbies’). Hannah’s online
research and consultation with Jessa reveal that Mimi-Rose graduated
from RISD with a Bachelor of Fine Arts with an emphasis in sculpture.
Mimi-Rose’s ‘Visiting Artist Keynote Address’ (Episode 5, ‘Sit-In’) is
archived on YouTube, and Hannah’s irritation at its topic and quality is
clear. She is also annoyed that Mimi-Rose is an alumna of such a respected
university. Its place in Bourdieu’s ever-shifting ladder of distinction disrupts
Hannah’s perceived status hierarchy among her friends. Bourdieu (1984)
argues that status and distinction conform to structuralist relativism.
Hannah’s forced introduction of RISD into her personal hierarchy of social
judgement disrupts her own place in the system. She has been harbouring
an optimistic schadenfreude in which she has already constructed a narrative
history for the beautiful Mimi-Rose that excludes an educational back-
ground comparable to her own, but when she discovers that Mimi-Rose’s
110 L. WITHERINGTON
degree is prestigious and mirrors her own liberal arts background, Hannah’s
desire to remain atop an intellectual hierarchy is dashed.
Other universities like Harvard and Columbia are mentioned as asides
in ways that comment on a character’s status and introduce them as
additional items in the ‘system of goods’ (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 231).
While job seeking, Shoshanna derides the interviewer: ‘Harvard alum
makes good. That is such an exciting story’ (Season 4, Episode 6,
‘Close-up’). Her derision expresses her frustration with the job hunting
experience, but also her jealousy of the young interviewer’s success, con-
sidering her own difficulties trying to graduate and then, upon graduation,
her trouble finding employment. Similarly, Columbia University figures
in Adam’s anecdote of being dumped when he was 22. He shares the story
to console and advise Marnie in Season 3:
She was both Colombian and went to the University of Columbia. And she
was beautiful, and she was smart, and she was related to Gabriel Garcia
Marquez. And just as fast as we fell in love, she disappeared. And I knew she
had just used me. You know, she was an intellectual, and I was a thug,
(Episode 1, ‘Females only’).
Adam’s emphasis on his girlfriend’s academic credentials demonstrates his

understanding of how status works. He also introduces, at least tangen-
tially, the concept of a smart, college-educated character who is potentially
not ‘white.’ Although situating himself as a ‘thug’ in the anecdote rings
false – not many thugs have degrees in comparative literature – we find also
that this woman rejects him, and that, in his mind, distinction through
class is dependent, at least in part, on university affiliation.
Another prestigious university, NYU, is featured over several seasons
through Shoshanna’s matriculation. The youngest of the four titular girls,
Shoshanna is the only one whose undergraduate travails comprise part of
the plot of the series. Initially studious, by the third season, following her
break-up with Ray (Alex Karpovsky), Shoshanna decides to alternate
‘nights of freedom with nights of academic focus’ so that by the end of
her undergraduate career, she will have accumulated ‘both experiences’
(Episode 1, ‘Females only’). Throughout the season, Shoshanna is shown
crawling from the bunk bed of an unidentified lover’s dorm, wearing a
hoodie and sunglasses to take a nap in the library, and then later struggling
to regain her lost study skills after Jessa returns from rehabilitation and
becomes her roommate again. Eventually, she faces the consequences of
her neglected studies when her ‘glaciology professor decided to fail’ her
(Episode 12, ‘Two plane rides’). The problem is resolved in the first five
minutes of Season 4, though Shoshanna’s parents may have intervened on
her behalf. They accompany her to a cashier’s desk at NYU where she
completes some documentation, is told she will receive her diploma in six
to eight weeks, and poses for photographs with her parents who hover
dotingly over her and bicker with each other. They are the stereotypical
US ‘helicopter’ parents who infantilise their daughter throughout univer-
sity studies (Lum, 2006). Lum (2006) acknowledges that helicopter
parents tend to be white and are almost non-existent in historically black
universities. Shoshanna’s parental intervention marks her participation in a
system that allows white parents to rescue their challenged offspring.
Shoshanna’s NYU experience, along with allusions to Oberlin and the
Ivy League, contrasts with a second tier of universities that are also men-
tioned in passing, and convey diegetic meaning to characters and scenes
through their lower status. Included in the second tier are Michigan State
University (MSU) and CUNY. For example, in ‘I Saw You’ (Season 3,
Episode 11), Elijah begs Hannah for permission to tag along to her dinner
with Broadway star Patti LuPone. Patti and her fictitious husband Peter
(Reed Birney) are gracious hosts. Peter confesses that he is a professor in
the CUNY system,1 a detour from his dream of being a writer. He explains
that he abandoned writing when he began teaching, and Patti compounds
the shame of his career choice by exclaiming, ‘The worst thing you can do
is subjugate your passion’. The awkward conversation casts his career as a
professor as a failure as he has abandoned his writing dreams and accepted
a position in a less prestigious university system, suggesting that university
employment is a default, but not a first-choice career.
MSU is another second-tier university that figures prominently in the
series and confirms that the young characters consider university employ-
ment to be a fall-back career, not an aspiration. Although Loreen Horvath
states that she and her husband are university professors in the pilot
episode, we do not learn where they teach until ‘The return’ (Season 1,
Episode 6). When they collect Hannah from the airport, Loreen nudges
Hannah into moving home by hinting, ‘We were just hearing that MSU
was looking for a post-graduate fellow to organise visiting lectures and
folks who come for lectures. Doesn’t that sound like an interesting job?’
Her parents hope that she will abandon her attempts to become a writer in
New York and settle for more stable employment. Hannah does not take
the bait, though later she flirts with a local pharmacist, Eric (Lou Taylor
112 L. WITHERINGTON
Pucci), whose collegiate affiliation seems clear from the Michigan State
bumper sticker glued to the cash register. Eric, too, tries to convince
Hannah to move back to East Lansing but Hannah resolutely identifies
herself as too sophisticated for suburban life after her New York experi-
ences. Despite her phone call to Adam when she expresses a desire to move
to East Lansing and ‘start the revolution’, her condescension for every-
thing in her home town is a case of New York exceptionalism that is also
critical of MSU as part of Midwest bourgeois mediocrity. MSU is impli-
cated by its suburban location, but also by its status in the university
structure – not top tier and not a liberal arts college.
In addition to its examination of the cultural importance of universities,
the series enters the debate over the role of liberal arts in the twenty-first
century by discussing the value of different majors and courses. As an
English major, Hannah is not employed in the type of job she wants, even
though she seems unsure what that would be. In the pilot episode, Adam
claims his degree in comparative literature ‘hasn’t done shit’ and his wood-
working is more ‘honest’. Similarly, Ray complains about his USD$50,000
of student debt, which we later discover was accumulated pursuing a PhD in
Latin Studies, though he works in a café. A minor character flaunts the USD
$80,000 spent on a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in theatre as proof of
dramatic talent (Season 3, Episode 7, ‘Beach house’), and Mimi-Rose’s
BFA hasn’t led to a successful career, despite Hannah’s initial jealousy of her
rival’s Internet fame. In contrast, Hannah’s cousin Rebecca has made her
extended family ‘very proud’ (Season 3, Episode 9, ‘Flo’) by entering
medical school, and Rebecca’s uptight response to Hannah’s light-hearted
gibes suggest her approach to life differs significantly from that taken by the
other women in Girls. She insists that the 15 hours she spends studying each
day is hard work, something that she does not believe Hannah understands.
Her future medical degree promises greater success than the liberal arts
degrees earned by the protagonists. Hannah, Adam, Ray, and Rebecca
harbour a romanticised view of hard work and paying one’s dues. They
each seem to expect that temporary discomfort, in Hannah’s case, for
example, as an intern and then barista, will soon allow them to transcend
the pedestrian and acquire the positions that white academic privilege makes
their right. Even Adam, in his ‘more honest’ work, continues to audition for
and write plays, not abandoning his artistic ambitions.
To emphasise the esoteric nature of liberal arts study, characters occa-
sionally reference their coursework, including Middle Eastern studies,
sports therapy, introduction to Hinduism, seventeenth-century European
notions of utopia, origami expression, and glaciology. Lewin (2013) has

noted the declining number of students entering majors in the humanities.
The Chronicle of Higher Education questions the fate of humanities degrees
so often that one can expect to see the topic appear at least monthly on its
website. The obscure names of the courses bandied about in Girls suggest
that universities cater to dilettantes who are not interested in valuable work-
force preparation. Professors in the courses would likely argue that the
foundation material necessary to reach synthesis in the course justifies the
misleadingly narrow title. A course in seventeenth-century European notions
of utopia surely would address European history, literature, and philosophy as
a way to scaffold instruction. Still, the series projects an image of characters
who have squandered their education resources upon caprice.
SWITCHING SIDES OF THE CLASSROOM

Hannah’s segue from graduate school into becoming a teacher herself in
Season 4 leverages her privilege and a dangerous cliché. After a bizarre set
of circumstances in which she manipulates her date Fran (Jake Lacy) into
attending Mimi-Rose’s performance exhibit, Mimi-Rose and Hannah end
up in a confessional heart-to-heart, and Hannah shares what may be her
biggest fear of reaching adulthood: ‘Now I’m going to have a boring life,
like my mother’s, be dissatisfied. I’m going to be normal. Do you think I
want to be normal? I just wasn’t talented enough . . . ’ (Episode 7, ‘Ask me
my name’). Hannah fears becoming her mother as she sees herself as
exceptional. Her mother, an employed academic in English, is the norm.
The episode title ‘Ask me my name’ refers to the performance exhibit
created by Mimi-Rose where visitors are assigned identities to assume
along with blue aprons emblazoned with their fictional name. It also
emphasises identity and Hannah’s epistemological search for understand-
ing her self, her place in her family, and her place in the adult world. If she
fears becoming her mother, it is for good reason. Like her mother,
Hannah has been romantically involved with a closeted gay man, holds a
degree in English, and has tried and failed to write a book. It’s worth
considering, though, whether Loreen leads a boring, unsatisfying, normal
life. What is it Hannah fears so much, and how does becoming like her
mother threaten the security of her privilege?
As noted earlier, Loreen and Tad Horvath (Peter Scolari) are professors
at MSU. Loreen seems to be an English professor from her declaration
in Season 2 that the ‘awesome conference’ she has been attending in
114 L. WITHERINGTON
New York City has allowed her to meet ‘so many women who feel the way
I do about Ann Patchett’ (Episode 8, ‘It’s back’). Tad’s specialty is not
mentioned, but he, too, is a tenure-track professor as we find when Loreen
accuses him of being jealous of her attainment of tenure before him. The
tenure celebration at Avi (Fred Melamed) and Shanaz’s (Jackie Hoffman)
house is an awkward throwback to 1960s counter-culture swinging
parties, as Avi attempts and fails to seduce Loreen. The title of the episode
‘Tad & Loreen & Avi & Shanaz’ (Season 4, Episode 8) is homage to the
1969 film Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, and as the classic film is also a
comedy that ends in a failed partner switch, the comedic outcome in Girls
aligns with the expectations the series has set for awkwardly realistic sexual
encounters. Loreen laughs at Avi and declines his kisses, despite her
frustration with Tad’s recent epiphany of sexual identity.
Attending conferences in New York and swinging parties suggests a
much more exciting life than the Horvaths generally lead. Their home in
Michigan is solidly middle-class, and it’s the middle class of realist televi-
sion, not aspirational consumerist décor (see also Witherington, 2014,
pp. 135–6) even though Loreen dreams of using the money saved from
cutting off support to Hannah to purchase a lake house (Season 1, Episode
1, ‘Pilot’). Their habits are not expensive, but the series neglects to show
them at work. If they live lives of professorial ease, they don’t seem ever to
teach, or research, or write, or work on committees. This is in contrast to
scenes of other characters working such as Hannah sweeping floors at
Grumpy’s Café or Marnie answering phones in an art gallery. The unex-
ceptional but ‘easy’ life her parents lead does not appeal to Hannah
because she has a millennial’s confidence in her own specialness.
At the tenure party, Shanaz tells Loreen, ‘You guys don’t know how
lucky you have it. Your Hannah’s a creative, what all children should be’.
The dramatic irony of Shanaz’s compliment against the previous four
seasons of the viewer watching Hannah fail repeatedly makes the
moment at once risible and self-impugning. Has the viewer been judging
Hannah’s privileged life too harshly? Is her creativity something to be
celebrated despite her lack of commitment and determination to succeed
in any of the fields she has explored? Perhaps the answer lies in Shanaz’s
use of the word ‘child’ to describe her. If Hannah were, in fact, still a
child, her creativity would be applauded, but as an adult, she has
exceeded the tacit statute of limitations for making creative mistakes.
Just as the series title suggests, Hannah is a girl – a child – not an adult.
Hannah’s resistance to following in her mother’s footsteps is mired in
her reluctance to see herself as normal. As long as she is considered by

herself and others as gifted and creative, she retains privilege that denies
accountability for her irresponsible actions.
The Horvaths’ lack of visible labour in their careers aligns with an
overall sense in Girls that higher education, particularly in the arts and
humanities, is an expensive caprice. Season 4’s exploration of the Iowa
Writers’ Workshop does nothing to dispel that negative image. Although
Hannah’s own immaturity leads her to abandon graduate school, other
students in her cohort behave marginally better. In the class argument
over Hannah’s faux apologia, Chandra (Desiree Akhaven) claims that their
‘cubbies’ have been violated and they should be treated as ‘sacred space’
(Episode 4, ‘Cubbies’). In an effort to determine how closely Girls repre-
sents graduate school life at Iowa, Boris Kachka (2015) questioned faculty
and former students of the Workshop on their impressions. He describes
‘instructor and recent graduate’ Pramodini Parayitam’s reaction to the
workshopping – or peer review – scene:
While the classroom scene was necessarily simplified — ‘it’s like Grey’s
Anatomy to a surgeon,’ says Parayitam — the tendency toward affected
cultural umbrage and what [recent graduate Casey] Walker calls ‘workshop
mumbo-jumbo’ seemed realistic. ‘There really was something accurate
about this PC self-seriousness,’ says [novelist and graduate Kate]
Christensen, who relished a [ . . . ] scene in which Hannah calls out her
classmates’ identity politics.
Hannah’s immaturity in the face of workshop criticism is expected by

viewers who have seen her behave that way for three seasons. The other
graduate students, though, wallow in similar childishness. Chandra’s claim
that the cubbies are ‘sacred spaces’ reserved for art is narcissistic hyperbole.
Another student claims to be offended even though he did not read the
letter deposited in the cubbies. If the student side of the classroom seems
like familiar adolescent territory, the professorial side is not. The unnamed
professor (Myra Lucretia Taylor) regulates the workshop through peda-
gogical licence that nudges students to explore their topics through con-
structivist wrangling. Her gentle chiding of Hannah after the cubbies
argument is the calmest and most reasonable approach to guidance the
series provides. Her reassurance that Hannah is not being expelled for her
behaviour includes the reminder, ‘Everyone here is an adult and can make
their own choices’. The dramatic irony is thick, and it is worth noting that
116 L. WITHERINGTON
the professor’s advice and mentoring disposition represent the most adult
counsel Hannah is given in four seasons. It is also noteworthy that the
professor is black and unnamed. Her patient, maternal wisdom stereotype
her as ‘magical negro’ as she transforms ‘disheveled, uncultured, or broken
white characters [Hannah] into competent people’ (Hughey, 2009, p. 543)
When she abandons Iowa to return to the relative safety and familiarity
of New York, Hannah finds employment as a substitute teacher at St
Justine’s, an elite private secondary school. Her motivation to teach
comes from Elijah and Jessa. Elijah criticises her outfit as being too ‘school
marm,’ and Jessa reminds her of the tired cliché, ‘Those who can’t, teach’
(Season 4, Episode 6, ‘Close-up’).2 Hannah is as bad at teaching as she is
in other jobs. In the classroom, she wings it, saying wildly inappropriate
things and later taking a young student to obtain a piercing. When a fellow
teacher takes her on a date, she complains that she had imagined herself in
a different teaching position, ‘deep in the Bronx, you know, teaching the
kids who can’t be taught, like Annie Potts in the Dangerous Minds TV
show, but it turns out you need a teaching degree for that’ (Season 4,
Episode 7, ‘Ask me my name’). Hannah sees her parents’ profession as a
last resort, a default employment where being inept will not disqualify her
and for which she does not need any particular credentials. Interestingly,
Dangerous Minds, the television show she references, cast a white teacher
guiding students of colour, just as the film by the same name did.
Hannah’s white privilege valorises a position of authority over students
of colour, while she declined the position in higher education her mother
previously suggested for her in Lansing, Michigan.
At the end of Season Four, as she tests the waters of becoming a
teacher, like her mother, Hannah enters a relationship with a fellow
educator. Hannah replicates what she considers the failure of her mother,
and she initiates the cycle again herself by educating the privileged as she
was educated herself, with vigour, but without accountability. In his
Foreword to Paulo Freire’s seminal Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Richard
Shaull (1996, p. 16) writes:
There is no such thing as a neutral educational process. Education either

functions as an instrument that is used to facilitate the integration of the
younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about
conformity to it, or it becomes ‘the practice of freedom,’ the means by which
men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how
to participate in the transformation of their world.
What, then, is the appropriate pedagogy for the privileged? Freire writes of
the oppressed that they almost never ‘realize that they, too, “know things”
they have learned in their relations with the world’ (p. 45), but the
privileged, like Hannah and the other white girls and boys in her set,
believe too strongly that they ‘know things’ the adults around them do
not know. Hannah requires a reverse Pygmalion effect in which she can
discard the cultural capital she has accumulated through white privilege so
that she can begin afresh to broach adult responsibilities. Hannah’s desire
to teach the unteachable in the Bronx represents Freire’s ‘myth of the
charity and generosity of the elites’ (p. 121) who believe their altruism
negates the master/slave dialectic. If the pedagogy of the oppressed is
ineffective for the privileged, what does work? The unnamed University of
Iowa professor’s approach is the most effective: presenting Hannah with
adult options and allowing her to choose.
At the close of Season 3, with Hannah on the cusp of becoming everything
she finds disappointing in her mother, Jasper’s intoxicated tirade against
higher education seems especially apt: ‘Higher education is elitist horseshit
perpetrated by a bunch of privileged hacks who think accumulating degrees
amounts to meaningful life . . . . They say they are teaching you to think, but
really they are teaching you to think like everyone else’ (Episode 8,
‘Incidentals’). If Hannah and the other girls are to achieve adulthood in
more than name only, and find a meaningful life, Girls suggests formal
education has not been their path to it. The series impugns the education of
white privilege for reinforcing the barriers between classes and simultaneously
retarding the emotional growth of the privileged class. The ‘everyone else’ that
Hannah and her friends have been taught to think like is the everyone else of
the privileged elite. In their search to become adults, Hannah and her friends
are urged to find meaning in life apart from status and the privilege they have
inherited and the elite institutions from which they have graduated.
NOTES
1. The CUNY system is often compared to the SUNY system (State University
of New York) and NYU (New York University). NYU is a private university
and ranked highly, particularly in Girls. The SUNY system is generally more
prestigious than the CUNY system, in part, because SUNY is larger and
includes more residential campuses.
2. Caroline (Gaby Hoffman) seems to have followed Jessa’s prescription, too,
as she seems as unlikely a teacher as Hannah.
118 L. WITHERINGTON
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gefactual.com/colleges/oberlin-college/student-life/diversity/#.
Daggett, C. (2014). Occupy Girls: Millennial adulthood and the cracks in HBO’s
brand. In B. Kaklamanidou, & M. Tally (Eds.), HBO’s Girls: Questions of
gender, politics, and millennial angst (pp. 199–216). Newcastle upon Tyne:
Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Hughey, M.W. (2009). Cinethetic racism: White redemption and black stereo-
types in ‘magical negro’ films. Social Problems, 56(3), 543–577.
Kachka, B. (2015, January 19). What Girls got wrong (and right!) about Iowa
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Lehman, K.J. (2014). All adventurous women do: HBO’s Girls and the 1960s–
1970s single woman. In B. Kaklamanidou & M. Tally (Eds.), HBO’s Girls:
Questions of gender, politics, and millennial angst (pp. 10–27). Newcastle upon
Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
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York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/27/
upshot/is-college-worth-it-clearly-new-data-say.html?_r=0.
Lewin, T. (2013, October 30). As interest fades in the Humanities, colleges worry.
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Logue, J. (2016, January 20). Psych! InsideHigherEd. Retrieved from https://
www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/01/20/florida-governor-wants-
know-why-all-psychology-majors-arent-employed.
Lum, L. (2006, November 16). Handling helicopter parents. Diverse Issues in Higher
Education. Retrieved from http://diverseeducation.com/article/6657/.
McIntosh, P. (1989). White privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack. Peace
and Freedom Magazine, July/August, pp. 10–12.
Rowles, D. (2012, April 24). HBO’s Girls and our resentment toward privileged
white America. Pajiba. Retrieved from http://www.pajiba.com/think_pieces/
hbos-girls-and-our-resentment-toward-privileged-white-america.php.
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London: Penguin.
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quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html.
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Witherington, L. (2014). Girls: An economic redemption through production and
labor. In B. Kaklamanidou & M. Tally (Eds.), HBO’s Girls: Questions of gender,
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Scholars Publishing.
Laura S. Witherington is an Associate Professor of English at the University of

Arkansas at Fort Smith in the US. Her research interests include English educa-
tion and multiple pedagogical topics, nineteenth-century British and American
landscape writing, and television’s cultural impact. She has recently published on
Girls in edited collections, including ‘Girls: An economic redemption through
production and labor’ (2014) and ‘Reading Girls: Diegesis and distinction’
(2015).
CHAPTER 9
Reading the Boys of Girls
Frederik Dhaenens
Charlie is not having the easiest of times. His girlfriend Marnie is fed up
with his caring personality. After another night of unsatisfactory sex,
Marnie asks him to act more like a man: ‘You should just be able to go
about your business, piss me off, and not give a fuck’. However, in the
same speech, she asks him to be himself. Confused and angry, Charlie
reacts by putting on a tough guy persona. Yet he fails to perform the part
wholeheartedly. He just does not want to be that traditional masculine guy
(Season 1, Episode 2, ‘Vagina panic’). The scene is just one of many that
demonstrate how the men in Girls are negotiating divergent discourses on
masculinity instead of embodying a hegemonic masculine ideal. It raises
the question of how and to what extent the series follows recent trends in
masculinity studies to rethink the dynamics among masculinities.
Connell’s (2005) conceptualisation of multiple masculinities and their
relation to hegemonic masculinity has been a key reference for scholars
working on masculinities. Anderson (2009), however, questions whether
the notion of hegemonic masculinity still holds in Anglo-American
countries as he considers these environments typified by a less explicit
homophobia and a more equal distribution of gendered power among
F. Dhaenens (*)
Centre of Cinema and Media Studies and the Department of Communication
Studies, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
e-mail: frederik.dhaenens@ugent.be

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-52971-4_9
122 F. DHAENENS
men – aspects that form the basis of his inclusive masculinity theory. This
leads me to consider how contemporary television fiction deals with these
divergent dynamics in a given gender order – especially when considering
that several scholars have demonstrated how television programmes reiterate
a hegemonic masculinity (Hatfield, 2010; Thompson, 2015). This chapter
explores whether inclusive masculinity has found its way to television or if
hegemonic masculinity still governs the way a gender order in a particular
setting is represented.
ON MASCULINITIES
Many gender scholars (Halberstam, 1998; Hearn, 1992) agree on think-
ing about masculinities as plural and subject to ideology. These shared
assumptions are crystallised in the social theory of hegemonic masculinity,
fleshed out by Connell (2005). Her theory starts from the notion that
masculinity ‘is simultaneously a place in gender relations, the practices
through which men and women engage that place in gender, and the
effects of these practices in bodily experience, personality and culture’
(p. 71). For Connell, gender refers to social practices that shape and give
meaning to the bodies and actions of people, which may be different
(or differently experienced) in various contexts. Further, she sees gender
articulated in an individual’s experiences, in a culture’s ideological dis-
courses and in a society’s various institutions. These sites are important in
understanding the dynamics in the gender order that help legitimise
patriarchy. She argues that within a given order a certain type of mascu-
linity assumes a hegemonic position that guarantees a superior position of
men over women. Hegemonic masculinity is not a dominant form of
masculinity per se – it concerns a masculinity that has succeeded in infus-
ing its gendered norms and values into institutions, culture and indivi-
duals. Consequentially, many shifting masculinities exist and all stand in a
hierarchical relation to one another. This leads Connell to formulate
various dynamics that are the result of hegemony, such as subordination
of all women and men who do not embody the hegemonic ideal, and
complicity among men who do not embody hegemonic masculinity but
who aspire to it, mimic, or incorporate certain aspects or practices and
thereby benefit from supporting the hegemonic ideal.
A recurring critique concerns Connell’s hesitancy to consider mascu-
linities as discursive constructions. Petersen (1998) argues that a discur-
sive approach does not imply a denial of the material dimensions of
READING THE BOYS OF GIRLS 123
gender (e.g. physical body, labour, violence) since many feminist and
post-structuralist scholars recognise ‘both the materiality of the body and
the fact that materiality is itself a product of power/knowledge’ (p. 12).
Connell and Messerschmidt (2005), who revised the concept, however,
underscore that the discursive dimension was always already part of
hegemonic masculinity, but stress that non-discursive practices equally
constitute gender relations. Connell’s (2005) discussion of neoiberalism
illustrates this poignantly. She argues that even though neoliberal
rhetoric and the organisation of material relations of production seem
gender-neutral, neoiberalism indirectly suppresses many women in its pri-
vileging of entrepreneurs. Even though certain outdated masculine practices
and traits have been abolished, entrepreneurship embodies a configuration
of masculinity that installs once more a gender hierarchy that is most
beneficial to men. Beasly (2008) nonetheless warns that over-emphasising
the material may result in assuming that men with a particular material and/
or institutional power are able to legitimate patriarchy, whereas the cultural
ideal of hegemonic masculinity can be embodied by men who have no real
institutional power, such as particular men within working-class manhood.
Connell and Messerschmidt (2005) do acknowledge the necessity of
approaching gender hierarchy as more complex. Although they perhaps
assumed that hegemonic masculinity always implied a dynamic process,
they did not explicitly address how hegemonic masculinity may interact
with subordinated or marginalised groups. A first strategy is the act of
changing the patterns of hegemonic masculinity by incorporating ele-
ments of other masculinities. Another strategy is tolerating or integrating
subordinated groups in a way that does not discredit them but that does
not challenge the gender order either. At the same time, they acknowledge
the agency of the subordinated or marginalised groups and underscore
that men who embody the hegemonic masculine ideal may not experience
their privileged position as satisfactory or meaningful. Lastly, they empha-
sise the importance of not losing sight of the relationship between mascu-
linities and femininities because gender is relational and masculinities are
constructed around the positions and practices that men and women
assume in society.
Anderson (2009), however, questions whether there should be a hege-
monic masculinity in each gender order. He argues that a change in
gender dynamics may render hegemonic masculinity theory unable to
fully grasp gender relations. Particularly, he points out how in Anglo-
American societies, homohysteria a term he coined to describe a society
124 F. DHAENENS
where homophobia, femphobia and compulsory heterosexuality are the

norm – decreases. In periods and societies where homohysteria is the
norm, an orthodox masculinity – which is characterised by the expression
and embodiment of sexist, homophobic and gender-normative discourse –
assumes the position of hegemonic masculinity. It affects the behaviour
and practices of men as their physical and emotional intimacy is severely
policed and restricted, and they are nudged into assuming a superior
position towards women and gay and/or feminine men. Yet in periods
of decreased homophobia, it is possible to find two ‘oppositional mascu-
linities, each with equal influence, co-existing within one culture’ (p. 93).
Anderson qualifies his argument by stressing that he considers this a
situation where an orthodox masculinity exists alongside an inclusive
masculinity. The latter is typified by physical and emotional homosocial
behaviour and decreased sexism and homophobia. He does stress that a
society with inclusive masculinities does not imply that patriarchy is
challenged, as decreased sexism ‘does not guarantee social parity for
women’ (p. 98). Similarly, as McCormack and Anderson (2010) show,
heterosexuality remains privileged by men who embody inclusive mascu-
linity. A common strategy to do so is heterosexual recuperation, by which
heterosexual men underscore their sexual identity without having to use
homophobic speech. Common strategies include boasting of heterosexual
successes and expressing same-sex desire ironically.
ON REPRESENTING MASCULINITIES
Scholars who reflect on the representation of men and masculinities in
contemporary media stress how men are no longer taken for granted. Men
are shown as troubled and looking for ways to compensate or mask a
gender identity conflict. Many contemporary quality television series, for
instance, dwell on what in popular speech is referred to as a ‘crisis of
masculinity’, even though Connell (2005) argues that we should consider
this as a crisis of the gender order where the particular changes may
transform or disrupt configurations of masculinity within that order. The
main characters of Mad Men (AMC, 2007–15) or The Sopranos (HBO,
1999–2007) all represent disturbed men whose acts (including promiscu-
ity, adultery, physical or emotional violence, homophobia and misogyny)
connote a nostalgic desire for a stable gender identity and hierarchical
gender order even though the societies around them are changing and
challenging their beliefs.
Does this heightened awareness of masculinity and the gender order –

as a construction that is open to change – imply a challenge to hegemonic
masculinity? One may argue that these television series aim to deconstruct
these gender tropes by means of exaggeration or vilification of the patri-
archal characters. Thompson (2015), for instance, demonstrates how the
juxtaposition of three different embodiments of masculinity in How I Met
Your Mother (CBS, 2005–14) reveals the variability of masculinities.
Particularly the exaggerated performance of Barney, the hypermasculine
character of the sitcom, exposes how (traditional) masculinity demands
energy and devotion and thereby loses its assumed claim to universality.
Others, however, argue that the hegemony of a patriarchal gender order is
not challenged even when presenting various embodiments of masculinity.
Hatfield’s (2010) analysis of Two and a Half Men (CBS, 2003–15) points
out how Charlie, the brother with the more traditional traits, assumes a
superior position toward Alan, the more feminine brother whose subordi-
nate masculinity enables and legitimates Charlie’s hegemonic masculinity.
Not all non-traditional masculinities are ridiculed. Burrill (2013) dis-
cusses the emergence of the ‘other guy’ – an identity position assumed by
(predominantly) heterosexual men who do not comply with a traditional
masculinity but who do not actively resist it either. Even though Burrill is
focused on audiovisual representations of other guys, he considers it a
widespread social phenomenon. It refers to a masculinity shaped by diver-
gent socio-cultural changes such as an increased social status of women,
the economic crisis and its consequences for the middle class and a con-
sumer society targeting men. Other guys tend to acknowledge their role in
the objectification of women, are more open to homosocial intimacies and
engage in practices or behaviour considered feminine. Representations of
other guys are not about mocking them but rather reflect changing
masculinities. Yet, drawing on Hanke (1992), other guy masculinity may
be busy assuming the position of hegemonic masculinity. Hanke observes
that representations of masculinities may change without posing a chal-
lenge to the hegemonic order. Being more nurturing or interpersonal
should not pose a threat to the order and can easily be considered a
means to level out some gender differences between men and women
while excluding subordinate masculinities that do not conform or are able
to conform to the hegemonic ideal.
Even though there is no consensus on whether or not television engages
in critiquing traditional accounts of masculinity, Hanke (1992) and
Thompson (2015) seem to agree on the persistence of a patriarchal gender
126 F. DHAENENS
order and, thus, the continuity of a hegemonic masculinity. Yet I question

whether one would reach the same conclusion from the represented gender
dynamics in popular film and television when informed by Anderson’s
(2009) inclusive masculinity theory. In other words, do representations of
‘other guys’ and ‘modern men’ articulate an inclusive masculinity rather
than a new hegemonic masculine ideal? To study this, this chapter turns to
the first two seasons of Girls to explore whether Adam, Ray, Charlie and
Elijah embody and/or aspire to a hegemonic masculinity or participate in an
inclusive culture.
MAKING DO IN THE CITY

Girls does not differ much from an average North American television
programme in terms of socio-cultural diversity. As several of the chapters
in this volume describe, its main characters are predominantly white,
middle-class, cisgender and heterosexual. However, whereas other series
tend to feature care-free middle-class citizens, the characters in Girls are
much more aware of the post-recession economy: Adam, who tries to
make it as an actor, makes a joke in the pilot (Season 1, Episode 1) about
how he has been unable to make a living from his studies in Comparative
Literature; Ray, who works in a coffee bar, implies that a college degree is
a liability by pointing out how deep in debt he is due to his student loans;
Elijah works for free as an assistant to a curator of dance. Only Charlie
seems able to make a decent living and, in the second season, becomes a
successful entrepreneur by selling an app to a business tycoon. His rise to
success remains an isolated case as many of the characters make explicit that
in order to afford a home and middle-class lifestyle in Brooklyn, they are
dependent on money from others: Adam depends on his grandmother to
support his living; Elijah depends on his lover for his rent and belongings;
Ray moves in with his girlfriend Shoshanna because he cannot afford a place
of his own.
The series is not invested in using this socio-economic condition to
voice a serious political and institutional critique but rather looks at how
millennial men and women negotiate precarity. Considering the symbolic
and material role of paid work, the uncertainty affects the characters’
masculinity. The series represents men who are yet another step away
from the patriarchal breadwinner. The markers of a middle-class career
are defunct; a degree does not result in a professional career. Rather, a
successful career might be short-lived and financial dependence on others
is needed to sustain a certain lifestyle. These uncertainties may be con-

tributing to a crisis of the gender order (Connell, 2005). How the men act
in Girls testifies to that crisis, albeit in different ways.
The character who suffers the most is Ray. From one perspective, he
performs a traditional/orthodox masculinity that has generally been con-
sidered hegemonic in Western societies. The series features many scenes in
which he assumes a superior position over women, often by means of
misogynist or sexist speech. Yet these scenes contrast with the introspec-
tive moments in which Ray indulges in self-loathing. For instance, in ‘It’s a
shame about Ray’ (Season 2, Episode 4), Shoshanna does not understand
why someone in his 30s does not have a proper home. Ray agrees with her,
refers to himself as ‘a huge fucking loser’ and wonders what makes him
worth dating. Although the candid speech results in Shoshanna and Ray
exclaiming their love for one another, the scene is bitter. They are uncri-
tical of a discourse of success which dictates that one should have ambition
and become more affluent with age. The scene also underscores the
gendered dimensions of neoiberalism: a man needs to be successful and
cannot be passive, doubtful, and negative. Eventually, Shoshanna ends the
relationship because of Ray’s lack of ambition. The series, however, does
not imply that Ray’s life would be easier if only he embodied the hege-
monic masculine ideal that is shaped by patriarchy and neoiberalism.
Rather, Girls uses Ray to expose how a hegemonic masculinity is forcing
men to set out ambitious life goals even though these goals have become
less evident in a post-recession economy and also pressures men to mask
their non-productive traits.
Adam is less concerned with succumbing to patriarchy and neoiberal-
ism. Adam’s masculinity does not follow masculine archetypes or gen-
dered stereotypes. Rather, it is a bricolage of various gender discourses. He
trains his body but does not care how he looks or dresses. He is concerned
with the well-being of others, is emotionally open, but assumes a patri-
archal and misogynist role in sex. As Albrecht (2015) argues, these prac-
tices demonstrate how Adam is caught in-between various models of
masculinity and unable to find a masculine identity that suits him.
Albrecht, however, assumes that the discomfort coming from this struggle
explains why Adam slips back into misogynistic and animalistic behaviour
(see Albrecht, 2015). In contrast, I argue that Adam is represented as
being comfortable with his masculinity. What is seen as incoherent beha-
viour makes sense for Adam and is experienced as authentic. Like Ray,
Adam does not fit in a neoliberal society. In the pilot, he explains to
128 F. DHAENENS
Hannah that he has reconciled himself to the idea that his humanities
degree will not result in a job. Instead, he turns to woodcraft. Even
though the series underscores the unlikelihood that his craft will become
profitable, it does show a character trying to resist certain hegemonic
principles that dictate the way contemporary societies ought to function.
The only character to ‘succeed’ in a post-recession economy is Charlie.
However, Charlie does not correspond to a neoliberal professional ideal.
He resembles the ‘other guy’ (Burrill, 2013). He is introduced as a sweet
and romantic boy who puts the pleasures and needs of his girlfriends
before his own. Even though his speech and behaviour deviate from a
traditional masculinity, he is not being mocked for it by the other men.
Ray, his best friend, defends him and vice versa; they take each other for
who they are. Yet, as in Ray’s situation, Charlie’s girlfriend does not
wholly accept him. Marnie is turned off by Charlie’s sensitivity and she
confides in Hannah that she will have to end the relationship because of it.
Hannah concludes that Marnie cannot stand the idea of her boyfriend as
feminine: ‘I think you need to admit something to yourself, which is that
you’re sick of eating him out. Because he has a vagina’ (Season 1, Episode
1, ‘Pilot’). The pun reveals how Charlie’s performance of non-traditional
masculinity is less accepted by the women than by the men. Marnie, in
particular, is represented as a person who cultivates a hegemonic masculine
ideal. Besides forcing Charlie to ‘man up’, she also judges the other men in
the series by her standards of what a man ought to be. Yet the series does
not side with her. Marnie often ends up losing the love or respect of men
as her desire to reproduce gendered norms and values are experienced as
outdated or ignorant.
Interestingly, non-traditional masculine behaviour is much more
accepted by the women when performed by Elijah, a gay man. Elijah,
comes out to Hannah (his ex-girlfriend) as gay in the first season and
becomes her ‘gay best friend’. At first sight, the character is represented as
a stereotype: he is witty, well-dressed, and loves to host parties. In line
with other US television shows with gay characters (e.g. Will & Grace,
NBC, 1998–2006 and Modern Family, ABC, 2009– ), Elijah is never
depicted having sex with another man. However, he is not completely
desexualised. In ‘It’s about time’ (Season 2, Episode 1), he attempts
having sex with Marnie after getting drunk at a party. The scene fits in
with other moments in which Elijah stresses that he does not want to label
himself or that he may be bisexual. Yet the sex does not work for either of
them, which leads to Marnie telling him that he does not need to try being
someone he is not. The series seems to suggest that sexual identity is

binary and unchangeable. However, it could also be seen as a critique of
the commodification of queer discourses imploring that sexual identity is
fluid and beyond categories (Sears, 2005). Without dismissing the value of
a queer approach to sexuality, it is important to note the problem of
turning queerness into an empty and marketable identity position.
Elijah’s queerness – which he cites as being part of his ‘authentic self’
(Season 1, Episode 3, ‘All adventurous women do’) – becomes as mean-
ingless as the stereotypical behaviour he performs. Elijah’s masculinity is
shaped to fit dominant discourses of gay masculinity in an urban and
liberal environment. Even though gay masculinities are considered sub-
ordinate to heterosexual masculinities, they nonetheless install their own
gender hierarchies – cultivated by both heterosexual and queer individuals.
Elijah appears to be mainly trying to conform to a dominant gay mascu-
linity embodied by affluent and fashionable individuals. However, like the
other men, the idealised masculinity is demanding something of Elijah
that does not correspond to the way he desires to experience his sexuality
and demands a material lifestyle he cannot afford.
HOMOSOCIAL INTIMACIES
Homosocial intimacy is central to an understanding of the embodiment of
masculinities (Anderson, 2009). Girls features few scenes with two men
interacting but it does portray two homosocial relationships. For instance,
even though Ray often performs a traditional masculinity, his friendship
with Charlie is intimate and caring. In ‘Hard being easy’ (Season 1,
Episode 5), Marnie approaches Ray to ask for Charlie’s address. She
wants to make up after Charlie finds out the truth about how Marnie
feels about him. Ray defends his friend and does not believe Marnie’s
intentions are genuine. Angered by his remarks, she mocks him by asking
whether he is in love with Charlie. Ray, with a serious face, responds:
‘More than you are. Yeah, maybe I am. Okay?’ Even though the love he
feels is connoted as asexual, the series does not fall back on heterosexual
recuperation (McCormack & Anderson, 2010). Rather, it uses the
moment to underscore an open climate of men being sincere about their
affection towards other men.
The second homosocial relationship featured is between Ray and
Adam. They barely know one another but end up going on a trip together
to return a dog Adam stole out of concern for the animal’s well-being
130 F. DHAENENS
(Season 2, Episode 6, ‘Boys’). Unlike Ray and Charlie, Ray and Adam’s
negotiation of homosociality is more complex. The episode recounts how
the two men start to connect with one another, albeit in a clumsy,
hesitant, and uncomfortable manner. Homosocial bonding is represented
in the scenes in which both men discuss current and past relationships. As
Feasy (2008) stresses, these personal conversations between men in the
public sphere challenge traditional conventions of how men ought to
process their feelings. Yet the homosocial bonding is disrupted when
Ray provokes Adam in relation to his past relationship with Hannah.
Ray does not seem to understand that Adam and Hannah accepted one
another’s difficult personalities. Adam is angered by Ray’s opinion and
suspects Ray of wanting to have sex with Hannah. Even though Ray did
not imply that he wanted to sleep with Hannah, Adam’s defensive and
jealous reaction exposes how outdated and essentialist ideas of masculine
behaviour linger. While the episode illustrates how men who embody
different configurations of masculinity are able to get along, it also
shows the fragility of that coexistence. Yet the aggressive and protective
reactions that articulate a traditional/orthodox masculinity seem point-
less. As Ray is staring at Manhattan from the banks of Staten Island, he
starts to cry while talking to the dog. Again, Ray’s self-loathing resurfaces
as he finds himself in conflict with his own identity: ‘You think I’m a kike.
I’m not even that. I’m nothing.’
NEGOTIATED MASCULINITIES
What can be said of these embodiments of masculinity? Keeping Anderson
(2009) in mind, the sociocultural environment depicted in Girls can be
considered inclusive. The urban setting the characters inhabit shows few
signs of homohysteria. First, the main characters are not homophobic.
Adam is friends with several lesbians, Elijah is close with several hetero-
sexual characters, and Ray may have used some words that articulate
homonegativity but without the intent to disrespect queer people. For
instance, in the aforementioned episode (‘Hard being easy’), Ray
reproaches Marnie for hurting Charlie by ‘ass-fucking’ him in the
heart. Despite connoting anal sex as derogatory, Ray does not appear
to be intentionally targeting gay men. Second, there is no explicit rejec-
tion of femininity among the men. Charlie’s sensitive traits are only
mocked by the women, whereas Charlie’s masculinity is not questioned
or policed by the other men. The series also ensures that the men are not
one-dimensionally masculine. To illustrate, Ray is often associated with

more ‘feminine’ cultural products as demonstrated by his love of litera-
ture by British women, his attachment to a copy of Little Women, and his
desire to watch old episodes of Ally McBeal (Fox, 1997–2002). Third,
compulsory heterosexuality is not taken for granted. Even though most
of the men in the series identify as heterosexual, they do not always
experience their sexuality in heteronormative terms. The sex between
Adam and Hannah, for instance, does not correspond to normative
sexual behaviour. Many will read the sex between them as patriarchal
and problematic (including several authors in this volume) but the series
repeatedly unmasks it as an enactment of a sexual fantasy and experienced
as pleasurable by both parties. Furthermore, their sexual roles are not
fixed. In ‘Hard being easy’, a fully dressed Hannah belittles a naked and
submissive Adam and tells him how to masturbate.
With little homohysteria, it may be assumed that the different config-
urations of masculinity in the show do not assume a hegemonic position
vis-à-vis one another. The men in Girls certainly do not put one another
on a pedestal or display envy. One could even argue that a more traditional
masculine character like Ray befriending a more inclusive masculine char-
acter like Charlie is the best illustration of an inclusive masculine culture.
Yet the homosocial bonding Ray pursues illustrates how Ray cannot be
simply labelled as a traditional masculine person. Rather, it shows how
he – like the other men – negotiates various gender discourses. As such, all
men on Girls could be considered to embody an inclusive masculinity. Yet
the men are simultaneously struggling with a hegemonic ideal. None of
them embodies that ideal, but several storylines revolve around their
confrontations with a form of hegemonic masculinity. Charlie does not
embody that ideal but is required to do so by Marnie; Ray aspires to the
ideal even though his gender identity is much more complex than his
masculine performance may imply; Adam’s masculinity consists of
extremes on a masculine continuum rather than being the moderate
hegemonic ideal; Elijah aspires to a dominant gay masculinity without
questioning the subordinate position that all gay masculinities assume in
relation to hegemonic masculinity.
Remarkably, the hegemonic masculine ideal in Girls is not a tradi-
tional/orthodox masculinity. Rather, it is a masculinity described by
Hanke (1992) as hierarchically superior to women but responding to
social changes such as increased gender equality and emotional openness.
However, it does little to challenge institutionalised inequalities and
132 F. DHAENENS
ensures identities are cisgender and grafted onto heteronormativity. In a

way, this configuration of hegemonic masculinity corresponds well
with postfeminist discourses stressing that gender equality is a fact and
minimising the political in favour of the personal (McRobbie, 2004). Such
masculinity promotes itself as in touch with the times while it actually
disavows that masculinities are plural, shifting and fragmented.
It is important to stress the role of women in cultivating the idea of
a hegemonic masculinity (Messerschmidt, 2012). The women from
Girls particularly illustrate this practice. Shoshanna ends her relation-
ship with Ray because he is not successful; Marnie breaks up with
Charlie because he is too feminine for her; Hannah is initially fed up
with Adam because he does not act like a proper boyfriend. The
hegemonic masculine man they desire does not exist in their lives
and, as the series illustrates, is an illusion in need of deconstruction.
In contrast to the very first episodes of the series – in which Hannah
and Marnie complain about how Adam is too masculine and Charlie
too feminine – the last episode of the second season (‘Together’)
reveals how the women are able to see beyond rigid ideas about
masculinity and relationships and commit to Adam and Charlie.
The deconstruction of hegemonic masculinity is a likely reason why
Girls is conjuring the spectre of hegemonic masculinity. Shaw (2015) is
correct in pointing out how the series challenges hegemonic gender
practices. As I have demonstrated, Girls does so by depicting a reality of
men negotiating a variety of discourses of masculinity whilst simulta-
neously allowing men to clash with hegemonic masculinity, thereby
revealing the various ways that men deal with such an impossible yet
legitimated identity position. As such, Girls shows that although men in
contemporary US society embody some form of inclusive masculinity,
they are still confronted with a hegemonic masculinity governing their
gender identities.
REFERENCES
Albrecht, M.M. (2015). Masculinity in contemporary quality television. London:
Ashgate.
Anderson, E. (2009). Inclusive masculinity: The changing nature of masculinities.
London and New York: Routledge.
Beasly, C. (2008). Rethinking hegemonic masculinity in a globalized world. Men
and Masculinities, 11, 86–103.
Burrill, D.A. (2013). The other guy: Media masculinity within the margins.
New York: Peter Lang.
Connell, R.W. (2005). Masculinities. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Connell, R.W., & Messerschmidt, J.W. (2005). Hegemonic masculinity:
Rethinking the concept. Gender & Society, 19(6), 829–859.
Feasy, R. (2008). Masculinity and popular television. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press.
Halberstam, J. (1998). Female masculinity. Durham: Duke University Press.
Hanke, R. (1992). Redesigning men: Hegemonic masculinity in transition.
In S. Craig (Ed.), Men, masculinity and the media (pp. 185–198).
London: Sage.
Hatfield, E.F. (2010) What it means to be a man: Examining hegemonic masculinity
in Two and a Half Men. Communication, Culture & Critique, 3, 526–548.
Hearn, J. (1992). Men in the public eye: The construction and deconstruction of
public men and public patriarchies. New York: Routledge.
McCormack, M., & Anderson, E. (2010). It’s just not acceptable anymore: The
erosion of homophobia and the softening of masculinity at an English sixth
form. Sociology, 44(5), 843–859.
McRobbie, A. (2004). Post-feminism and popular culture. Feminist Media
Studies, 4(3), 255–264.
Messerschmidt, J.W. (2012). Engendering gendered knowledge: Assessing the
academic appropriation of hegemonic masculinity. Men and Masculinities,
15(1), 56–76.
Petersen, A. (1998). Unmasking the masculine: ‘Men’ and identity’ in a skeptical
age. London: Sage.
Sears, A. (2005). Queer anti-capitalism: What’s left of lesbian and gay liberation?
Science & Society, 69(1), 92–112.
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Frederik Dhaenens is a Research Member of the Centre of Cinema and Media

Studies and a Lecturer in the Department of Communication Studies, Ghent
University, Belgium. His education and research deals with media, popular
culture, gender and sexual diversity.
CHAPTER 10
All Adventurous Women Sing: Articulating

the Feminine Through the Music of Girls
Alexander Sergeant
Girls’ musical soundtrack functions as a significant aspect of the show’s

popular, critical and commercial identity. Before the series premiered on
HBO in 2012, trailers used to promote the show showcased music from a
collection of artists signed to Universal’s indie-label Republic Records
division. These early teaser trailers not only offered audiences a glimpse
of the dynamic between the show’s four lead characters, but established a
clear sense of tone through the use of an eclectic, quasi counter-cultural
soundtrack which positioned the show within a culture of ‘post-hipster
cool’ (Willenbrink, 2015, p. 89). After the success of Season 1, HBO
released a set of accompanying soundtracks through a distribution deal
with Warner Media’s indie-orientated record label Fuelled by Ramen. The
first of these soundtracks was released five days prior to the premiere of
Season 2 and was issued with a supporting press statement from Lena
Dunham, who described the appropriateness of the soundtrack’s release
given the ‘huge part’ music plays in her creative process (The Hollywood
Reporter, 2012). In addition to assisting Dunham’s creative process, music
has also been important in appealing to the show’s target demographic of
young, educated women (Nygaard, 2013). The show’s musical supervisor,
A. Sergeant (*)
Department of Film Studies, King’s College London, London, UK
e-mail: alexander.sergeant@kcl.ac.uk

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-52971-4_10
136 A. SERGEANT
Manish Raval, has confessed that his strategy has been to find ‘cool music’
to use within the show to distinguish its soundtrack from other television
shows and as a way of meeting audience expectations for Girls after the
success of Season 1 (‘Girls soundtrack featuring new music’, 2012). The
songs of Girls, therefore, play a key role in defining the show’s commercial
identity as a key mode of address established in the episodes themselves.
This chapter will examine the function of the show’s soundtrack as it
relates to what Fuller and Driscoll refer to as ‘the series’ explicit address
to feminism’ (2015, p. 253). As Woods argues, the widespread recep-
tion of Girls as a TV show that proclaims to speak of feminist issues has
led to the phenomenon of ‘Girls talk’ (2015, p. 38), a mode of
interpretation that frames an appreciation of the show through a dis-
cussion of the way in which Girls has proven itself to be readily
susceptible to a series of ‘liberal feminist readings’ (Perkins, 2014,
p. 35). Whilst debates remain about the appropriateness of such inter-
pretation of Girls, given its lack of diversity of representation (Watson,
2015), as Ruby Grant and Meredith Nash argue in this volume, it is
precisely the show’s concentration on a certain kind of white, middle-
class vision of femininity that allows Dunham to address and critique a
number of problematic representations of femininity perpetuated
within similar shows targeted at young women. Girls is self-consciously
indebted to and yet critical of shows such as Ally McBeal (Fox, 1997–
2002) and Sex and the City (HBO, 1998–2004), critiquing the aspira-
tional, sexually liberated postfeminist ideal represented in such media
examples in order to perform a ‘feminist engagement with post-femin-
ism’ (Nash & Grant, 2015, p. 988).
This chapter extends such discussions into the realm of the show’s
soundtrack. Alongside the other chapters in the volume that examine
how Girls critiques certain postfeminist ideals and values at the level of
characterisation, performance, setting, and narrative, I examine the
function of music as a key way that the show proclaims to speak of
feminine concerns within an authentically feminine register. Situating
the role of the soundtrack in Girls within wider feminist discourses on
language and its masculinised restrictions reflected in the philosophy of
Luce Irigaray, the chapter examines how Girls might provide a feminist
critique not simply through what the characters ‘say’ and ‘do’, but how
spectators engage with narrative scenarios through a series of sonic
positioning strategies. Girls is, therefore, a show that not only speaks of
feminist concerns in a postfeminist age, but sings them as well.
ALL ADVENTUROUS WOMEN SING: ARTICULATING THE FEMININE… 137
GIRLS AS ‘WOMEN’S’ TELEVISION: MUSIC, GENDERED

DISCOURSE, AND LUCE IRIGARAY
HBO sells Girls to a targeted demographic of audiences versed in the
conventions and expectations of quality television by emphasising the
supposedly fresh take the show offers on contemporary gender issues
through a particular ‘indie female vision’ (Nygaard, 2013, p. 373). The
use of song within Girls does not function as a purely decorative accom-
paniment to the action on-screen but, as Johnson suggests, is essential in
the show’s efforts at positioning itself within ‘the current cultural forma-
tion of the modes of popular culture’ (2014, p. 195). Music is central to
the way the show proclaims to speak of female concerns to a female target
audience, utilising its soundtrack in a way that parallels the traditional role
of music within ‘women’s cinema’. As LaPlace argues, whilst the most
prominent formal feature of the industrial category of ‘women’s cinema’
has been the desire to tell female-led stories for female-dominated audi-
ences, such stories have tended to inhabit genres such as ‘serious dramas,
love stories, and musicals’ in which music has featured prominently
throughout the narrative and stylistic patterns on display (1987, p. 138).
This cultural association between displays of femininity and music
stretches beyond the notion of ‘women’s cinema’. Historically, music
and dance have traditionally functioned throughout Western society as
devices that simultaneously announce the presence of the feminine
through their appeal to the sensual and bodily aspects of human commu-
nication (Laing, 2007, pp. 9–12). Emphasising both a bodily and sonic
mode of address, narrative forms associated with women’s cinema present
this dynamic through a mode of filmmaking based around ‘excessive mise
en scene, performance and extradiegetic sound’ (Kuhn, 1994, p. 260).
The perceived excess of music utilised within women’s cinema has the
effect, therefore, of normalising alternative cinematic forms associated
with a more masculine register. Men’s cinema becomes simply ‘cinema’,
whilst women’s films are domesticated and subjugated so that the ideas of
femininity they purport to communicate are seen to function outside the
sphere of everyday life.
This relationship between music and femininity speaks to a wider con-
cern within a particular strand of feminist philosophy over the restrictions
language imposes upon the female subject due to the masculinised nature
of its discourse; an area of feminist philosophy that has been explored by
Irigaray (1974, 1977). Building on an understanding of gendered identity
138 A. SERGEANT
within both Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, Irigaray’s philosophy

elaborates on Lacan’s famous declaration that ‘woman does not exist’ in
order to articulate the paradoxical relationship between femininity and
masculinity. For Lacan, the ‘woman’ as concept does not exist because the
model of gendered identity described within such a term only functions as
a ‘signifier of the lack of a signifier’ (1975, p. 73). Whilst the masculine
model of subjectivity positions itself against the primordial signifier of the
phallus, the feminine model, lacking such an expression, expresses itself as
an absence rather than as a presence. Irigaray (1974) interrogates Lacan’s
acceptance of the feminine as absence by examining the socio-historical
dimensions that underpin his theory. As Irigaray argues, Lacan’s psycho-
analysis displays an inability to see his own work as part of the same systems
of signification it attempts to articulate (i.e. as a theoretical framework
produced within a patriarchal culture). His model of gendered subjectivity
therefore lacks the ability to conceive of female identity as something out-
side traditional discursive structures that position the masculine as norma-
tive (Irigaray, 1974, p. 102). Psychoanalysis, therefore, articulates how male
subjects are able to enter into the symbolic realm through a relationship to
ideas of masculinity, but not how female subjects gain similar access to the
feminine. As Whitford (1991, p. 33) argues, what is at stake for Irigaray is
that ‘the female imaginary needs to find her voice’. By creating a new
discourse outside the masculinised trappings of Western intellectual
thought, Irigaray gestures towards, without ever fully defining, a notion
of the feminine that is defined in isolation from its relationship to ideas of
the masculine. Additionally, until the feminine is articulated, Irigaray argues
that ‘woman does not exist owing to the fact that language – a language –
rules as master, and that she threatens – as a sort of ‘prediscursive reality’ –
to disrupt its order’ (1977, p. 89). In disrupting that discursive system
through which masculinity has asserted itself over the feminine, Irigaray
offers a feminist engagement with the nature of gendered discourse and
provides a theoretical space through which a concept of femininity might be
brought into being beyond the traditional remits afforded by language.
Drawing on Irigaray’s philosophical concerns regarding language as
a discourse that speaks to the gendered nature of subjectivity, I argue
that the role of music in Girls can be understood as a potentially
feminist tool that assists in establishing a mode of address to the
spectator that speaks of issues of the feminine through a feminine
form of expression. As Mulvey argues, narrative cinema (and by impli-
cation narrative television based on a similar series of formal and
stylistic strategies) positions spectators so that they identify with the

persons and characters on-screen such that men are the ‘active con-
trollers of the look’ (1975, p. 21). This model of spectatorship is
enhanced when considering the specific mode of address established
within television where, coupled with the desire for identification, the
spectator is provided with a feeling of ‘domesticity’ that assures mastery
over the images on display (Smit, 2015, p. 892). The spectator trans-
forms the perceptual information on screen into a codified and ratio-
nalistic discourse, making meaning out of information in a manner that
provides a feeling of faux-mastery over the images and sounds in
accordance with a phallic relation to the symbolic order. In privileging
this mode of address, media culture establishes the rational pursuit of
meaning as the key function of narrative, a dynamic which, according
to Irigaray, might contribute to the way in which ‘man is explicitly
presented as the yardstick of the same’ (1974, p. 28). However, as
Dyer argues, song and music provide performers and audiences with a
means of partially accessing the ‘pre-semiotic’ register of everyday life
(2012, p. 2). In privileging emotion over reason, the use of music in
film and television can potentially disrupt previous theoretical notions of
spectatorship based upon a Lacanian model of subjectivity. In this man-
ner, song both emphasises the show’s thematic concerns surrounding
women and identity and also provides a means of expressing ideas of
the feminine beyond those afforded through traditional, phallocentric
devices available through narrative and characterisation alone.
DANCING ON THEIR OWN: COMMUNITY AND

INDIVIDUALITY IN THE SONGS OF GIRLS
Previous discussions of Girls as a feminist text have often focused on
the way the show emphasises female friendship as its key narrative concern
(e.g. Tally, 2014). Within contemporary popular media culture, the repre-
sentation of female friendship on-screen often functions as an affirmative
space for maintaining a particular postfeminist vision of femininity (Winch,
2012, p. 70). It provides a nurturing space wherein women can discuss
aspects of their own gendered experiences of their body, their personal
relationships or their work life, and this can be potentially empowering. In
this manner, one important aspect of the show’s soundtrack is that it
functions to display ‘community’, a key utopian concern identified by
Dyer in relation to the musical (1992, p. 26).
140 A. SERGEANT
Placing the four women of Girls in a continuously shared soundscape, a

synergy between song and narrative is established which allows music to
be used as a sensuous device that binds the different narrative threads
together and adds meaning to the expression of female friendship on
screen. For example, a significant display of female friendship occurs in
‘All adventurous women do’ (Season 1, Episode 3), in which music is the
platform through which Hannah reaches out to Marnie for support as she
struggles to come to terms with her ex-boyfriend Elijah’s disclosure of his
homosexuality. Alone in her apartment, Hannah blasts Robyn’s ‘Dancing
on my own’, a dance-track described as a ‘comet-trail of sadness and
exhilaration’ (NME, 2010). Hearing the music in the corridor, Marnie
greets Hannah in her room with ‘Yo, girl!’ and the friends dance together,
hugging. The comfort that might otherwise have been communicated
verbally is done physically. At first, the lyrics of the song match
Hannah’s sense of rejection and loneliness borne out of her perceived
failure in relation to a man (I’m in the corner Watching you kiss her’).
However, as Marnie enters the room and they start dancing, it is the
sensuality of the up-tempo song that provides the richer platform for an
expression of friendship taking place on screen. They are not dancing on
their own, as the song suggests, but rather dancing together. The har-
mony of their bodies moving together to the rhythm expresses their
closeness as best friends; an articulation of friendship that arises from the
two characters ignoring the lyrical, and thus linguistic, qualities of the
song in favour of its rhythmic and tonal qualities.
The relationship between music and narrative in such moments is
framed through an Irigarayan view in which female identity is expressed
through a rejection of the symbolic rather than through the symbolic
itself. However, in contrast to the representations of relationships the
characters have with men, the positive representation of female friendship
is expressed through the sensuality of song and is matched by other
moments in which the soundtrack punctuates moments on-screen. For
instance, in ‘It’s about time’(Season 2, Episode 1), a karaoke stage is set
for Hannah’s housewarming party to celebrate her decision to move in
with her ex-boyfriend Elijah. The housewarming party functions as a
comedic and dramatic set-piece; the scene is constructed around a series
of awkward encounters as each character obsesses over the personal strug-
gles they face. In this scene, rather than serving to unite the characters, it
expresses the awkwardness of the party and the characters’ fractured
relationships. To illustrate, Marnie makes awkward conversation with her
ex-boyfriend Charlie and his new girlfriend Audrey. To highlight the

jealousy and competition underpinning the small talk, the camera cuts to
Shoshanna’s karaoke performance – which is abrasive compared to the
faux pleasantries exchanged in the conversations preceding it. Shoshanna
sings a cover of Sean Kingston’s ‘Beautiful girls’, a song described by
Erlewine et al., (2015) as an expression of the ‘high-school self-pity’ of a
teenage boy. Her performance deflates the masculine angst contained
within the original lyrics (‘Beautiful girls/They only want to do you
dirt’) in order to reveal their banality, constantly breaking between singing
and speaking in a manner that shows a lack of commitment to the song’s
symbolic register. In this scene, the lyrics shift from directing attention to
a female subject to addressing the female as a fellow subject. Shoshanna’s
song, therefore, becomes a declaration of her pain at being dismissed by
Ray after their one-night stand together, as well as a plea to her fellow
‘girls’ to not ‘do [her] dirt’ but rather help her through her emotional
distress. Through this sound/image interplay, music functions to bring
the personal stories of four women in dialogue with broader cultural issues
of problematic gender relations and to highlight the way in which the four
women draw comfort and strength from their relationships.
Music importantly allows the women of Girls to display different values
and characteristics that challenge homogenised notions of femininity even
within the narrow subsection of US society the characters represent as a
group. As Grdešić argues, criticisms of Girls that attack the show’s failure
to represent and adequately embody the complexities of contemporary
femininity ultimately ignore a key aspect of the show that rejects such a
collective notion altogether (2013, p. 356). Ford suggests this aspect of
the show is heightened by its adherence to conventions associated with
North American indie ‘smart’ cinema, particularly that of ‘reflexivity’
(2016, p. 5). Characters engage with and yet distance themselves from
postfeminist notions of femininity, allowing the series to provide a more
complex representation of femininity marked by its lack of cohesion rather
than by its adherence to a set of identifiable principles. In line with this,
song functions in accordance with its traditional function with the
Hollywood musical. With its roots in popular folk art and vaudevillian
entertainment forms, the musical genre has traditionally provided the
means by which audience members can engage in a process of ‘personal
identity formation’ by allowing the performances on-screen to embody
some of the values associated with a particular ethnicity, sexuality, and
gender (Knapp, 2006, p. 1).
142 A. SERGEANT
This musical dynamic is exemplified through the character of Marnie.

Of the four lead characters, Marnie is an embodiment of ‘postfeminist
entitlement’ as her narrative arc takes her on a journey from an art gallery
assistant in Season 1 to an aspiring singer/songwriter by the end of Season
4 (DeCarvalho, 2013, p. 368). Her relationship with the other lead
characters is also often the least authentic and positive. She often sees
Shoshanna, Jessa, and especially Hannah either as sources of competition
or as useful to her only as means of serving her own emotional needs. Yet,
given Marnie’s persistent failure to express herself authentically through
conversation, it is the moments where she expresses herself non-verbally
that she is, arguably, at her most ‘honest’ on-screen.
In ‘All adventurous women do’ (Season 1, Episode 3), Marnie encoun-
ters an attractive artist named Booth Jonathan at one of her gallery’s
openings, with whom she proceeds to engage in a series of flirtatious
exchanges. When Booth tries to kiss Marnie, he tells her that he ‘is a
man, and [he] know[s] how to do things’, and his forceful advances
trigger within Marnie a level of erotic excitement that requires her to
immediately return to the party, find a private space, and masturbate.
The scene speaks to Marnie’s relationship with her sexuality, but does so
in a way that is almost entirely non-verbal. The use of music in the
masturbation scene adds to the intensity of the moment. Marnie mastur-
bates to Gang Gang Dance’s ‘Mindkilla’, a song described in The
Washington Post (2011) as a startlingly ‘dystopian dancehall bounce’.
This song is designed to engage its listener in a physical act of self-
expression – dance. This appeal to the bodily register recalls Irigaray’s
statements about femininity – that ‘woman takes pleasure more from
touching than from looking’ (1977, p. 26). Whilst the act of looking is
associated with a masculine gaze, femininity is often expressed through the
act of touching. In the case of Marnie’s masturbation, the spectator is
given an insight into Marnie’s experience of her own body and sexuality
outside the linguistic register, expressing a feminine viewpoint through an
expression defined in Irigarayan philosophy as ‘feminine’.
Of the four leads, Marnie’s relationship with music is arguably the most
crucial for the development of the character’s self-expression. As Bolton
argues, self-expression is a key way that popular film and television exam-
ples might contribute progressively to gendered representation (2001,
p. 4). Drawing from Irigaray, Bolton (2001) suggests that a truly feminine
register can be established in media outside its traditionally masculine
mode of address. Aligning with psychoanalytic spectatorship theory, this
may occur through a ‘foregrounding of the inner life of the female

characters in each film, the positioning of the female point of view, and
the invitation to share it’ (p. 6). Arguably, Marnie’s greatest moments of
self-expression come not when she expresses herself in conversations with
her friends, lovers, or family, but rather in her relationship with music. It is
in these moments that she is at her most transparent and open, often
making herself vulnerable in the process as her ambitions and desires are
revealed to the world though her performances.
Such a moment of transparency occurs during ‘On all fours’ (Season 2,
Episode 9), wherein Marnie covers Kanye West’s ‘Stronger’. During this
performance, the audience is encouraged to laugh at Marnie as she tries to
inject emotional vulnerability and personal expression into a song with
largely nonsensical and arguably misogynist lyrics (‘Let’s get lost tonight/
You can be my black Kate Moss tonight/Play secretary I’m the boss
tonight’). Her decision to ‘feminise’ a ‘masculine’ song reveals pretention
in her own ambition as a performer. Similarly, in ‘She said ok’ (Season 3,
Episode 3), Marnie tries to take a music video offline wherein she performs a
cover of the song ‘What I am’ by Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians. In
the embarrassing video, Marnie’s performance straddles a variety of female
performer archetypes from the grunge-girl look of a performer like Avril
Lavigne to the school-girl sexualisation of Britney Spears. As her relationship
with Desi progresses in Seasons 3 and 4, Marnie expresses her identity
through an interplay between the traditional ‘feminine’ role she embodies
in that relationship (on and off stage), and in the discomfort felt by inhabit-
ing this position. The relationship with Desi allows her a voice in the show’s
diegetic soundtrack, replacing the hyperbolic displays that characterise her
early performances with a degree of authenticity as covers are replaced with
the original songs she and Desi write and perform together. Yet this
authenticity comes through the positioning of her musicality in relation to
a more authoritative masculine presence. Marnie is ambivalent about being
Desi’s muse and accompanying songstress, and it is this contradiction that
best represents her character’s contribution to the show’s feminist discourse,
framed through its dialogue between music and narrative form.
CONCLUSION: DISCUSSING GIRLS THROUGH THE FEMININE

As I have argued, the prominent use of song in Girls serves to enhance,
emphasise, and, at times, augment the series’ thematic concerns with
issues of female identity and friendship as a key part of its feminist
144 A. SERGEANT
negotiation of postfeminism. However, placed in dialogue with Irigaray’s

broad philosophical principles, the importance of song to Girls is not
simply that the show’s soundtrack adds a dimension of meaning to the
story that is worth expanding upon through critical analysis. This chapter
examines the role of music in articulating issues of gender, but it also
explores the gendered registers of the music itself. As Gilbert and Pearson
argue, ‘the human experience of sound is fundamentally more tactile than
the experience of light’ (1999, p. 86). In establishing emotional resonance
between spectators and characters, song provides spaces whereby meaning
is invited beyond the expression of ‘mere’ words or sight alone. Music,
therefore, functions as a method of engagement similar to demand for a
feminised practice of writing and communication as expressed within
feminist philosophy. As Cixous (1976, p. 881) suggests:
In women’s speech, as in their writing, that element which never stops

resonating, which, once we’ve been permeated by it, profoundly and imper-
ceptibly touched by it, retains the power of moving us – that element is the
song: first music from the first voice of love which is alive in every woman.
Enacting her vision for a feminised mode of writing, Cixous (1976)

utilises imagery in these sentences to link concepts of female identity to
a semantic field of touch, emotion, and music, arguing that for a feminised
mode of expression to truly exist it must embrace this style of commu-
nication above the focus on clarity of meaning or logic of argument that
has been appropriated by the masculine register.
As I have shown, music is more than merely an added accompaniment to
Girls’ narrative, and neglecting this aspect of the show necessarily results in
certain experiential aspects of watching the show to be prioritised over
others. The meaning obtained from its more overt communication style
to the audience (i.e. its dialogue) is articulated, whilst the feeling of watch-
ing Girls is often considered superfluous to intellectual analyses of its politics
of gender. For Irigaray (1974), this prioritisation of reason over feeling has
traditionally functioned in intellectual discourse to privilege the masculine
over the feminine voice, a critique she demonstrates by recalling Plato’s own
analogy of the cave. For Plato, the subject seeking intellectual advancement
must see the world as series of imperfect images projected onto a cave wall.
For Irigaray, this way of understanding the world is inherently gendered.
Instead of seeking to understand the mystique of the darkness and embrace
the sensual surrounding of the cave itself, Plato’s subject looks to images on
the walls in order to establish a link ‘between the outside and the inside,
between the plus and the minus’ in an act that is fundamentally masculine in
its characteristic (1974, p. 247). In a similar manner, instead of shying away
from music’s lack of overt symbolism, it is the very absence of logic or
symbolic value in music that allows it to inhabit a space outside the trap-
pings of traditional logic structures that have prioritised and valorised
masculinity over femininity. In harnessing that space, Girls is able to con-
tribute to feminist debates not simply by communicating with a female
voice, but by expressing itself as a female voice. To watch Girls is to hear
Girls, and to understand its narrative is to recognise that there are moments
in the show where understanding the narrative is not enough. It is in these
spaces where things are best left to song.
REFERENCES
Bolton, L. (2001). Film and female consciousness. Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Cixous, H. (1976). The laugh of Medusa. Signs, 1(4), 875–893.
DeCarvalho, L.K. (2013). Hannah and her entitled sisters: (Post)feminism, (post)
recession, and Girls. Feminist Media Studies, 13(2), 367–370.
Dyer, R. (1992). Only entertainment. Abingdon: Routledge.
Dyer, R. (2012). In the space of the song. Abingdon: Routledge.
Erlewine, S.T., Spanos, B., & Murray, N. (2015, May 2). Sean Kingston,
‘Beautiful Girls’. Rolling Stone. Retrieved from http://www.rollingstone.
com/music/lists/20-best-covers-of-ben-e-kings-stand-by-me-20150502/u2-
and-bruce-springsteen-20150502.
Ford, J. (2016). The smart body politics of Lena Dunham’s Girls. Feminist Media
Studies. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2016.1162826.
Fuller, S., & Driscoll, C. (2015) HBO’s Girls: Gender, generation, and quality
Gilbert, J., & Pearson, E. (1999). Discographies: Dance music, culture and the
politics of sound. London: Routledge.
Girls soundtrack featuring new music by Fun, Santigold, Grouplove. (2012,
December 10). The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved from http://www.hollywoo
dreporter.com/earshot/girls-soundtrack-features-new-music-400058.
Irigaray, L. (1974). Speculum of the other woman. Trans. Gill, G.C. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press.
Irigaray, L. (1977). The sex which is not one. Trans. Porter, C. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press.
146 A. SERGEANT
Johnson, C.H. (2014). ‘Dancing on my own: Popular music and issues of identity in
Girls. In B. Kaklamanidou & M. Tally (Eds.), HBO’s Girls: Questions of gender,
politics, and millennial angst (pp. 186–198).Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars.
Knapp, R. (2006). The American musical and the performance of personal identity.
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Kuhn, A. (1994). Women’s pictures: Feminism and cinema. Verso: London.
Lacan, J. (1975). The seminar of Jacques Lacan book XX: On feminine sexuality, the
limits of love and knowledge 1972–1973. Trans. Fink, B. New York: W.W.
Norton & Company.
Laing, H. (2007). The gendered score: Music in the 1940s melodrama and the
woman’s film. Aldershot: Ashgate.
LaPlace, M. (1987). Producing and consuming woman’s film: Discursive struggle
in Now, Voyager. In C. Gledhill (Ed.), Home is where the heart is: Studies in
melodrama and the woman’s film (pp. 138–166). London: BFI Publishing.
Lewis, L. (2010, June 12). ‘Album review: Robyn – Body Talk Pt 1. NME.com.
Retrieved from http://www.nme.com/reviews/robyn–2/11370.
Mulvey, L. (1975). Visual pleasure and narrative cinema. Screen, 16(3), 6–18.
Nash, M., & Grant, R. (2015). Twenty-something Girls v. thirty-something Sex
and the City women. Feminist Media Studies, 15(6), 976–991.
Studies in Television: The International Journal of Television Studies, 9(3), 33–43.
Richards, C. (2011, May 9). Gang Gang Dance’s ‘Eye Contact’: Fulfilling cosmic
musical ambition. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washing
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musical-ambition/2011/05/09/AFIS4bbG_story.html.
Smit, A. (2015). On the spectator side of the screen: Considering space, gender,
and visual pleasure in television. Feminist Media Studies, 15(5), 892–895.
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Girls: Questions of gender, politics, and millennial angst (pp. 28–42). Newcastle:
Cambridge Scholars.
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Willenbrink, H. (2015). Capitalizing on post-hipster cool: The music that makes
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Alexander Sergeant is a PhD candidate in Film Studies at King’s College London

in the UK. His research interests include the history of Hollywood cinema, film
theory, and theories of film spectatorship, film-philosophy and psychoanalysis. He
has published on a variety of these subjects in edited collections and academic
journals, including James Bond and phallocentrism, Disney animation and its
legacy to fantasy filmmaking, The Wizard of Oz (1939) and The Lord of the
Rings (2001–03).
CHAPTER 11
‘Doing Her Best With What She’s Got’:

Authorship, Irony, and Mediating Feminist
Identities in Lena Dunham’s Girls
Wallis Seaton
The mediation of feminism is fraught with complex and often contra-

dictory concerns inherently associated with an oppositional, political,
social movement working from within the parameters of capitalist culture.
Lena Dunham and her identifications with ‘the complicated nexus of
feminism and celebrity’ (Taylor, 2015, p. 125) are entangled with such
concerns. Dunham appears comfortable in occupying these grey areas,
however, considering her work to be synonymous with a feminist agenda:
‘I just think feminism is my work [ . . . ] It is the thing that makes space for
it all. It means everything to me because it sort of is everything’ (Dunham
quoted in Gay, 2014b). How feminism is understood in popular discourse
is continually being revised and is contingent upon the changing para-
meters of media culture and the crucial role that influential figures like
Dunham have in reframing how feminist issues are portrayed in popular
culture. Many critiques of Dunham’s feminism focus on its ‘celebrity
endorsements’ and ‘seductive marketing campaign[s]’ (e.g. Gay, 2014a)
and articulate a push and pull between what is considered ‘right’ and
W. Seaton (*)
PhD candidate in Film Studies, Keele University, Keele, UK
e-mail: w.a.seaton@keele.ac.uk

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-52971-4_11
150 W. SEATON
‘wrong’ in feminist politics, even though Dunham asserts, ‘If feminism has
to become a brand in order to fully engulf our culture and make change,
I’m not complaining’ (Dunham quoted in Clark, 2014).
GIRLS, DUNHAM, AND FEMINISMS

As I will argue in this chapter, the intertextual nature of Dunham’s
performances across different media and digital platforms form a complex
layering of identity that makes a specific address to feminist issues
and themes. Beginning with her portrayal of Hannah Horvath in Girls
(2012–2017), ‘a strong feminist awareness pervades the series’ (Fuller &
Driscoll, 2015, p. 257). Various plot lines address abortion, sex, sexuality,
and body image, thus positioning such feminist issues at the forefront
of the series’ trajectory. This feminist awareness extends to Dunham’s
acknowledgement of the potential criticisms levelled at her work and
displayed through metatextual comments within the series’ plots
(Grdešić, 2013, p. 357). A blurring between Dunham and her character
(Woods, 2013) is cemented by such comments in the pilot episode,
namely through Hannah’s ambition to become a writer – or ‘the voice
of her generation’ – a prophetic, satirical nod to the media’s inevitable
appropriation of the term in relation to Dunham herself. As other scholars
have shown (e.g. Bell, 2013), Girls actively invokes feminist and postfe-
minist discourses and the attendant criticisms of whiteness and privilege,
and scrutinises these by failing to live up to the expectations inherent
within them: ‘Rather than [Anita] Harris’s “can-do” girls, they are girls
who should-be-able-to-but-don’t’ (Fuller & Driscoll, 2015, p. 257). The
same ironic, self-deprecating tone present in Girls is a crucial aspect of
Dunham’s feminist work and performance across diverse media platforms.
Hannah exists in parallel with Dunham’s ‘real’ self through her book
Not That Kind of Girl (2014), her strong social media presence, and
numerous television and press features. Dunham’s involvement with poli-
tical and social campaigns has often coincided with her creative work, most
notably through her partnership with Planned Parenthood, as well as her
involvement with Hillary Clinton. Two of Dunham’s digital projects,
Lenny Letter, a twice-weekly email newsletter, and Women of the Hour, a
podcast mini-series, are even more affirmatively feminist. The candid
nature of Dunham’s tone and performance is a consistent thread, in a
way that seemingly refuses to filter what is discussed and how it is dis-
cussed. As Hannah puts it in Girls: ‘TMI is such an outdated concept.
AUTHORSHIP, IRONY, AND MEDIATING FEMINIST IDENTITIES IN GIRLS 151
There’s no such thing as too much information. This is the Information

Age’ (Season 4, Episode 2, ‘Triggering’). In moments like these from
Girls and other projects, Dunham is ‘able to pre-empt [ . . . ] criticisms by
demonstrating a facility for both self-deprecation and high degrees of self-
reflexivity’ (McRobbie, 2015, p. 13), showing an active engagement with
the critical discourses surrounding her work.
As I shall foreground here, the role of digital technologies is funda-
mental in both facilitating and disseminating Dunham’s feminist narra-
tives. This emphasis on the digital as a tool for activism is also evident
through Dunham’s promotion of ‘choice’, a strong sense of self,
body confidence, and the advocacy of a feminist community via various
media. Dunham’s status as a celebrity within popular culture, however,
embodies, for some critics, an ambivalence towards activism and/or a
rebranding that simply offers a ‘gateway to feminism, not the movement
itself’ (Gay, 2014a). Postfeminist discourses are defined by ‘an evident
erasure of feminist politics from the popular’ (Tasker & Negra, 2007,
p. 5) despite certain aspects of feminism still influencing cultural con-
versations. Neoliberal discourses add further critical weight to this posi-
tion, through the promotion of the individual over the collective and the
equation of consumption with freedom, liberation, and empowerment,
indicative of a capitalist ideology (Mendes, 2012, pp. 557–8). Dunham’s
public persona encapsulates these problematic positions as she occupies
sites that arguably endorse the very values that feminism has often
critiqued.
Dunham’s work demonstrates that the parameters of the feminist
movement are shifting, particularly in a media landscape where ‘the
yoking of celebrity and feminism continues to evolve’ (Hamad &
Taylor, 2015, p. 126). As Gill argues, ‘much of what counts as feminist
debate in Western countries today takes place in the media rather than
outside it’ (2007a, p. 268). While Dunham’s work and presentation of
self are entangled with issues of commerce and privilege that are often
contested (e.g. McRobbie, 2015), her approach actively (re)negotiates
such mediated spaces to advance these debates. In the same way that
Girls is ‘a kind of millennial consciousness-raising tool’ through her
engagement with past and present discourses of feminism (Nash &
Grant, 2015, p. 988), so too can this be said of Dunham’s cross-
platform presence more widely. Lena Dunham and her feminist identity
are reference points from which to examine the nuances in current
feminist debates.
152 W. SEATON
‘NO SUCH THING AS TOO MUCH INFORMATION’:

AUTHORSHIP AND IRONY
To understand Girls’ feminist address requires consideration of the points
of articulation between Dunham’s different planes of authorship. Very
much at the centre of this text, both in its production and in its narrative,
Dunham’s authorial voice is shaped by the relationship between her
character, Hannah, and her extratextual persona. As Nygaard’s contextual
analysis of HBO’s industrial imperatives indicates, Dunham was part of the
network’s strategy to appeal to younger, web-savvy audiences, indicative
of the millennial generation (2013, p. 372). Her strong social media
presence fused well with Girls’ cross-platform reach, offering behind-
the-scenes content to audiences, fitting nicely with HBO’s target demo-
graphic. Upon the release of Girls’ first season in 2012, however, HBO’s
decision to recruit the then 26-year-old, ‘relative[ly] unknown’ Dunham
as part of their line of established male auteurs was initially met with
criticism of the network’s supposed nepotistic practices (Nygaard 2013,
pp. 370–1), as Dunham and her co-stars were ‘daughters of the cultural
elite’ (e.g. artists, musicians, playwrights, and broadcasters) (Woods,
2013). Positioning Judd Apatow as executive producer in the early stages
of Girls’ promotion arguably further undermined and threatened the
authenticity of Dunham as female showrunner (see Nygaard, 2013;
Woods, 2015), but the series’ distinctly ironic and satirical tone was firmly
established at the outset, intensified by the synergy between Dunham’s
‘real’ and fictional selves.
Feeding assumptions that Dunham’s arguably semi-autobiographical
subject matter forms the basis for some of the narrative content in Girls,
the initial media buzz surrounding the series focused on Dunham’s
character Hannah as the ‘voice of a generation’. Negative readings came
in the form of criticisms of Hannah’s inflated self-entitlement in the pilot
(‘I could be a drug addict. Do you realise how lucky you are?’), and were
mirrored by criticisms of Dunham herself and her own privileged connec-
tions, serving to blur author and character within the paratextual framing of
Girls (Woods, 2015, p. 41). While unapologetically working from within
the same privileged cultural parameters that are subject to media scrutiny,
what Dunham’s fictional creation of Hannah allows for is a dramatic arena
in which to reflect upon such issues of gender, class, and privilege. This
results in a specific feminist address – an address that is strongly driven by
the articulation between Dunham’s different planes of authorship.
Anticipating potential criticisms of the show, Dunham uses her fictional

performance as Hannah to create a space in which to engage in a critical
dialogue about the important gendered issues surrounding her work.
Even the title, Girls, acknowledges its inability to meet media expectations
through its use of this often pejorative term, while also knowingly inscrib-
ing certain popular inflections of feminism (e.g. girl power) through its use
(Fuller & Driscoll, 2015); the capitalisation in the title sequence ‘gobbles
up the entire screen’ in a way that ‘kind of reclaim[s] it’ for its own
feminist purpose despite its problematic connotations (Danes, 2012). As
Grdešić asserts, certain narrative elements in Girls foreshadow critics’
complaints with the series and with women’s popular culture more gen-
erally, making it ‘highly self-conscious and attuned to criticism, and there-
fore deeply political’ (2013, p. 358). Critical commentaries feed into the
series via narrative devices such as references to Hannah’s writing, her
tweets, and her use of online feminist websites like Jezebel (p. 357). In
more pronounced metafictional elements, Hannah’s halting attempt
at writing her memoir ironically draws attention to Girls as fiction: in
the pilot episode, Hannah insists that she cannot write more essays until
she has ‘lived them first’, so that the material for her memoir advances the
action of the series as the series becomes the memoir itself (p. 357). In the
same vein, Hannah’s boss, Ray, mirrors common gendered criticisms
levelled at women’s writing, asking her if there is ‘anything real’ that she
can write about because ‘What in the world could be more trivial than
intimacy?’ (Season 1, Episode 9, ‘Leave me alone’).
This reflexive critical dialogue is affirmatively feminist and significant in
its address, both in terms of its articulations in Girls and in considering
how such an address is performed in her social media. Dunham also
positions Not That Kind of Girl as a feminist act: ‘There is nothing gutsier
to me than a person announcing that their story is one that deserves to
be told, especially if that person is a woman’ (Dunham, 2014, p. xvi).
Dunham’s book adopts similar tonal and aesthetic elements to Girls, such
as the cover’s bold pink and black typeface, reminiscent of that used in
Girls’ title screen, both of which are knowingly ironic in their overtly
‘feminine’ colour palettes. The same candid mode of storytelling that
informs Girls’ narratives is also evident in the gendered topics of her
essays, including love, sex, bodies, and friendship. There is a knowing
irony associated with her privileged perspective that underlies essays like
‘My top 10 health concerns’, among which are ‘a fear of tinnitus’ and
‘lamp dust’ (2014, p. 236). Others, like ‘Who moved my uterus’, discuss
154 W. SEATON
the painful trials of menstruation (pp. 113–23). The revealing nature of

Dunham’s writing has been labelled as a self-indulgent, masturbatory
approach (e.g. Freeman, 2014). Dunham’s critical response to such sexist
comments is reciprocated via her different planes of authorship and per-
formance, attaching even more significance to Girls as a feminist text.
In perhaps one of the most self-reflexive of episodes from Season 4
(Episode 2, ‘Triggering’), Dunham directly addresses the criticisms aimed
at her writing through Hannah’s character. Hannah attends a writing
workshop at the University of Iowa and, upon reading her fictional story
aloud to the other students in the class, receives largely negative, sexist
criticisms of the piece. Her account of a tattooed 25-year old’s seemingly
abusive sexual relationship with a man is pulled apart for its ‘privileged’
and ‘stunted feminist ideas’, as well as its insensitivity towards victims.
Further, her peers identify Hannah as ‘very much this character’ in her
story, with one student identifying the personal, seemingly semi-
autobiographical nature to be his ‘problem’ with her writing. In this
scene, Dunham appears to be addressing and challenging the gendered
critiques of her own written work.
As other scholars have identified (e.g. Bell, 2013; Nash & Grant,
2015), Girls calls up past and present discourses of feminism and post-
feminism to scrutinise them. Again, this can be seen in ‘Triggering’, as
Dunham seemingly dissects her own responses to critiques of her work
through her fictional character: Hannah struggles to remain silent while
her peers deliver their opinions, continually raising her hand as she inter-
rupts, chewing loudly on her snacks. Allowing the most praised student in
the class to defend her right to speak (‘If it’s about her, so what? . . . This is
her voice. This is who she is’, Dunham’s scripting here arguably evokes
postfeminist rhetoric. Using the classroom as a platform, Dunham’s
performance channels the same kind of ‘in-your-face, confrontational
attitude’ (Shugart et al., 2001, p. 195) exemplified by a postfeminist
sensibility (Gill, 2007b). Empowerment evokes ‘feeling good about one-
self and having the power to make choices, regardless of what those
choices are’ as well as a ‘[v]igorous assertion of one’s own individuality’
(Shugart et al., 2001, p. 195). The title of the episode ‘Triggering’
acknowledges the loaded politics of this appropriation. But rather than
applying this language to simply reinscribe and recontextualise certain
elements of a postfeminist sensibility without question (Shugart et al.,
2001), Girls takes this further by critically contributing to and intervening
in such dialogues about feminisms and their media (re)presentations.
‘DOING HER BEST WITH WHAT SHE’S GOT’: DUNHAM’S

DIGITAL PROJECTS
In Girls, the Internet and social networking underpin the ways in which
the characters navigate life. These digital platforms provide a canvas for
narratives that highlight their impact on the presentation and understand-
ing of selfhood in the current moment. The significance attached to these
digital platforms is arguably influenced by Dunham’s own experiences
as a millennial woman, coming of age in the public gaze. Alongside her
published work, including various magazine and newspaper columns,
Dunham’s strong presence on social media, as well as her website and
blog, deploy the same candid, knowingly ironic tone. As McRobbie
notes, Dunham creates a larger narrative landscape whereby such extra-
textual material is used to frame the narrative content itself (2015, p. 14).
Embedded within this metanarrative are comments on her work; Dunham
ably shapes these across multiple platforms, extending her feminist identity.
Online platforms are crucial in facilitating Dunham’s approach
(see Marshall, 2010, p. 40). Marshall sees Twitter as a key vehicle for
this performance – through the presentation of the ‘public private self’
celebrities appear to engage with a ‘new notion of the public that implies
some sort of further exposure of the individual’s life’ (p. 44, emphasis in
original). Dunham has used Twitter to promote her personal and profes-
sional selves. However, now her posts are sent through a trusted friend in
an attempt ‘to create a safer space for [her]self emotionally’ from the
constant barrage of hateful comments (Delaney, 2015). Although social
media offers a platform for women to express themselves, it also opens
them up to largely unpoliced sexism and misogyny. As the 2014
Gamergate controversy made public, the toxicity of cyber warfare poses
very real and potentially life-threatening consequences for women who
simply voice their opinions online (e.g. Stuart, 2014). Dunham has experi-
enced gendered attacks on social media and has referred to the effects of
online abuse as ‘psychically depleting’ (‘Instagram’s Kevin Systrom’,
2015). Despite this, she still champions these modes of communication
because they facilitate her feminist agenda.
Of particular importance to this discussion is Dunham’s use of
Instagram as it draws attention to the complex state of feminism within
this commercial space. Dunham includes images of feminist literature,
icons, art, and political content, alongside images of her dog, friends,
and popular culture. This content is also compatible with her support of
156 W. SEATON
the second-wave rallying slogan ‘the personal is political’, as illustrated by an

image of a friend and reproductive rights activist wearing a t-shirt embla-
zoned with the slogan.1 As with Girls, Dunham uses Instagram to share
images of herself and her semi-naked, non-normative body for mundane
purposes such as showing an outfit but also to share intimate details of her
life. Using her body as ‘a tool to tell the story’ (2014, p. 102), she uses
Instagram to extend this important creative choice.
While Dunham’s activity on this platform is in line with her personal
politics – a promotion of choice, a strong sense of self, and encouraging
body confidence – it is this form of self-presentation or self-promotion that
complicates her seemingly feminist position anchoring such activity. A
plethora of images from various photo shoots and public appearances
extend Dunham’s intertextual reach and provide entry points through
which to access and consume her work and that of those whom she
promotes.2 Aligning with postfeminist, neoliberal discourses, the promo-
tion of the individual over the collective privileges ‘certain narratives
about feminism – as well as certain ways of being feminist’ (Taylor,
2014, pp. 76–7). While pushing content from a variety of feminist voices,
Dunham’s Instagram also features selfies with renowned feminist celebrities
such as Gloria Steinem, Hillary Clinton, and Taylor Swift. As McRobbie
argues, Dunham ‘inscribes herself within, and implicitly subscribes to, those
cultural norms which celebrate the seeming gains of young white woman-
hood, as if feminism has done its work and everything else is up to the hard
work and dedicated striving of the individual girl’ (2015, p. 15).
The raced and classed nature of her engagements with digital public(s)
problematises Dunham’s feminist agenda, particularly in terms of the ways
that some of her interactions on various media platforms are reflective of
white privilege. For instance, in an interview with Amy Schumer for Lenny
Letter, Dunham (2016) suggests that an African-American professional
football player, Odell Beckham Jr, ignored her at the 2016 Met Ball
because she was ‘not the shape of a woman by his standards’. Dunham
was pilloried by a number of feminist commentators for ascribing mis-
ogynist thoughts to Beckham Jr in ways that also perhaps perpetuate racial
stereotypes about black male sexuality (Blay, 2016). More broadly, as
McCann discusses in this volume, Dunham’s white privilege has also
been an issue for women/feminists of colour who take aim at Girls for
its lack of diversity (e.g. Stewart, 2012).
Dunham has attempted to address these issues. For instance, she publicly
apologised via Instagram to Beckham Jr3 and she briefly introduced a black
character to the whitewashed cast of Girls. As McRobbie notes, Dunham

has shown some ‘liberal sensitivity’ towards this criticism but ‘the overall
ethos is that of privilege, and the need for success as confirmation of the self’
(2015, p. 15). It is, indeed, part of Dunham’s brand that we accept her
failings. Dunham’s Instagram profile describes her as ‘Doing her best with
what she’s got’, intimating an acceptance of this self-presentation and the
commercialised space within which she works, and its potential for main-
taining her feminist narrative.4 As McRobbie argues, Dunham is complicit
with a ‘cultural appropriation of feminism’ (2015, p. 16) and allows herself
to become a subject for the press and their often gendered editorial com-
ments (p. 14). Dunham often co-opts these media images by re-posting
them to her Instagram profile, along with captions that subvert their
intended meanings (‘Was literally psyched about the paparazzi photo
so I would have evidence of it [her outfit] #thanksforthehelpcreepy-
guyintruckerhat’), demonstrating her active role in the construction of
meanings associated with her mediated self within commercialised digital
spaces.5
Lenny Letter, Dunham’s collaborative project with Girls’ executive pro-
ducer Jenni Konner, offers a similar refraction of gendered notions such as
over-sharing. This is evident in its description as ‘An email newsletter where
there’s no such thing as too much information’. Projects like these serve as
‘a repository for many different voices’ (‘Instagram’s Kevin Systrom’,
2015), united by their associations with feminism(s), no matter how
diverse. Such projects arguably fit with the contemporary online feminist
activism that Keller (2012) identifies as characteristic of third-wave feminist
communities. Specifically, they are defined by ‘messy’ networks, made up
of multiple voices with different interests and agendas, complicating the
notion of a unified social movement (p. 437). Understandings of femin-
isms in the current moment are shaped by their digital manifestations:
using the Internet as a resource, Dunham is arguably (re)negotiating
these mediated spaces to resist the policing of female narratives. Rather
than simply embracing her popular identity as celebrity, Dunham is
attempting to change the narrative (Zeisler, 2016, pp. 136–7).
CONCLUSION
In a 2015 issue of Harper’s Bazaar, Lena Dunham interviewed prominent
US feminist Gloria Steinem. A photograph shows the two women sitting
arm in arm in the centre of a lush two-piece suite. While adopting the
158 W. SEATON
aesthetics of a white, privileged (post)feminism, the image also flags gen-

erational differences and a shared celebrification of their feminist
identities. Steinem’s fame may be read through the lens of ‘blockbuster
celebrity feminism’, a concept that references ‘women whose fame is the
direct product of their feminist intervention into public discourse’
(Taylor, 2014, p. 75, emphasis in original). Augmented by her position
as co-founder of Ms. Magazine in 1972, Steinem became a prominent
voice during the second-wave movement and has remained a public
feminist figure throughout her life (Hamad & Taylor, 2015, p. 126).
Her appearances on The L Word (2004–09) and The Good Wife (2009–
16), as well as her recently published autobiography My Life on the Road
(2015), further cement her celebrity as she continues to capitalise on her
renown.
Steinem’s celebrity and her performance of a public feminist identity
made her a controversial figure in the feminist movement. She has been
criticised for her brand of upper-class, white feminism by millennial fem-
inists but her skill in media manipulation has ensured that her voice
continues to ‘culturally reverberate’ (Taylor, 2014, p. 76). As feminist
ideas are embedded into popular discourses and as celebrities increasingly
assert their feminism in the mainstream, the presumption that media
engagement with feminism is inherently negative and apolitical is ques-
tionable (Taylor, 2015, p. 125). Through their affirmative positions in the
mainstream, often performed with a knowing irony, Dunham and Steinem
seemingly acknowledge the limitations of such critiques and push these
debates further by asking, ‘what now?’ (Bell, 2013, p. 363). Nevertheless,
their privileged self-declarations have done little to address the ongoing
issues of race and class inequality, for instance, that plague popular inflec-
tions of feminism over successive generations.
Despite their similarities, Steinem’s view of ‘women’s media’ (Dunham,
2015) points to generational shifts in popular feminism: ‘obviously the
Internet is a bright spot, if women can use it [ . . . ] But we just need
to remember that it’s a medium, not a message’ (Dunham, 2015). While
acknowledging the paths forged as part of previous waves of feminist
activism, Dunham seems more optimistic about the potential of new
technologies to continue this political work. Girls as a feminist text is
enhanced by the articulations between Dunham’s ‘real’ and fictional nar-
ratives. As such, she has created a show that appears greater than the sum
of its parts. Dunham’s multi-platform identity demonstrates the messy
terrain(s) of postfeminism. Given her acceptance of feminism as a
commercialised, branded form, Dunham appears comfortable in occupy-

ing this grey area in popular culture. While her work communicates its
feminist position through a privileged, narcissistic, and ironic lens, what
this analysis and others have shown is that Dunham, and indeed, Girls
cannot simply be dismissed as apolitical.
Dunham and Girls signify a renewed imperative ‘to advance the feminist
adage that the “personal is political” through acknowledgement of both past
and present feminisms’ (Nash & Grant, 2015, p. 988). Going beyond mere
appropriation of language, Dunham’s engagement with postfeminism via
witty, trenchant self-critique breathes new life into a concept that has argu-
ably become boring (Whelehan, 2010). From this analysis, it would seem
that the emphasis on the individual rather than the collective, and a shift
from a physical emancipatory movement to more digital projects, still encap-
sulates many of the anxieties surrounding the future of feminism and the
ways in which celebrity culture is shaping this. Although Gay (2014a) argues
that ‘[f]eminism should not be something that needs a seductive marketing
campaign’, Dunham is simply ‘doing her best with what she’s got’.
NOTES
1. See https://www.instagram.com/p/8HTZsgC1In, retrieved 25 February,
2016.
2. See https://www.instagram.com/p/3H_TH5C1Iz, retrieved 26 August,
2016.
3. See https://www.instagram.com/p/BJ50WGnAZDk, retrieved 13
September, 2016.
4. See https://www.instagram.com/lenadunham Dunham’s Instagram pro-
file bio reads ‘don’t fight it live it’ on last date of access: retrieved 25
February, 2016.
5. See https://www.instagram.com/p/9R3TWVC1C-, retrieved 25
February, 2016.
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huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/the-way-lena-dunham-talks-about-black-men-
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160 W. SEATON
Clark, A. (2014, November 2). Lena Dunham: If feminism has to become a brand
to make change, I’m not complaining. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://
www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/nov/02/lena-dunham-interview-q-
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Danes, C. (2012). Lena Dunham. Interview. Retrieved from http://www.inter
viewmagazine.com/film/lena-dunham-1/.
Delaney, B. (2015, January 13). Lena Dunham goes dark on Twitter. And it’s no
wonder. The Guardian, Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/commen
tisfree/2015/jan/13/lena-dunham-goes-dark-on-twitter-and-its-no-wonder.
Dunham, L. (2015). Lena Dunham interviews Gloria Steinem. Harper’s Bazaar.
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view-amy-schumer.
Freeman, H. (2014, September 30). Not That Kind of Girl review – Lena Dunham
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com/books/2014/sep/30/not-that-kind-of-girl-lena-dunham-review-
memoir.
television. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 29(2),
253–262.
Gay, R. (2014a, October 10). Emma Watson? Jennifer Lawrence? These aren’t the
feminists you’re looking for. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.
theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/10/-sp-jennifer-lawrence-
emma-watson-feminists-celebrity.
Gay, R. (2014b). Roxane Gay talks to Lena Dunham about her new book,
feminism, and the benefits of being criticized online. Vulture. Retrieved from
http://www.vulture.com/2014/10/roxane-gay-interview-lena-dunham-
bad-feminist-not-that-kind-of-girl-books.html.
Gill, R. (2007a). Gender and the media. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Gill, R. (2007b). Postfeminist media culture: Elements of a sensibility. European
Girls. (2012–2017). Television series. Seasons 1–6. USA: HBO.
Grdešić, M. (2013). ‘I’m not the ladies!’ Metatextual commentary in Girls.
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fttreading.wordpress.com/2013/08/13/the-show-that-launched-a-thou
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162 W. SEATON
Wallis Seaton is a PhD candidate in Film Studies at Keele University in the UK.
Her doctoral research focuses on issues of commodification, feminist and mediated
identities, stardom and celebrity in relation to popular girl figures in contemporary
American film and television. Her thesis seeks to address the ways in which certain
texts from postfeminist, neoliberal culture articulate the politics of feminisms in the
current moment, with consideration of the increasing appropriation of “feminist”
ideas and agendas in more commercialised spaces, and across both physical and
digital realms.
PART III
Sex, Sexuality, and Bodies

CHAPTER 12
‘Art Porn Provocauteurs’: Feminist

Performances of Embodiment in the Work
of Catherine Breillat and Lena Dunham
Maria San Filippo
Exploring the nature of sex [allows] me to transcend the usual, horrible

images that form the basis of porno films.
Catherine Breillat (Macnab, 2004, p. 22)
Guys my age watch so much pornography. There’s no way that you,

young Jewish man from Chappaqua, taught this to yourself.
Lena Dunham (Bruni, 2012, p. 3)
As an artist whose oeuvre displays a preoccupation with provocative

subjects and whose authorial signature is branded by her courting of
controversy, self-proclaimed ‘pariah of French cinema’ Catherine Breillat
embodies par excellence my conception of the ‘provocauteur’ (Secher,
2005). Responding to charges that the sexual obsessiveness of her work
renders it sensationalist and risks reducing women’s representation to their
sexual selves, Breillat justifies herself with such pronouncements as ‘I take
M.S. Filippo (*)

Communication and Media Studies, Center for Art and Media,
Goucher College, Baltimore, US
e-mail: Maria.SanFilippo@Goucher.edu

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-52971-4_12
166 M.S. FILIPPO
sexuality as a subject, not as an object [of my work]’, while her defenders

proclaim her accomplishment ‘is to insist upon the inescapability of the
realm of the visual, on the fundamentally gendered nature of the erotic
imaginary, and on the complicity with which we inhabit our fantasmatic
roles’ (Wells, 2002, p. 65). Writer-filmmaker-television series creator Lena
Dunham has blazed her own path as provocauteur from the 2007 viral
YouTube video The Fountain, which features her bikini-clad and bathing
in a public monument, to her postcollegiate sloth and squalid ‘sex in a pipe
in the street’ in breakout feature Tiny Furniture (2010), to her frequent
nudity and cringe-inducing sex scenes as alter ego Hannah Horvath on
HBO’s Girls (2012–2017), to her 2014 memoir Not That Kind of Girl’s
redefining of the ‘tell-all’ (Dunham 2014b). Since its debut, Girls has
provoked extreme responses, from proclamations of its Emmy-winning
eminence to allegations that its characters and perspective are entitled,
self-absorbed, and non-diverse. Lamenting Hannah’s fixation on ‘non-
fulfilling, awkward, degrading, and unprotected sex with [hookup-turned-
boyfriend] Adam [Adam Driver] and her passive aggressive self-conscious-
ness about her body’, Daalmans (2013, p. 360) indicates how Dunham’s
anti-erotic depictions of masochistic sex and unidealised nudity prove as
controversial as Breillat’s work; male and female viewers alike question
Dunham’s choice to turn her flabby torso and personal humiliations (sex-
ual and otherwise) into performance. I regard Dunham’s performance of
embodiment as constituting a feminist critique that controversially and
perhaps counter-intuitively uses supposedly negative, disempowering
images of female (self-) degradation. While criticised for ostensibly reinfor-
cing masochistic behaviour through sexualised depictions of women,
Dunham is committed to screening feminist consciousness and women’s
subjectivity as irreducible to but importantly determined by sexuality. In
this way, Dunham’s work occupies the cultural realm known as ‘postfemi-
nist’, similar to how Breillat takes up a position (as I will show) within what
some would categorise as porn.1 Yet for both provocauteurs this orienta-
tion is aimed at critiquing prescriptive feminism’s denouncement along-
side postfeminism’s exoneration of sexual subjugation as a strategy of
liberation and empowerment.
Sharing a devotion to challenging sexual norms and norms of repre-
sentation, converging at the point of embodied female performance of
sex/uality, Dunham joins Breillat in purposefully stretching the defini-
tional and representational boundaries of what we consider ‘feminist’ and
‘porn’. Driven to ponder and find inspiration in what is typically deemed
ART PORN PROVOCAUTEURS 167
abject or shameful, especially for women, Breillat and Dunham invert

pornography’s ‘frenzy of the visible’ to examine and validate women’s
bodies, desires, and pleasures through sexually explicit imagery (Williams,
1999).2 Through examination of performative self-pronouncements
in Breillat’s films A Real Young Girl (1976, released 2000), Romance
(2000), Fat Girl (2001), Sex Is Comedy (2002), and Anatomy of Hell
(2004), and in the first four seasons of Girls, I consider how their
complementary politics of screen representation and self-presentation of
bodies and sex constitute feminist ‘art porn’. The critique that they
mutually accomplish reveals and revises heteropatriarchal uses of female
nudity and sexuality, in and out of pornography, that conceal and deny
women’s humanity.
PROVOKING PORN: SCREENING SEX AS FEMINIST CRITIQUE

The ‘art or porn’? debate has nipped at Breillat’s heels since her first book,
A Man for the Asking (1968), was banned in France for readers under
18 (ironically, Breillat was 17 at the time of its release). Much as how
Dunham was first noticed for cheeky, body-baring YouTube video The
Fountain, Breillat forged her own notoriety as a teenage memoirist-
turned-filmmaker who deliberately desecrated Lolita-like fantasies of girl-
hood sexuality in films such as A Real Young Girl, based on her novel The
Opening (1974). That adaptation, financed with an interest toward dupli-
cating the commercial success of soft-core feature Emmanuelle (1974),
was made in 1976 but deemed unreleasable and suppressed by its finan-
ciers, even after the French censorship board approved it, until its eventual
release in 2000. Surmising about the X rating given to Romance that ‘The
X certificate was linked to the X chromosome’, Breillat promoted the film
with an image of a woman holding her hand between her legs with a red
‘X’ obscuring the view, and retitled it Romance X for release in the USA
(Price, 2002). These and Breillat’s subsequently released films openly
court comparison to hard-core pornography, namely Romance with its
rumoured unsimulated sex featuring Italian hard-core performer Rocco
Siffredi in a lead role, as well as Anatomy of Hell, also starring Siffredi and
adapted from Breillat’s novel Pornocratie (2001). Linda Williams names
such extreme sexual displays within art cinema ‘hard-core eroticism’ to
suggest their mix of hard-core porn and erotic suggestion through
employing ‘concealing erotic silhouettes, inferred fellatio, [and] inferred
unprotected [vaginal and/or] anal penetration’ (2014, pp. 15, 18).
168 M.S. FILIPPO
Yet Breillat’s films go further, not merely imitating but brandishing porn’s
signifiers of realness as means to critique porn’s sexual truth claims, hence
my adoption of the more precise term feminist ‘art porn’ to signal
Breillat’s reflexive mode of explicitly political (auto-)critique. Also in con-
tradistinction to conventional porn’s proffering of realness and
Hollywood-style cinema’s own brand of highly manipulated ‘realism’,
Breillat explicitly reminds us of the illusoriness of images, even beginning
Anatomy of Hell with a disclaimer stating: ‘A film is an illusion, not
reality-fiction or a happening; it is a true work of fiction. For the actress’s
most intimate scenes, a body double was used. It’s not her body; it’s an
extension of a fictional character’.
With none of the female performance of awe that is porn’s requisite
response to phallic excess, Breillat undermines the phallic visual economy by
rendering male ejaculation, the ‘money shot’, obscured (by a condom,
in the case of Siffredi’s character in Romance) or fabricated (as with the
prosthetic penis crafted for ‘The Actor’, played by Grégoire Colin, in Sex Is
Comedy). Instead, Breillat inverts porn’s frenzy of the visible to visualise
female pleasure, filming in close-up fingers inserted into a vagina and with-
drawn coated in fluid, both in a scene of Romance’s Marie (Caroline Ducey)
being pleasured by lover Robert (François Berléand) and in a flashback
sequence of children playing doctor in Anatomy of Hell. Such porn-
style close-ups of the female body observed with near-gynaecological
scrutiny work to defamiliarise its erotic signification and render it
more human. Moreover, such bodies are individuated by means of voiced
self-examination (as in A Real Young Girl and Fat Girl, while studying
themselves in mirrors) and/or visually aligned with non-erotic images
through intercutting – for example, ejaculate landing on Marie’s stomach
followed by a squirt of gel in preparation for an ultrasound examination in
Romance.
Breillat’s following in the French tradition of ‘philosophy in the
bedroom’ by injecting women’s introspection into sex scenes results
in purposeful alienation from such scenes’ visual pleasures, as with the
monologue in Romance that Marie delivers mid-coitus with pick-up
Paolo (Siffredi). Breillat also distances us from pleasurable immersion
within sex scenes by filming them with discomforting, defetishising
scrutiny and duration, using long takes that permit performers’ unfrag-
mented bodies to occupy real space. In two excruciating scenes of the
virginal older sister goaded into anal and then vaginal penetration in
Fat Girl, Breillat abruptly cuts away from the static long take on prone
Fig. 12.1 Distanciation merging with identification: Breillat’s use of deep focus
in Fat Girl shows Anaïs (Anaïs Reboux) crying in the foreground as her sister loses
her virginity in the background
Courtesy of The Criterion Collection
Elena (Roxane Mesquida) and seducer Fernando (Libero De Rienzo)

to the tearful face of younger sibling Anaïs (Anaïs Reboux), suffering
silently on both sisters’ behalf across the room. The combined effect
of two atypical elements – the shock cut disrupting Breillat’s signature
static long take and the emotive moment in Reboux’s otherwise implac-
able performance – allows for a simultaneous balancing of distanciation
and identification, such that visual pleasure is compromised even as the
sisters’ shared suffering intensely affects the spectator (Fig. 12.1).
Sex Is Comedy offers a fictionalised re-enactment of the making of Fat
Girl, with Breillat’s alter ego Jeanne (Anne Parillaud) alternately coaxing
and commanding her actors into performances she insists are about inti-
macy rather than titillation. Both self-serving and self-searching, Sex Is
Comedy ends with an unflinching scene of Mesquida re-enacting the
coercive deflowering her Fat Girl character endures. The film closes on
Jeanne embracing the sobbing actress in a poignant moment that again
transcends Breillat’s distanciation effects, permitting pathos for the char-
acter despite the reflexive techniques restricting our immersion within
the diegetic world. The empathy thus provoked is a non-moralising yet
170 M.S. FILIPPO
effective reminder of the cost of creating such images, even as their

necessity as crafted by Breillat is shown to be indisputable so long as
oppressive pornographic images and real-life sexual coercion persist.
One sees a similarly critical targeting of ‘heterophallic’ pornography in
Girls; indeed, in her widely tweeted denouncement of Hustler parody This
Ain’t Girls XXX (2013), Dunham explains that ‘a big reason I engage in
(simulated) on-screen sex is to counteract a skewed idea of that act created
by the proliferation of porn’.3 It is not the existence of porn that Dunham
condemns but the nature of so much of it and its domination of our sexual
imaginary that she, like Breillat, criticises. Similar to Breillat’s balancing
of distanciation and identification, Dunham deftly steers dialogue and
(self-)performance to deny the viewer untroubled immersion in the
much-discussed sex scenes between Hannah and Adam in Girls’ premiere
season, in which Adam sets the stage with lines clearly inspired by main-
stream porn:
I knew when I found you that you wanted it this way. You were a junkie and
you were only 11. And you had your fuckin’ Cabbage Patch lunchbox.
You’re a dirty little whore and I’m going to send you home to your parents
covered in cum. (Season 1, Episode 2, ‘Vagina panic’)
Hannah’s game yet unconvincing attempt to follow his lead, pleading

‘Oh, don’t do that. They’re gonna be so angry’, proves as disruptive to
spectatorial immersion as that of the mid-coitus monologues by Breillat’s
female protagonists. In this and other role-play moments, Dunham pokes
fun at the narrative absurdity for which porn is infamous while also
signalling its underlying misogyny. In opposition to not just porn but
HBO’s otherwise hypersexualising of idealised female nudity in shows
like The Sopranos (1999–2007) and Game of Thrones (2011–), Dunham
displays yet defetishises naked bodies. Girls’ sex scenes could hardly
be said to belong among those associated with HBO’s popularising of
‘sexposition’ – the term coined to describe cable television’s exaggeratedly
prurient ‘use of sex and nudity in conjunction with a specific piece (or
pieces) of information’, the chief distinction being that in Girls that
‘information’ and the sex scenes through which it is conveyed aim to
critique heteropatriarchal representations of sex and of women (McNutt,
2012). In their mutual referencing of how porn conventions dictate
women’s sexual subjectivities, Breillat and Dunham expand and revise
porn’s representational contours to feminist ends. In so naming their
works ‘art porn’, I hope to contribute to blurring and questioning, rather

than dividing and defining, these not mutually exclusive categories of art
and porn.
OWNING ONE’S ABJECTION: NUDE PERFORMANCE

AND EMBODIMENT
Beyond recontouring the gaze and its desired object as policed by

Hollywood and porn, Breillat and Dunham push further to explore and
affirm women’s ‘unladylike’ characteristics, elsewhere on-screen rendered
abject if not effaced completely. As Rowe (1996) argues, such ‘unruly
women’ subvert patriarchal authority through their excessive bodily per-
formances. For Kristeva (1982), abjection is a heteropatriarchal tool for
coercing female bodies into regulated social subjects, alienating women
from their bodies and one another. If shame is the internalised response to
revealing that which gendered or sexual hegemonies dictate must remain
hidden, to ‘own’ one’s abjection is to transform self-disgust into self-
affirmation. As Adrienne Angelo observes, for Breillat’s female protagonists,
abjection ‘is exemplified by [their] vomit, urine, and vaginal fluids, which
signify a body whose own borders are unstable and threaten to erupt or
transgress proper codes of feminine conduct’ (2010, p. 47). A Real Young
Girl uses surreal elements to convey the uncanny experience of pubescent
sexuality, with a changing body, surging libido, and much vying between
fantasy and reality as 14-year-old Alice (played by the then 20-year-old
Charlotte Alexandra) grapples with the conflicting lust and shaming direc-
ted her way. Unlike heteromasculinist fantasies of adolescent girlhood, our
look at this real young girl does not omit Alice’s curious inspection of her
bodily fluids and staging of fantasies involving animal urges and self-humi-
liation. The performance of owning one’s abjection functions similarly in
other Breillat films to render bodies and sex naturalistically and to humanise
women. Between a post-coital Marie and Paolo in Romance, the latter
expresses disgust at used condoms, which Marie likens to the shame
women are made to feel about tampons. ‘Women hide it under the bed,
so the guy’s not turned off’, she says. ‘Guys are easily disgusted. I quite like
disgusting things.’ In Anatomy of Hell, Siffredi’s character, known only as
‘The Man’, is shown a bloody tampon by ‘The Woman’ (Amira Casar), who
says, ‘It’s because of this blood that [women] are called impure’, then dips it
teabag-like into a glass of water, from which both drink. By film’s end
172 M.S. FILIPPO
‘The Man’ overcomes his fear and disgust of the reality of female bodies,
and, due to their routinised, destigmatised display on-screen, the viewer
has too.
This striking lack of self-shaming – freedom from looking at them-
selves through others’ (namely men’s) eyes – unites Breillat’s female
protagonists. Fat Girl’s Anaïs is the Breillat heroine par excellence for
appearing immune to external or internalised shaming, evidenced by the
relish with which she devours food despite others’ disapproval.
Contrasted with sister Elena’s hunger for male approval, food is the
substitute for the sensuality denied Anaïs even as it serves to protect
her from the manipulative Fernando. So too do actor Reboux’s expres-
sions and gestures establish Anaïs’s femininity-resistant armour; never
seen smiling, her glowering at the camera (most notably in the closing
freeze-frame) spurn diegetic and non-diegetic gazes even as she defies
the invisibility foisted upon ‘fat girls’ in scenes that foreground her
awkward, unflatteringly attired inhabitation of what Elena deems her
‘lumpy’ body.
Dunham has weathered a hailstorm of shaming for putting her own
body on display despite more closely resembling Anaïs than Elena;
the public response is telling for revealing, as Lunceford notes, that
‘taboos on nakedness do more than reign [sic] in sexuality; controls on
nakedness function as controls on the body itself – how one can appro-
priately use one’s own body’ (2012, p. 8). In one such ridiculing,
The Wrap’s Tim Molloy criticised Dunham at a 2014 Television Critics
Association panel:
I don’t get the purpose of all of the nudity on the show. By you particu-
larly. I feel like I’m walking into a trap where you go, ‘Nobody complains
about the nudity on Game of Thrones’, but I get why they are doing
it. They are doing it to be salacious and, you know, titillate people.
And your character is often naked just at random times for no reason.
(Rosenberg, 2014)
What Malloy’s remark reveals, apart from his overlooking potentially

progressive uses of nudity beyond mere titillation, is his chief grievance:
Dunham’s choice to perform nude herself before a public and press
known to mock her as ‘blobby’ and worse (Stasi, 2013). Hannah’s
body becomes still more unruly in refusing to conform to expectations
of how women should act: like Dunham herself, she is frequently chided
for not wearing pants, and few female performers save Fat Girl’s Reboux
have been filmed eating so often and with such gusto (e.g. Hazlett,
2012). To bookend its premiere season, as Girls does, with Hannah
blissfully chowing down on pasta then wedding cake, is audacious, as is
a defiant Dunham parodying herself binging while sitting naked on a
toilet in a 2012 Emmy Awards skit.4 Each act comprises an owning of her
abjection, a rejection of the doctrine of docile bodies that regulates
gender performance and body image through exacting modes of sub-
mission and self-denial.
In the series pilot, when Adam presses Hannah about whether she
has tried losing weight, she shoots back defensively, ‘No, I have not
tried a lot to lose weight because I decided that I was going to have
some other concerns in my life’! This reflexive tactic of articulating,
through Hannah, Dunham’s own endeavour to remain impervious in
the face of public denigration frequently exceeds the diegetic frame to
engage with her critics – an exemplary instance being the two dreamy,
sex-filled days Hannah spends in a well-appointed brownstone with
Patrick Wilson’s handsome doctor Joshua (Season 2, Episode 5, ‘One
man’s trash’). Told that she’s beautiful, Hannah is surprised. ‘Don’t
you think you are’? asks Joshua, to which she replies with a tentative
‘Um . . . yeah, it just isn’t always the feedback I’ve been given’. Cue
the cuttingly indignant responses (not all by anonymous Internet
trolls) that took Dunham to task for what they alleged was an unrea-
listically self-flattering premise; a discussion between Slate staff writers,
for example, asked, ‘Why are these people having sex, when they are so
clearly mismatched – in style, in looks, in manners, in age, in every-
thing’? (Hagland & Engber, 2013). Dunham greets the barrage of
public shaming by steadfastly continuing to flaunt her form, defying
discourse that insists on not-thin women staying covered up, expres-
sing discontent with their larger form, and abstaining in an effort
to ‘improve’ themselves. What the charged response to Dunham ulti-
mately establishes is the political potency of what Singer calls ‘specta-
cular self-subjugation – an activist tactic by which the body is given
up temporarily to an exploitative system as a means of staging carnival-
esque resistance against that system before a mainstream audience’ (cited
in Lunceford, 2012, p. 6, emphasis in original). Precisely because we are
so unaccustomed to seeing bodies like Dunham’s flaunted within popu-
lar culture, her image mobilises the carnivalesque’s effects to defamiliarise
our cultural notions of beauty and gender performance (Fig. 12.2).
174 M.S. FILIPPO
Fig. 12.2 Flaunting her bikini bod: Hannah (Lena Dunham) ejected from a
store for being unsuitably attired, in Girls
Courtesy of HBO
(UN)BECOMING WOMEN: SUBJECT FORMATION

THROUGH SELF-DEGRADATION
Also connecting Breillat and Dunham is sexual experience as the route to
owning one’s abjection; for both their characters, self-knowledge and self-
acceptance are arrived at through mindful acts of sexual self-degradation.
Observing this dynamic of degradation in Breillat’s work, Constable argues
that Breillat’s female protagonists enact not submission but surrender – the
choice to take pleasure in degradation, not merely in service to another’s
desire, but in an individually transformative way that also yields ‘a possibi-
lity of reciprocity generative of intimacy’ within a couple: ‘This surrender,
unbecoming as it might at first appear, is nevertheless often significant to the
transformative process of becoming a sexual subject for women, and to the
articulation of desire without masochism for women’ (2004, pp. 690, 693,
emphasis in original). In depicting her heroines as self-determining in
choosing submission, Breillat models a deshaming of women’s sexual
self-degradation and other articulations of desire. Romance’s Marie dictates
the terms under which she will give Paolo oral sex, then brings the same
authority to defining her role and aim in penetrative sex: ‘I want to be a
hole. The more gaping, the more obscene it is, the more it’s me, my
intimacy, the more I surrender’. Marie’s attempt to find sexual fulfilment
and personal liberation through this extreme self-positioning as ‘hole’ is
not altogether effective. Nor is her subsequent encounter with a stranger
who first propositions, then violently penetrates her; though left crying and
shaken, the words she hurls upon his retreat (‘I am not ashamed’!) perfor-
matively declare Marie’s refusal to regard the instance as shaming. Fat
Girl’s equally argued-over final sequence, interpreted by some as fantasy
fulfilment of Anaïs’s preternaturally mature pronouncement that ‘the first
time, I’d like it to be a man I don’t love’, works similarly. Responding to
police questioning after her own violent sexual attack, Anaïs denies having
been raped. ‘Don’t believe me if you don’t want to’, she obstinately tells
the officers. Electing to deny victimhood and its requisite shaming, Anaïs
defines the experience for herself with the same willful self-determination
that Breillat and Dunham bring to their (self-)images.
A similar dynamic of self-degradation initially characterises Hannah’s
relationship with Adam, with Hannah consciously (if at first naively)
framing their interactions as in service to her becoming a sexually mature
woman and professional writer as much as a girlfriend. ‘I do explore’,
Hannah assures ex-boyfriend Elijah (Andrew Rannells). ‘Right now, I’m
seeing this guy, and sometimes I let him hit me on the side of my body’
(Season 1, Episode 2, ‘All adventurous women do’). There is self-delusion
vying with self-assertion in her statement, as she sorts out which are Adam’s
desires and which are hers. Though Rolling Stone claims that ‘Hannah
clearly gets off on being degraded’, it is not at all clear that she actually
enjoys, or orgasms during, these sessions (Hiatt, 2013). In an interview,
Dunham (2014a) described her intention for shaping these scenes:
A phenomenon that Hannah experienced – and Hannah experienced it

because I experienced it – was the sense that if you were a girl who didn’t
have an ideal body, what you had to offer was your willingness to please,
your openness to adventure and your desire to do it all [ . . . ] ‘I’m a fat girl,
just do it – I’m down for anything. I’m not like those skinny girls. I can’t say
no’ [ . . . ] You don’t have to, obviously, be chubby to feel this, you just have
to feel an essential sense that you yourself are not enough.
Over Girls’ next two seasons, Hannah and Adam’s relationship trans-
forms into a more egalitarian if still troubled coupling. The pair lack the
emotional honesty that is required for their dominant-submissive role
176 M.S. FILIPPO
play to be pleasurable and connective rather than hurtful and distancing,

though it is not sexual degradation intrinsically but its misuse under non-
consensual or emotionally conflicted circumstances that is to blame. Girls’
discourse on (self-)degradation illuminates the burdensome cultural
silence – and thus ignorance – around sexual desire, especially as experi-
enced differently by opposingly socialised women and men.
These socially shamed acts made subject-forming in Breillat’s and
Dunham’s hands are accomplished through representations that both reveal
the ‘real’ – the awkward, the messy, the humiliating – of bodies and sex, and
that reflexively perform ‘writing the self’. In a scene from A Real Young
Girl, Alice uses her vaginal secretion to write her name on a mirror’s surface,
then vomits while intoning in voice-over, ‘Liberated by the vomit’s warmth,
disgust makes me lucid’. Rather than succumbing to those who alternately
sexualise or infantilise her, Alice takes control of her body and identity:
‘It was at that very moment that I decided to write [in] my diary’, she
announces. Subject formation is equally tied up with writing for Hannah,
as for the autobiographically inclined Dunham. The lived life makes for
superior subject matter, as Hannah finds in a Season 1 episode that has her
struggling to write on the weighty but impersonal topic of death (Episode 9,
‘Leave me alone’). ‘What could be more trivial than intimacy’? her cynical
employer Ray (Alex Karpovsky) asks, disdaining the topic of her work in
progress in a way that recalls how women’s writing is stigmatised for its
supposedly feminine frivolity. After another surge of self-doubt in Season 2,
Hannah’s publisher (John Cameron Mitchell) orders her to retrieve her self-
revealing authorial voice: ‘Where’s the sexual failure? Where’s the pudgy face
slick with semen and sadness? More Anaïs Nin, less Jane Austen’ (Season 2,
Episode 9, ‘On all fours’). Hannah heeds his words and finishes the memoir
with stories drawn from her own, defiantly abject, sexual experiences.
Hannah’s short-lived stint at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in Season 4
provides Dunham once again with a forum to reflexively address criticisms
about Girls and its controversial play with sexual (self-)degradation
specifically. Workshopping a short story in a fiction-writing seminar,
Hannah issues the class a trigger warning before reading aloud a graphic
description of an encounter in which her character is sexually dominated
(Season 4, Episode 2, ‘Triggering’). ‘The goal was not to say no’, she
reads. ‘In my choicelessness, I was free for a moment’. It is an articulation
of precisely that which Dunham and Breillat seek in their performances of
liberating self-degradation, to which Hannah’s classmates respond as if
echoing Dunham’s real-life detractors: ‘It’s about a really privileged girl
deciding that she’s going to let somebody abuse her’. Another student’s
comparison of the story to Fifty Shades of Grey (2012) suggests how Girls’
sex scenes have been unfairly conflated with the far less female-empowered
fantasy of dominance-submission that E. L. James’s neo-Gothic romance
employs. Moreover, Hannah’s cohort’s willingness to concede the ‘literary
merit’ of male writers describing blow-jobs speaks to how sexual explicit-
ness as screened elsewhere on HBO (and beyond) garners high-fives,
while Girls is berated for its ostensibly excessive sexual displays. As allega-
tions mount that Hannah’s story is offensive and traumatising, their
professor offers a voice of reason that would be well extended to our
contemporary culture of fear around disturbing ideas in and out of the
classroom: ‘Everyone here is an adult and can make their own choices’.
As was Breillat’s aim in Sex Is Comedy, this sequence is a self-serving if
satisfying means for Dunham to reflexively rebut critics who dispropor-
tionately politicise her. But whereas Hannah opts to leave Iowa and
proceeds to trespass teacher-student boundaries in her next gig as a
high-school substitute, Dunham continues to provoke her critics with
performances that are defiantly feminist in their personal-is-political ‘over-
sharing’ and body ‘flaunting’, but always within consensual adult contexts.
When Lunceford posits that ‘to perform nude embodiment is to make
explicit the performance of self’, he gestures at the individualism that is
written on the body, unveiled of certain social signifiers yet also reduced to
others – namely, gender and race (2012, pp. 142–3). More than their
controversial play with degradation, it is these clinging significations that
ultimately limit the political power of Breillat and Dunham’s work, insofar
as they shift cultural meanings still tied to bodies rather than untying them
altogether. Yet ours remains for now a culture of bodies that matter; thus,
we carry on the imperative to examine identity-inscribed bodies and sexual
behaviours as they continue to define and confine our social subjectivities.
And so it is of utmost, urgent importance that Breillat and Dunham, in
defiantly and mindfully owning their abjection, wield their bodies as
weapons for change.
NOTES
1. ‘Postfeminism’ has been defined in multiple, often competing ways as
following from, reacting to, and revising elements of second-wave feminism
that are themselves not easily encapsulated. For a thorough parsing of
postfeminism’s accumulated meanings, see Gill, (2007, pp. 147–66).
178 M.S. FILIPPO
2. Linda Williams adopts Jean-Louis Comolli’s concept of the ‘frenzy of the

visible’ to characterise pornography’s fixation with showing what it claims is
the truth of sexual pleasure, yet as Williams demonstrates, in much of
heteronormative pornography that which disproportionately serves to sig-
nify truth is the visual fetishisation of male ejaculation.
3. Also listed: ‘Because Girls is, at its core, a feminist action while Hustler is a
company that markets and monetizes a male’s idea of female sexuality’ and
‘Because it grosses me out’. @lenadunham, Twitter, May 24 2013.
4. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PItNqKh8DW8.
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Maria San Filippo is Assistant Professor of Communication and Media

Studies at Goucher College in the USA. She is author of The B Word:
Bisexuality in Contemporary Film and Television (Indiana University Press,
2013), winner of a Lambda Literary Award. Her article on queer film criticism
180 M.S. FILIPPO
and AfterEllen.com, published in Film Criticism in the Digital Age (Rutgers

University Press, 2015), received the Best Essay in an Edited Collection Award
from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. Her forthcoming book,
Sexual Provocation in 21st Century Screen Media, is under contract with
Indiana University Press.
CHAPTER 13
‘You Shouldn’t be Doing That Because

You Haven’t Got the Body for It’:
Comment on Nudity in Girls
Deborah J. Thomas
At a Television Critics Association panel in January 2014, Tim Malloy, an

editor for the media news site The Wrap, provocatively asked Girls creator
and star Lena Dunham:
I don’t get the purpose of all the nudity on the show. By you, particu-
larly [ . . . ] you say no one complains about the nudity on Game of
Thrones, but I get why they’re doing it. They’re doing it to be salacious.
To titillate [ . . . ] But your character is often naked at random times for
no reason. (Malloy, 2014)
Annoyed, Dunham responded, ‘it’s because it’s a realistic expression of

what it’s like to be alive [ . . . ] If you are not into me, that’s your problem,
and you are going to have to [ . . . ] work that out’, at which point Judd
Apatow, executive producer of Girls, intervened and suggested that if
Malloy had a girlfriend she wouldn’t appreciate his question. However,
D.J. Thomas (*)

Department of Communication and Arts, University of Queensland,
Queensland, Australia
e-mail: deborah.thomas@uq.edu.au

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-52971-4_13
182 D.J. THOMAS
these somewhat reflexive responses, and the subsequent online furore that
the query unleashed, obscure a certain legitimacy to the question of how
female nudity is mobilised in Girls, what purpose it serves, and why it has
attracted so much commentary?
Girls depicts the Brooklyn-based post-college lives of four 20-something
females, and stars 26-year-old Lena Dunham as Hannah Horvath, the
central wannabe-writer protagonist. The show is created, largely written,
co-produced, and, at times, directed by Dunham herself. Stylistically, Girls
fuses an ironic, comedic ‘smart’ (Sconce, 2002, p. 349) sensibility with the
‘feigned vérité’ (p. 359) reminiscent of North American indie films, such as
Richard Linklater’s, Slacker (1991). The show has attracted considerable
controversy, much of which has revolved around the relatively frequent
display of Lena/Hannah’s less than perfect naked body.
This chapter will examine Dunham’s nudity in Girls and how the show
appears to invite critique and prompt questions about the representation
and consumption of female nudity on the screen. How does Dunham want
people to look at her body? What counts as erotic imagery? What does her
body say about the way we currently consume female nudity on TV and
elsewhere? These questions are more compelling when considered in the
popular cultural contexts of the relatively explicit and decorative female
nudity that punctuates cable TV shows, such as Game of Thrones (2011–),
Boardwalk Empire (2010–04), and the first season of True Detective
(2014); the latest reality television franchises, Naked Dating (2014–), and
Naked and Afraid (2013–), as well as the recent controversies arising from
the celebrity photo scandal where non-consensual female nudity was traded
as cash value. In order to answer these questions, I will consider the impact
of ‘paratextual’ (Gray, 2010, p. 6) commentary on the framing of
Dunham’s naked body in Girls and provide analysis of how nudity in the
show situates itself within the ambivalent and contested cultural politics of
female nudity and dominant postfeminist discourses. In addition to this,
I will examine how it functions within the contingencies of the medium of
television itself, and its particular aesthetic, generic, and authorial inclinations.
Dunham’s body – pale, a little pudgy, tattooed – fearlessly demon-
strates a resolute lack of co-operation with the visual conditioning of
the eroticised gaze on female nudity. It is evident that Dunham is
intent on inviting us to ‘look’ at her body; as she explains in her recent
‘autobiography’, Not That Kind of Girl, ‘exhibitionism wasn’t new to me.
I’d always had an interest in nudity, one I would describe as more socio-
logical than sexual. Who got to be naked, and why?’ (2014, p. 100)
‘YOU SHOULDN’T BE DOING THAT BECAUSE YOU HAVEN’T GOT… 183
The notion of exhibitionism is important here; as Nally and Smith observe,

‘the naked, exhibited female body has been a staple of culture for several
centuries with varying ideological inflections’, while the ‘exhibited body
has become progressively more visible’ (2013, p. 2). There have been
various second wave feminist and postfeminist attempts, such as experi-
mental theatre (for example, the 2011 production, Untitled Feminist
Show, by US theatre director Young Jean Lee), performance art (such as
the work of Carolee Schneemann and Karen Finlay), and naked protest to
deploy nudity as a means to reclaim the sexual body from patriarchal value
judgements. However, despite these aims to reposition and re-evaluate the
naked female body, the criteria for evaluation and judgement of female
nudity within the normative tenets of the erotic have remained resilient.
Dunham is an exemplar of this. While at face value Dunham’s honest
exposé appears both admirable and brave, her nudity has attracted con-
siderable criticism and derision for its exhibitionism and the way her body
refuses to adhere to the erotic finesse of the sexualised female body.
Dunham’s body does not display the toned, food-resistant discipline
evident in the majority of female bodies that adorn the screen and maga-
zines in the Western world. As Hughes (2012) writes in The Independent:
when Hannah sits in the bath, we see the slight pudginess around her
stomach. When she has sex, it’s often awkward and ungainly. These are
fascinating scenes because they’re so rarely seen on TV, where sex is always
either perfect [ . . . ] and young women saunter undressed through sitcoms
so that we can admire their polished perfection.
Similarly, television critic Emily Nussbaum (2013) notes that Dunham:
lets herself look like hell. Dunham films herself nude, with her skin breaking
out, her belly in folds, chin doubled, or flat on her back with her feet in a
gynecologist’s stirrups. These scenes shouldn’t shock, but they do, if only
because in a culture soaked in Photoshop and Botox, few powerful women
open themselves up so aggressively to the judgment of voyeurs.
Abetted by free rein from HBO, whose propensity for relatively explicit
content forms part of its ‘brand equity’ (Rogers et al., 2002, p. 42), nudity
in Girls also occurs beyond the context of the awkward, quite graphic sex
scenes featuring Hannah and her sexual partners, but in a series of familiar,
184 D.J. THOMAS
everyday situations; Hannah brushing her teeth, texting, talking on the

phone, in the shower, sitting on the bath, and so forth.
It is worth pointing out that until Season 4, the other female protago-
nists, such as Marnie (Allison Williams), whose figure conforms more to
ideal conceptions of the female body, do not appear naked in the show.
Significantly, however, there is a nude sex scene in the shower between
Hannah’s middle-aged parents, Loreen and Tad (Becky Ann Baker and
Peter Scolari), resulting in Tad slipping naked out of the shower and
falling unconscious on the bathroom floor so it is up to Hannah to help
move him, totally nude, from the bathroom to the bed. Leaving aside the
way the scene confronts the cultural embarrassment around the idea of
parents (and older people) having sex, Baker’s body is notable for its
middle-aged dimensions and ordinariness.
So, while nudity for Dunham may be a realistic statement ‘of being
alive’ (Dunham 2014, p. 100), it would appear that there is political
intent behind the way in which it defies normative female representation
in the media. Nudity can be one of the ways in which the body is made
culturally visible, and Dunham states that, ‘the missing link for me in
movies was the presence of bodies I understood in situations that felt
real’ and that she has a strong impulse to make the public ‘look at us until
you see us’ (‘Video: Lena Dunham’, 2012). As Dean (2014) notes:
[Dunham’s] nakedness is pretty clearly weaponized. It’s a shot fired right

through the neural pathways formed over years of understanding ‘naked
thin women’ to mean both ‘sexy’ and ‘sex’, even if most of us don’t look like
and don’t sleep with women who grace the cover of GQ. It forces the viewer
to understand the purpose of Dunham’s nudity as something outside of
‘it turns me on’ [ . . . ] and why not?
Thus, Dunham’s body is aimed at provocation; more specifically, the

kind of provocation that has resonances of the political activity that is
the focus of Lunceford’s (2012) work, Naked Politics, which examines
the rhetorical power of the unclothed body as it relates to protest and
political action in the public sphere. Although primarily focused on
nudity and how it is specifically mobilised for social change via protest
movements, Lunceford (2012) discusses the body as a site of resistance
and persuasion. He observes that ‘the act of disrobing can have social
and political consequences’ (p. 15), and pose a direct challenge to
normative assumptions and cultural expectations around the body and
representation. Thus, Dunham’s determination to flout convention and

expose her less than perfect body is partly reflective of a latter-day
socio-cultural movement exemplified by a range of contemporary cultural
projects that focus on the naked display of ordinary women’s bodies, such
as The Shape of the Mother website. Created ‘so women of all ages, shapes,
sizes and nationalities can share images of their bodies so it is no longer
a secret’ (Lunceford, 2012, p. 4), this site aims to offer resistance to
the airbrushed and worked out perfection offered by normative media
representation of women’s (maternal) bodies.
While the efficacy of postfeminist ‘love your body’ discourses to ‘create
liberation from harmful beauty standards’ (Gill & Elias, 2014, p. 179) has
been challenged, this also coheres with a particular historical construction
of feminism that celebrates the ordinary woman. Blurring the boundaries
between the sexual and the non-sexual, this position is evident in the more
positive critiques of Dunham’s body. For example, Spencer (2013) com-
ments, ‘Lena Dunham is really the first woman I’ve ever seen on screen
who looks like me [ . . . ] And every time Hannah/Lena takes off her
clothes, every time she establishes that she is, for the most part, comfor-
table in her body, it gives me a little bit of hope for myself’. This ordinari-
ness is augmented by Dunham’s performativity of nakedness in spaces that
are specifically non-sexual – the everyday and the familiar – thus further
destablising the erotic gaze and inviting the viewer to assimilate a visuality
of the female body beyond what is has been theorised as ‘the determining
male gaze’ (Mulvey, 1975, p. 11).
Added to this is Dunham’s sense of confidence and naturalism around
her nudity rather than vulnerability; while the character of Hannah reveals
a pronounced level of psychological anxiety and insecurity this is not
directed at her body. In fact, she ‘revels in the body as a simple matter
of fact: a necessary component in (as opposed to the ultimate object of)
sexual relationships, a truth familiar to everyone, and a source of awkward-
ness and fun’ (Maughan, 2013). The concept of nakedness gathers its
potency from the original Judeo-Christian myth and in this way Dunham
could be seen to be self-consciously enacting a pre-shame performance of
an archetypal Eve. This may not be entirely lost on Dunham herself, as
evidenced by her ‘Biblical Movie Girl’ spoof for Saturday Night Live
(2014) which satirises the myth of creation in the style of Girls. Taking
aim at critics of her nudity, Dunham includes mock reviews by various
publications, such as The New York Times, which ‘wrote’, ‘even for Adam
and Eve there was a lot of nudity on the show’.
186 D.J. THOMAS
However, as with Adam and Eve, the sexual is never far away and
insistently encroaches on the reception context of Dunham’s nudity.
Woods has drawn attention to the way commentary on Girls:
was facilitated by the networked spread of culture websites and women’s

websites, with the active and reactive circulation of cultural commentary
beyond traditional promotional and critical discourses [ . . . ] as an example
of how television is produced and made complex through discussion and
active consumption. (2015, p. 38)
An online search reveals an astonishing amount of commentary on

Dunham’s nudity and body shape. Much of the criticism of Dunham’s
naked body is subject to the criteria for erotic judgment, in addition to
damning her for what is perceived as blatant exhibitionism.
There are two social media sites dedicated to her nudity – a blog called
Put Your Clothes on Lena Dunham and a Facebook page, Please Keep Your
Clothes on Lena Dunham. The bloggers, Julie and Stacey of Put Your
Clothes On claim that their criticism of Dunham’s willingness to bare all is
motivated by a response to her ‘self-indulgent exhibitionism’ rather than
the fact that ‘she is flabby and pear-shaped, and not tanned and toned and
perfect like everyone else in Hollywood’ (e.g. Julie, 2013). This claim
seems rather contentious when followed by contradictory statements
such as:
Lena Dunham getting naked for attention is not empowering to women,

and it does nothing to counter the grossly unrealistic ideal to which too
many women hold themselves. If anything, it does the opposite. We want to
eat nothing but celery and raw almonds for the next month after looking at
that picture for too long. (Julie, 2013)
A number of female journalists have also leveraged similar criticism at

Dunham. Stasi (2013) in the New York Post refers to Dunham as a ‘patho-
logical exhibitionist’, while Flowers (2014), writing in the Delaware County
Daily Times, describes Dunham as:
an exhibitionist who has the doughy dimensions of a ‘Before’ picture and

who embraces her Rubenesque beauty with gusto. Except that the Dutch
master never painted a woman in a bikini with shoulder tattoos that resem-
ble the residue around your bathtub after the seventh family member has
used it.
This censuring of Dunham’s nakedness and her body reveals some of the
contradictions inherent in postfeminism; while seemingly constructed
around the idea of ‘choice’, variation in the construction and representa-
tion of gender, and the notion that women can function as ‘active desiring
social subjects’, in practice this has been curtailed by ‘a level of scrutiny
and hostile surveillance that has no historical precedent (Gill, 2008,
p. 442). As Gill argues, this is intimately connected to the self-regulating
governmentality that encompasses a broad range of social and cultural
practices under neoliberalism:
notions of autonomy, choice and self-improvement sit side by side with

surveillance, discipline and the vilification of those who make the ‘wrong’
choices [ . . . ] these notions are also central to neoliberalism, and suggest a
profound relation between neoliberal ideologies and postfeminism. (p. 442)
Gill also notes that this regime of surveillance is predominantly performed

by women ‘who are called on to self-manage, self-discipline’ (p. 443). In
light of this, it is worth noting that most of the criticism of Dunham’s
body and her nudity is framed by women. So, while in decades past it
would have been a question of evaluating Dunham’s nudity in terms of
taste and decency, it appears that the debate has shifted under postfemin-
ism and neoliberalism to what kinds of bodies are given approval to be
naked and why?
However, while nudity in Girls can be construed as a feminist treatise
based on the erotic logistics of Dunham’s body, it also functions in
interesting ways within the contingencies of the medium of television
itself, and its particular aesthetic, generic, and creative inclinations. More
specifically, this invites analysis on how Dunham’s body and nudity in
Girls cultivate productive tensions between televisual space and realism,
comedy, authorship, and autobiography.
While nudity is deployed as a feminist provocation on Girls, it remains
undidactic, partly via the framing of Dunham’s body with a low-key vérité
situated in everyday spaces. Television provides an ideal medium in which
to do this as it allows us to ‘live into’ places, people, and objects –
inhabiting the space as a dwelling and getting to know it intimately and
experientially (Jacobs & Peacock, 2013, p. 12). Television is ‘the medium
of intimacy’, instilled, in part, by the ‘sense of television overcoming
distance – getting closer – by means of the smaller, intimate scale of the
television screen’ (Jacobs, 2000, p. 31) that is located in the domestic
188 D.J. THOMAS
environment of the home. Television’s latter day migration to the com-

puter screen intensifies this intimacy, with its one on one relationship
between the viewer and the screen.
Televisual intimacy also involves ‘the revelation and display of the char-
acter’s inner feelings and emotions’ (Jacobs, 2000 p. 8). Girls is largely
structured in a series of episodic vignettes of moments of intimate revelation
– albeit often comedic – of the everyday lives of its protagonists. As Hannah
pronounces in Season 2, ‘I’m planning to expose all my vulnerabilities to the
entire internet’. The casual exposé of Hannah’s body in the show provides a
physical correlation and continuity of this intimacy of revelation. Intimacy
implies closeness and familiarity; nudity is intimate, television is the ‘medium
of intimacy’ while seriality potentially evokes intimacy with character.
For example, in Season 2, Episode 4 (Fig. 13.1), a scene set in a slightly
dingy, prosaic bathroom opens with Hannah singing in the bath. She is
interrupted by a visibly upset Jessa, who says ‘don’t get up’ as she proceeds
to disrobe – her body is only partially revealed – and climbs into the tub.
There is a conscious pause, undoubtedly designed to raise the question of
whether we are about to witness a ubiquitous ‘girl on girl’ sex scene.
However, this quickly devolves into the humorous intimacy of friendship;
Jessa starts sobbing, noisily blows her nose, Hannah accuses her of grossly
Fig. 13.1 Hannah and Jessa in the bath. Nudity is contextualised in the familiar
intimacy of female friendship
Courtesy of HBO
‘snot rocketing’ into the tub, they start laughing, and the scene plays out
with them lying at each end of the tub, clasping hands across the length of
the bath. There is a sense that we are privy to the intimacy of friendship,
absent of fantasised sexual connotations of the male gaze. The scene is
likely to prompt youthful memories for any number of women of sharing
beds with girlfriends and any other occasion where it is possible to be
naked together in intimacy without the intrusiveness of the erotic. Thus,
Dunham’s nudity is polysemic; while undoubtedly transgressive, it is also
contextualised within the intimacy of televisual space and constructed as
natural and familiar as opposed to titillating or gratuitous.
Of course, despite this, there is also an abundance of nudity framed
around sex in Girls. The initial sex scene between Hannah and Adam
(Adam Driver) in the pilot episode, when Adam nearly inserts his penis in
‘the wrong hole’, sets the tone for what has become a representational staple
on the show, perhaps culminating in the controversial scene when Desi
(Ebon Moss-Bachrach) performs analingus on Marnie (Season 4, Episode
1, ‘Iowa’). Overall, however, these scenes tend to be more awkward than
arousing and framed from a desire for realism as Dunham has indicated:
My goal is to have a sexual verisimilitude that has heretofore not been seen
on television. I did it because I felt that the depictions of sex I had seen on
television weren’t totally fair to young women trying to wrap their brains
around this stuff. I didn’t do it to be provocative. (Resin, 2013)
However, as I noted previously, Girls is a conflation of realism and

comedy. Hannah’s nudity is also mobilised in the show for comedic
purposes; it is a comedy of transgression, often awkwardly funny, and
sometimes confrontational. In generic terms, it is used at times to provide
a variation of the comedic trope of public male nudity, which is particularly
evident in teen movies (Cover, 2003, p. 54), as well as Judd Apatow’s
brand of latter-day ‘bromance’ comedies, and also recently evoked in
James Franco’s and Seth Rogan’s naked antics in a spoof special for the
reality survival show Naked and Afraid (2013–). Much of the comedic
effect of this trope is generated from the exposure of ordinary, imperfect,
male bodies in inappropriate public spaces, which operates ‘as a context for
the representation of nakedness in legitimated ways that defuse both
vulnerability and obscenity’ (Cover, 2003, p. 54).
However, rarely, if ever, is the female body deployed in this way; the
requirement to fulfil the erotic is perhaps too resilient. Thus, while
190 D.J. THOMAS
Hannah’s nudity often takes place in mundane, everyday situations, it also

occurs in the show in a series of public and often inappropriate contexts
designed to provoke a sense of the comically absurd. For example, in ‘Bad
friend’ (Season 2, Episode 3), Hannah is depicted in a mostly see-through
yellow mesh singlet, which she traded on the dance floor after taking
cocaine. Later, we see her meandering through a late-night convenience
store wearing the singlet, apparently oblivious to the fact that her nipples are
clearly visible. In another episode, she plays ‘naked ping pong’, while, in
‘Beach house’ (Season 3, Episode 7), Hannah brazenly cavorts in the public
spaces of a resort town on Long Island for almost the entire episode,
wearing a scanty green string bikini while her co-performers remain fully
clothed. While not entirely naked, the bikini does little to cover up her body
or disguise Dunham’s physical imperfections (see Figure 12.2).
The deployment of this trope is a comedic gesture that aligns itself
within a broader tradition of female transgressive comedy, that of the
‘unruly woman’ (Rowe, 1995), which has provided a recognised cultural
space for feminist discourse and subversion. As Lotz notes, ‘scholars
generally concur that feminist discourse is predominantly found in the
comedy genre because of narrative and generic qualities that both intro-
duce and then contain potentially subversive content’ (2001, p. 111).
Dunham can be seen to be participating in the pronounced rise in recent
years of iconoclastic and irreverent female comedy on North American
television, apparent in the work of Amy Schumer, Amy Poehler, Tina Fey,
and Julia Louise Dreyfus, among others.
My final point considers how Girls is positioned as an authored text and
how Dunham’s deployment of her naked body can be construed as a
gesture of ‘autobiographical exhibitionism’ (Maughan, 2013) that forms
a key component of her creative self-expression and brand identity across
her cultural output. Television authorship invites an appreciation of the
medium as art or creative endeavour and is linked to notions of achieve-
ment, as well as perhaps levels of originality and evaluation. As Cardwell
notes, while contentious and challenged within academia, the notion of
screen authorship remains resilient in wider critical discourses about tele-
vision (2005, p. 11). In fact, this has become more pronounced in the
post-network era, where:
the explosive growth of cable, satellite, and streaming television over the
past two decades has been accompanied by a dramatic rise in the number of
such high-profile showrunners, who are regularly identified in the networks’
promotional materials, featured in fawning journalistic profiles, and cele-

brated for their ambitious storytelling strategies as well as their ability to
connect with fans via social media. (Perren & Schatz, 2015, p. 5)
This is particularly evident in relation to Dunham and Girls, where pro-

motional discourse and paratextual commentary successfully focused on
Dunham as an ‘auteur showrunner’ (Woods, 2015, p. 39), not only within
the context of a channel ‘dominated by white male auteurs’ (p. 37) but in
the television industry as a whole. Leaving aside questions of ‘art’ and the
fact that Dunham herself has pointed out the generally highly collabora-
tive nature of television (‘Video: Lena Dunham’, 2012), her input into the
show in her capacity as a creator, writer, actor, executive producer, and
director of a number of episodes provides a valid claim to an argument on
authorship.
In addition to this, Girls shares formal, semantic, and expressive proper-
ties with Dunham’s oeuvre, from a series of short films, such as Pressure
(2006), the web series Delusional Downtown Divas (2009), her films
Creative Non-Fiction (2009) and Tiny Furniture (2010), and her auto-
biography Not That Kind of Girl (2014). Importantly, there appears to be
a degree of conflation between Dunham, her characters in her previous
films, and the character of Hannah in Girls. Dunham has been somewhat
contradictory about the extent as to which Girls is autobiographical. For
example, in an interview, she admitted writing Girls as ‘super specific to
my experience’ and that she ‘avoids rendering an experience she can’t
speak accurately to’, while at the same time claiming that Hannah is both
‘close’ and ‘alien’ to her (‘Lena Dunham addresses criticism’, 2012).
However, in saying this, it is possible to discern a series of connections
and consistencies across Dunham’s film and TV characters, her memoir,
and social media profile. For example, the confessional comedy cultivated
in Girls is apparent in her 2006 short, Pressure, which includes revelatory
scenes, such as asking her friend to describe what an orgasm feels like. In a
shower scene with her friend in Creative Non-Fiction, Dunham’s character
Ella discusses the washing of her vagina and confesses that she doesn’t
wear underwear. Nudity or near-nudity, both sexual and otherwise, also
recurs in her work. Dunham’s interest in awkward-sex realism is perhaps
first apparent in her web series Tight Shots (2007), where she disrobes in
the first episode to reveal distinctly unsexy body-shaping hosiery, while
Creative Non-Fiction depicts her first, extended, uncomfortable, nude sex
scene when her character of Ella loses her virginity to an acquaintance
192 D.J. THOMAS
from her psychology class. In Tiny Furniture the character of Aura

Freedman, played by Dunham, appears at least four times naked in the
bathtub. Tiny Furniture, in turn, references a video Dunham made as a
student at Oberlin College, called The Fountain, in which she strips to her
bikini, climbs into a college fountain, bathes in it, and brushes her teeth.
Afterwards in a conversation with her boyfriend about nudity. she com-
ments that, ‘she wants to do so in front of people who don’t want to see
her naked’. In 2015, Dunham posted a Memorial Day photo of herself
posed in a set of revealing lingerie on Instagram, demonstrative of the way
in which, ‘Dunham built an intimate connection with her online followers
and chronicled production of Girls via her Twitter and Instagram
accounts, which cultivated a confessional format that assisted in the
cultural blurring of herself and Hannah’ (Woods, 2015, p. 43).
These authorial consistencies also challenge Marghitu and Ng’s (2013)
claim that, ‘when Dunham bares her body in Girls, it is as though all
attention is diverted from her status as a storyteller to a wrongly supposed
request to be viewed as a sexual spectacle’. Aside from the fact that the
above-mentioned arguments interrogate the notion that Dunham is invit-
ing herself to be viewed as an erotic object, it would appear that her nudity
(and awkward-sex realism) can be considered as a signature across her
work, which forms a vital component of her status as a storyteller. This
‘signature’ is self-reflexively and comically acknowledged in Jimmy
Kimmel’s opening video skit for the 2012 Emmy’s, which features a
star-studded female cast trying to placate a panic-stricken Kimmel, who
has escaped into the ladies’ restroom. In the skit, Dunham is naked and
alone eating cake in a bathroom stall.
Dunham’s display of her naked body on Girls represents an unapolo-
getic acceptance of her figure, intent on challenging the visual condition-
ing and normative cultural expectations around voyeurism and the
consumption of female nudity. In doing so it exposes contemporary
postfeminist contradictions on the representation of women’s bodies and
‘asks questions without easy answers, providing spaces for fraught dis-
courses and alternative narratives’ (Bailey, 2015, p. 33). Even so, one
wonders if a young male showrunner/writer/star would attract the same
level of comment, criticism, and derision. The fact remains that major TV
shows created, written, and directed by women are extremely rare. So
perhaps instead of shooting Dunham down in the flames of critique it
might be better to acknowledge that achievement and celebrate the way in
which she and her naked performed body not only engage with the
cultural politics of the representation of the female body but also with the
contingencies of the medium of television, the generic contexts of
comedy, and notions of authorship and autobiography in fresh, smart,
and insightful ways.
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Queensland, Australia.
CHAPTER 14
Sexual Perversity in New York?
Christopher Lloyd
When Danny, in David Mamet’s 1974 play Sexual Perversity in Chicago,

talks to a friend about sex and says ‘Nobody does it normally anymore’
(2014, p. 54), he could easily have been referring to Lena Dunham’s
characters today. Girls is not shy about presenting sex that is awkward,
erotic, uncompromising, funny, and visceral. Mamet’s play opens with two
men, Danny and Bernie, discussing the previous night’s sexual conquests:
the dialogue is brisk and frank. Throughout that play, the intimate details
of their erotic lives are candidly revealed much like the ways in which Girls
depicts the vicissitudes of four young women’s lives in contemporary New
York. This chapter will read a number of scenes, from the first season
particularly, that feature sex, and conversations about it, to show its impact
on this group of women and men. No more ‘perverse’ than Mamet’s play,
Girls shows the ‘non-normality’ of sex primarily through its ‘self-shatter-
ing’ effects and affects. Borrowing Leo Bersani’s (2010) term, which is
rooted in queer and psychoanalytic theory, I want to think through the
various ‘shattering’ sexualities that Girls represents through its dominantly
heterosexual characters. While Bersani’s term is clearly rooted in queer
thinking, this chapter will apply his insights to a seemingly heteronorma-
tive group of white women. That the show has a narrow sociocultural
C. Lloyd (*)
School of Humanities, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK
e-mail: christopher_lloyd_9@hotmail.co.uk

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-52971-4_14
198 C. LLOYD
window – these are wealthy, white, straight ‘girls’ – is undeniable; but it is

worth investigating the ways in which disruptive, queer sexualities make
their way into the show’s representational practice. I do not aim to offer a
route out of Girls’ limitations in documenting a very skewed (elite) picture
of twenty-first-century New York, but rather want to frame the show’s
honest investigation into the machinations of sexual contact, experience,
and fantasy.
Bersani derives the concept of self-shattering from psychoanalytic
thinking and develops this most notably in the famous essay ‘Is the rectum
a grave?’, first published in 1987 at the height of the AIDS crisis.
Specifically, Bersani writes that shattering emerges from Freud’s ‘some-
what reluctant speculation [ . . . ] that sexual pleasure occurs whenever a
certain threshold of intensity is reached, when the organisation of the self
is momentarily disturbed by sensations or affective processes somehow
“beyond” those connected with psychic organization’ (2010, p. 24). Self-
shattering is thus the disruption of selfhood in various psychic and somatic
ways produced by the intensities of sex. Tim Dean clarifies further: the
‘pleasure involved in violating one’s self image’, or self-shattering, is ‘a
pleasure in tension with that of secure boundaries and self-recognition’
which might also be called jouissance (2009, p. 22). Sex, Dean writes,
‘confuses the separateness and hence the distinguishability of bodies,
thereby shattering (or threatening to shatter) our sense of corporeal
integrity’ (p. 22). I want to track some of the ways in which the bodies/
psyches of young women and men in Girls shatter (or threaten to shatter)
as they try work out, often fumblingly so, their own senses of bodily
distinctness and psychic cohesion. Through sex, any gesture towards
sovereignty or self-knowledge becomes undone, and the threat or actuality
of shattering occurs. In their early 20s, grasping at adulthood’s meaning
and responsibilities, Girls’ characters are in a liminal space of development
and change that is both registered by and worked-through sexual activity.
As is evident from Sex and the City (1998–2004) to Queer as Folk
(1999–2000) to Game of Thrones (2011–) and beyond, television is no
stranger to representing sex and sexuality in its multitudes. As Williams
writes, ‘the small screen has delivered a great many forms of erotic moving
images’ (2008, p. 304); Girls is not, in this sense, charting new or original
territory. What the show does accomplish, however, is a reflexivity, both
thematic and aesthetic, about sex that the other shows might be argued to
have lacked. While Williams goes on to say that Sex and the City ‘preferred
to satirically talk about rather than to depict sex’, and Queer as Folk ‘more
SEXUAL PERVERSITY IN NEW YORK? 199
boldly displayed the sex of its protagonists’ (2008, p. 304), Girls, I am

arguing, accomplishes this and more. While Queer as Folk’s obvious queer-
ness may provide a more radical lens through which to think about
contemporary televisual sex, Girls’ representational practice is nonetheless
attuned to the intricacies and complexities of sexuality and identity today.
Though the show represents a small, and select, portion of the US popula-
tion, this lack does not (and should not necessarily) present only a limited
understanding of sex on the small screen. To say as much would be to
push aside one form of sexuality over another, which queer theory itself
has helped us to interrogate and dismantle. While on the one hand I want
to stress that sexual acts and fantasies are not simply locked into sexual
orientation (but are overlapping and complex), on the other I do not want
to suggest that Girls’ straight sex(uality) is indistinguishable from queer
forms of sex(uality). To use the show as a marker of contemporary erotics
would be to marginalise, occlude, and overlook numerous and significant
sexual practices that do not feature on-screen. I flag this tension if only to
signal its imprint on the analysis that follows. Borrowing key theoretical
coordinates from queer theory and psychoanalysis can help illuminate the
messy lives and bodies of Girls in new and important ways.
To press these matters further, Tim Dean has, in a number of places,
highlighted queer theory’s failings when it comes to talking about sex
itself. In his sharp review of recent texts (such as Berlant and Edelman’s
Sex, or the unbearable [2014] which I refer to here), Dean (2015b, p. 614)
opens with this scathing gambit, a rephrasing of Bersani’s famous line:
‘There is an open secret about sex: most queer theorists don’t like it’. In a
more recent essay, Dean expands this argument, claiming that in academia
‘Sex remains a sticking point’ especially for queer theory, which ‘seems
more comfortable discussing multicultural identities’ then ‘confronting
the libidinal investments of those constituencies’ (2015a, p. 226). In
short, queer theory in his eyes ‘has become just another mediating frame-
work that distances us from the erotic’ (p. 226). While the present chapter
does not fit squarely within queer theory, I do want to take heed of Dean’s
argument and foreground the sexual and the bodily in this discussion of
Girls; to do so, I follow Williams’s influential Screening sex (2008). Sex on-
screen, Williams argues, has often been read for the ways in which we
identify (or not) with it, but far less ‘has been written about the ways we
reencounter our own bodies, and our own sensuality’ (p. 1) through these
scenes. Williams uses the ‘double meaning’ of screening, in ‘screening sex’
as ‘both revelation and concealment’ (p. 2). As she charts a history of sex
200 C. LLOYD
on-screen – which is not simply a movement from prurience and coded

sexuality to unadulterated explicitness, as is sometimes suggested –
Williams clearly argues that the ‘growing visibility or inference of wide
varieties of sex acts [ . . . ] have complicated the notion of sex as a singular,
visible truth that one knows when one sees it’ (p. 12). The cinema’s (and
television’s) role in this revelation of the body and its desires should be
central to the way we not only understand sexuality but visual media itself.
This chapter will closely read a small selection of scenes from early in
Season 1 of Girls, in light of Williams’s theory. This analysis will depend,
partially, on close detail of the sex acts so as to see in close-up (as it were)
how the screening of sex plays out and the affects it produces. Girls’ key
protagonist Hannah (played by Dunham) has an instructively uncomfor-
table sex scene with Adam, her central love interest, in this first episode.
From the pilot episode’s beginning, Hannah has been waiting to hear
from Adam, but finally goes to his apartment mid-afternoon. Adam is
shirtless the whole scene, foreshadowing their inevitable sexual contact.
After some charged conversation they start kissing, and Hannah blurts out
‘I like you so much I don’t know where you disappear to’. This punctua-
tion-less plea illuminates the theme of absence/presence that defines their
relationship; Adam’s reply, ‘I’m right here’ both assuages Hannah’s lack
while truthfully underlining his temporary presence in the moment only.
While Hannah then thinks they are going to have sex in the way she
imagines, Adam forces her onto her front, telling her to ‘grab your legs’
while he goes to ‘get some lube’. When Hannah asks ‘will you get a
condom?’, Adam honestly admits ‘I’ll consider it’ (he does). As he further
instructs Hannah to disrobe, her lower body is exposed to the viewer – the
scene is mainly in long shots, with clear lighting rendering the whole scene
crisply visible (in contrast to the scene described later from Episode 2).
Hannah’s movements are awkward, and the encounter is fraught, for her
and the viewer alike. Adam begins to penetrate Hannah anally, but her
quick response, ‘please don’t do that, it feels awful, thank you’ is luckily
heeded by Adam. There is a moment, in this scene, when the viewer
imagines this encounter progressing in a number of ways; after all, we
have not seen Adam before, and do not understand fully the relationship
between these characters. They continue to have sex doggy-style, and
while Hannah thus thinks she should placate Adam after telling him to
change position, he briskly tells her: ‘let’s play the quiet game’. The
tensions and power dynamics (the games) that undergird this scene are
central to Girls’ representational practice in general. Sexual encounters
turn in a moment; they uncover larger relationship fault lines; and they
illuminate deeper psychic and bodily crises. Sex, in this light, might be
thought of as a kind of ‘cruel optimism’: Berlant writes that ‘A relation of
cruel optimism exists when something you desire is actually an obstacle to
your flourishing’ (2011, p. 1). Optimistic attachments – like Hannah’s to
Adam – ‘become cruel only when the object that draws your attachment
actively impedes the aim that brought you to it initially’ (p. 1). Sex, in
Girls, often functions both optimistically and cruelly: as mode of social/
sensual attachment as well as its undoing.
The sex scene between Hannah and Adam should also be framed
through the pilot episode’s (and season’s) opening. Hannah is having
dinner with her parents at a nice restaurant; she and her father are greedily
enjoying their pasta and salad, not speaking. The scene is shot with warm
tones and a naturalistic style. Hannah’s mother laughingly scolds them
both: ‘slow down, you’re eating like they’re gonna take it away from you’,
to which Hannah responds ‘I’m a growing girl’. Her mention of matura-
tion triggers a conversation that her parents had obviously planned before-
hand: ‘it may be time’ her father says, for ‘one final push’. Hannah is
confused by this obscure reference and sudden gear-change in the eve-
ning, until her mother spells things out abruptly: ‘we’re not going to be
supporting you any longer’. While her mother is referring to financial
support – ‘No. More. Money [ . . . ] starting now’, she says – this scene
clearly sets up a kind of parental ‘dropping’ (in Winnicottian language) or
general renunciation of sustenance. It needs to be noted, here, that even
while this scene reveals a range of ways in which Hannah is ungrounded by
her parents, it can be critiqued for its clear privilege. Hannah is lucky that
her parents have been able to support her as long as they have (and both of
them are professors, so clearly middle to upper-class and wealthy).
However, by producing tension around Hannah having to actually make
money instead of continuing to intern, Girls sets a highly particular tone
from the very beginning: this is a world of white moneyed privilege in a
post-crash USA. I argue, however, that this narrow sociocultural window
does not limit the show’s exploration of self-undoing. Whatever their
cultural background, Girls’ characters are psychically and somatically shat-
tered by their sexual explorations: it is that visceral and emotional world
that this chapter foregrounds.
After Hannah’s mother delivers the full-stop-heavy line ‘No. More.
Money’, a fraught argument breaks out in which Hannah declares that
she does not want to see her parents the next day before they leave the city.
202 C. LLOYD
After work, Hannah claims, she’s ‘busy, trying to become who I am’.
Hannah’s self-becoming, which is notably in process as well as already
achieved is, in a short time span, destabilised. Hannah’s parents disrupt
Hannah’s sense of self at the moment in which she is so happily and
enthusiastically taking in the world, through food. This comforting inter-
nalisation is met with uncomfortable external disappointment. I suggest
that this parental abandonment produces a range of feelings and affects
that are at once recapitulated in, assuaged by, and acted-out through the
sexual encounter with Adam (both consciously and unconsciously). As
soon as she is suddenly dropped, psychically, by her parents, Hannah
yearns instantly for sexual and physical contact with Adam. This need,
however, is simultaneously answered and challenged by Adam’s forthright
presence in the apartment, and wavering detachment from Hannah: ‘I
don’t know where you disappear to’. The self-shattering that occurs in this
scene relates principally to the ways in which Hannah both wants to lose
herself in/to Adam and to retain her bodily and psychic coherence.
The above sex scene is contrasted and connected to a scene in the same
episode involving Marnie – Hannah’s best friend and roommate – and her
boyfriend Charlie. As the description of the scene will attest, it is apparent
from the very beginning that Marnie is drifting away from Charlie and no
longer committed to their relationship (it unravels as the season pro-
gresses). We witness the two discussing the potentiality of sex: ‘What
would turn you on the most right now?’ Charlie asks Marnie, as they
uneasily stand in the kitchen (Season 1, Episode 1, ‘Pilot’). Her evasion of
Charlie – ‘What would turn you on the most?’ – is followed by an equally
awkward reply: ‘To turn you on [ . . . ] let me do that’. His passivity (‘let
me do that’) is underscored by Marnie’s cold response: ‘what if you were a
stranger?’ she says, ‘What if you were a totally different person?’ While
Marnie is obviously signalling her desire for Charlie to be anyone other
than himself, Charlie is nonetheless bewitched by his girlfriend. It is the
cruel optimism of attachment – both to each other – that is visible here.
Though it would seem as though Charlie is attached more firmly to
Marnie (his desires seem unwavering, in the face of rejection), this attach-
ment sustains Marnie, too. It is the tension inherent in their relationality –
the shattering that occurs for Marnie, especially – that keeps them locked
in position. As the season develops, Marnie disconnects from Charlie, but
she remains cruelly attached to ideas of him, even as he begins a new life.
It should be clear that I take Girls seriously in its aesthetic and affective
practice, but the show is not without its detractors. Before progressing
further, it is worth outlining the often negative criticism the show has
received. Nygaard, for instance, argues that Girls was in part ‘an attempt
by the network [HBO] to expand its viewership by appealing to younger
female viewers’ (2013, p. 371). Further, even though Daalmans appreci-
ates some of the show’s sexual frankness, she declaims that ‘some of
Hannah’s attempts at self-expression are so ridiculous that she loses
some of her audience’ (2013, p. 360). These critiques can be situated in
the larger debate about Girls that has raged since its first episode in 2012.
Fuller and Driscoll’s (2015) overview of this terrain is also a passionate
defence of the show’s complexity. Their article ends with the statement
that, if nothing else, Girls ‘becomes a story in which feminism refuses to
recede into the past’ and ‘while they may be endlessly frustrated and
always contested, the feminist stories told by Girls remain visibly alive to
a changing social situation’ (p. 261). The openness of Girls’ relation to
issues of feminism and, I would add, sexuality in all of its complications is
too frequently shut down by the show’s critics.
In ‘Vagina panic’ (Season 1, Episode 2), the sex further illuminates the
tensions, desires, and fantasies at work in Hannah’s relationship with
Adam, and Marnie’s with Charlie. The episode opens on a long shot of
Adam and Hannah having intercourse in a dark bedroom (the lighting is
gloomy and red, heightening the scene’s intensity), she on her back and he
on top. We see most of his naked body, and parts of hers. As the sex
becomes more intense, Adam suddenly articulates a sexual fantasy: ‘I knew
when I found you, you wanted it this way’. Where, Hannah asks? ‘In the
street, walking alone’, Adam replies. She refutes this, saying they met at a
party – Hannah has not fully realised that she is supposed to be partaking
in Adam’s fantasy story. When she catches on, Adam further elaborates
that they met when ‘Hannah’ was ‘only eleven’. Making the Hannah
character into an underage girl partakes in a larger fantasy schema of
‘innocent’ and ‘virginal’ young girls, but this is not simply a stereotypical
narrative. Approaching climax, Adam says ‘you’re a dirty little whore and
I’m going to send you home to your parents covered in cum’. As
Hannah’s parents have been prominent in Episode 1, particularly in cut-
ting her off financially, this aside is somewhat telling: it is as though the
maturation of Hannah in her parents’ eyes (they can stop paying for her as
she is now an adult) is concomitant with the ‘infantilisation’ of her by
Adam. Hannah’s liminal position in age and development is frustrating to
her, but also stresses the in-betweenness of identity that Girls so fully
examines and represents. Disoriented by her parents’ ‘dropping’ of her,
204 C. LLOYD
Hannah has to rebuild her relations to others, most significantly with and
through Adam. In this moment of corporeal connection, they are also
psychically close (even though they seem not to consciously know it).
Adam then pulls out of Hannah, masturbating loudly; his body is elon-
gated and tensed in the light. The noise and physicality of Adam’s frame
stand out in this episode’s opening, routing attention towards the male
form, rather than that of Hannah/Dunham’s (which has received so much
commentary). ‘Where do you want me to cum?’ he asks; ‘What are the
choices?’ Hannah replies, still not quite in or with Adam’s fantasy. As Adam
offers a suggestion, she replies ‘it seems like you want to cum on my tits so I
think you should [ . . . ] it seems like you’re going to do it’. The repetition of
‘seems like’ and the timid ‘I think you should’ render Hannah somewhat
passive in the scene. As if to combat this state, Adam instructs Hannah to
‘touch [her]self’, but again Hannah can only respond with a question,
‘Where?’ which Adam replies to (annoyed) ‘You know where’. Comically,
Hannah adds, ‘It’s a little hard from this angle’, both signalling the
difficulty she has in being part of this sexual act (physically and mentally)
as well as punning on Adam’s erection that his body is blocking from the
viewer. The scene is, notably, funny and awkward, erotic and embarras-
sing; it screens a multitude of pleasures and discontents for the characters
and viewer.
Pushing this dynamic further, Adam talks of a sexual future with
Hannah, while gripping her neck: ‘From now on you have to ask my
permission whenever you want to cum’. The threat of sexual violence is
meant, I think, to be both possible and pleasurable. If she is masturbating
alone, Adam goes on, ‘you better fucking call me first’. Hannah’s reply,
‘You want me to call you?’ undercuts the sexual intensity, immediately
revealing the power-relation between the two. It indicates Hannah’s desire
for Adam to want her; it also refers back to the conversation Hannah and
Marnie have in Episode 1 of the series, where they talk about the best
forms of communication. At the bottom of this list is Facebook, and near
the top is a phone call. ‘Face to face is obviously ideal’, Marnie says, ‘but
it’s not of this time’. (The comedy of this line, and its astuteness about the
zeitgeist, should not go unnoticed here.)
The desire that Hannah has for Adam to call her – ostensibly she is far
more invested in him than he in her – overpowers the fantasy that Adam is
constructing for them both, in which he oversees and is in control of her
sexuality. Adam then cums – at the thought of controlling Hannah’s
orgasms, or Hannah’s wanting him to call her? – pushing Hannah’s face
into the pillow, again resurfacing the aggression at play in their relation-
ship (however mutually desired). She responds, ‘That was really good
[ . . . ] I almost came’. Adam’s reply to this reveals that the sexual scenario
has vanished: ‘You want a Gatorade?’ Hannah asks ‘What kind, what
flavour?’ (still not making decisions); ‘Orange’, Adam replies. Hannah
refuses, ‘no thanks I’m good’. Adam walks into another room, shielding
his nakedness from the camera, and the scene cuts to the opening titles. The
small exchange, about the flavour of a sports drink, both comically con-
cludes the scene we have been witnessing as well as indicating a perhaps
nurturing and gentle side of Adam’s character that is not dissociable from
the sexual fantasy.
The self- and other-shattering that this scene depicts is manifold. It is the
otherness of Adam that Hannah desires, even while this otherness keeps him
at a distance from her, unknowable (which is too under the pretence of
knowability). At the same time, it is Hannah’s inability to become fully the
sexual object that Adam desires (she cannot and does not entirely partake in
his sexual scenario) that he wants. This tension oscillates as Hannah’s
stubbornness to not be the object of his fantasy threatens to overwhelm
and destroy the fantasy, while at the same time allowing it to continue. For
both, the inability to be what the other wants them to be enables and
disrupts the sexual encounter in addition to their ontological and episte-
mological senses of self. Hannah and Adam’s sex here can be seen, as
Berlant and Edelman write, as an ‘encounter with what exceeds and
undoes the subject’s fantasmatic sovereignty’ (2014, p. 2) This ‘negativ-
ity’ in sex ‘registers at once the insistence of enjoyment, of the drive, and
of various disturbances that inhere in relation itself’ (p. 2). Opening with
this scene, which oscillates back to the awkward sex between the two in
Episode 1, illuminates the drives that propel Girls’ characters towards
and away from one another, as well as the textures and tensions of
relationality.
Hannah and Adam’s narrative doubles as we cut, after the titles, to
Marnie and Charlie having sex; the parallel is crudely drawn, but instructive
nonetheless. While it is apparent at this point that Marnie does not like her
boyfriend (though will not, necessarily, break up with him), their sexual
scene here is fraught with resistance and fracture on her part. The scene
opens with them having slow intercourse, missionary style; Charlie asks how
it is, and Marnie half-heartedly replies ‘it feels good, fine’ (Season 1, Episode
2, ‘Vagina panic’). That change from ‘good’ to ‘fine’ is instructive of her lack
of pleasure (which the audience is aware of, but Charlie is not). However, it
206 C. LLOYD
proceeds as Charlie asks Marnie to look at him, which she quickly follows
with ‘I’m gonna turn around’. Even though she apparently ‘hate[s] doggy’,
Marnie refuses Charlie’s gaze. This, in turn, however, produces more plea-
sure for him as the physical sensation of this position forces him to ‘go slow’.
The personal and erotic tension of the scene is twofold: first, through
dramatic irony, we know that Marnie is not invested in Charlie or the sex
(though that is pretty clear in the way she acts anyway), thus underscoring
how ostensibly unidirectional the desires run; second, it is in some ways
Marnie’s aversion to Charlie – as in Episode 1 – that produces even more
desire in him. This could be an unconscious response to her pulling away
(he pushes forward), but I want to read it more in light of shattering. It is
the exposure to unrequited love and desire that at once pulls Charlie
apart and produces, sustains, and heightens his libido. Forcing himself
into such proximity with Marnie is simultaneously dismantling his self-
hood. The self-shattering effects of sex, in this scene, are clear to see
for both characters as they confront their limits in pleasurable and
anxiety-ridden ways.
In Mamet’s play, the idea of nobody doing it ‘normally any more’ was a
registering of changing sexual attitudes as well as a chance for Danny to boast
to his friend about the previous night’s exploits. The ‘perversity’ in Chicago,
for Mamet, was not simply the eruption of sexual deviance but the multitude
of meanings, affects, attachments, fantasies, and cruelties inherent in sex and
its relationality. To return, furthermore, to perversity, one must contemplate
Freud’s elaboration of this term across his thinking. Williams tells us that
perverse ‘in its adjectival form literally means turned about, deviated from, a
more “proper” direction’ (2008, p. 14). For Freud, she says, to have sex with
an organ ‘not destined for procreation’ is perverse behaviour: ‘a deviation
from the “proper” direction and aim of sex’ (p. 14). Yet, she goes on, Freud’s
model of perversion and norm, Williams argues, cannot be maintained, and
following Bersani suggests that ‘perversion actually becomes [Freud’s] model
for the understanding of pleasure’ (p. 14). Bersani claims, in Williams’s
words, ‘that often Freud’s model of sexual pleasure accepts the existence of
forms of sexual stimulation that seek not to be released in discharge, but
remain to be pleasurably-unpleasurably increased as tension’ (p. 14). Pleasure
and satisfaction are thus detached; the latter Bersani describes as ‘on one
hand, an itch that can be satisfied by a scratch, and, on the other, an itch that
does not seek to be scratched’ (Williams, 2008, p. 14). Williams’s ‘circum-
venting’ of Freud’s normativity, via Bersani, becomes for her a useful way
‘for analyzing the activation of new cinematic erogenous zones’ (p. 14).
Extending Williams’s insight from the cinematic to the televisual, this chapter
enlarges our understanding of sex’s self- and other-shattering in life and on-
screen. Dunham’s perversity in New York reminds us of the shattering at the
heart of sexuality itself, wherever our desires travel.
REFERENCES
Berlant, L., & Edelman, L. (2014). Sex, or the unbearable. Durham: Duke
University Press.
Bersani, L. (2010). Is the rectum a grave? and other essays. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Daalmans, S. (2013). “I’m Busy Trying to Become Who I Am”: Self-entitlement
and the city in HBO’s Girls. Feminist Media Studies, 13(2), 359–362.
Dean, T. (2009). Unlimited intimacy: Reflections on the subculture of barebacking.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Dean, T. (2015a). Mediated intimacies: Raw sex, Truvada, and the biopolitics of
chemoprophylaxis. Sexualities, 18(1–2), 224–246.
Dean, T. (2015b). No sex please, we’re American. American Literary History,
27(3), 614–624.
Fuller, S., & Driscoll, C. (2015). HBO’s Girls: gender, generation, and quality
television. Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 29(2), 253–262.
Nygaard, T. (2013). Girls Just Want to be “Quality”: HBO, Lena Dunham, and
Girls’ conflicting brand identity. Feminist Media Studies, 13(2), 370–374.
Mamet, D. (2014). Plays 1: Duck variations, Sexual perversity in Chicago,
Squirrels, American buffalo, The water engine, Mr Happiness. London:
Bloomsbury Methuen Drama.
Williams, L. (2008). Screening sex. Durham: Duke University Press.
Christopher Lloyd is a Lecturer in English Literature at the University of

Hertfordshire in the UK. His research and teaching interests focus on twenty-
first-century American culture, and the U.S. South in particular. Christopher has
published a monograph, Rooting Memory, Rooting Place: Regionalism in the
Twenty-First-Century American South (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015),
articles and essays on Hurricane Katrina, the Southern Gothic, and a special issue
on American Exceptionalism.
CHAPTER 15
All Postfeminist Women Do: Women’s

Sexual and Reproductive Health
in Television Comedy
Elizabeth Arveda Kissling
The recent spate of North American television comedies by and about

young women, including Girls (2012–present), The Mindy Project (2012–
present), 2 Broke Girls (2011–present), New Girl (2011–present), Don’t
Trust the B— in Apartment 23 (2012–13), Whitney (2011–13), Up All
Night (2011–12), and Suburgatory (2011–14), frequently address sexu-
ality and intimacy. Much digital ink has been spilled over the treatment of
gender, class, and racial diversity in these shows. Without diminishing the
importance of those critiques – for example, Carroll’s (2012, 2014)
commentary on the whiteness of Girls and how white privilege contributed
to its and Lena Dunham’s success, and numerous criticisms of rape jokes
and racism on 2 Broke Girls (Goodman, 2011; Lyons, 2012) – this chapter
will focus on the portrayal of women’s sexual and reproductive health with
particular emphasis on Girls, The Mindy Project, and 2 Broke Girls.
US audiences generally reject explicit or heavy-handed entertainment-
education but research suggests television can indeed change awareness,
E.A. Kissling (*)

Department of Women’s Studies and Communication, Eastern Washington
University, Washington, USA
e-mail: ekissling@ewu.edu

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-52971-4_15
210 E.A. KISSLING
attitudes, and behaviour of viewers about health-related issues (Moyer-

Gusé & Nabi, 2011). For example, teen viewers of Friends (1994–2004)
surveyed by telephone during the show’s heyday recalled learning about
the effectiveness and failure rate of condoms from a recent episode
(Collins et al., 2003). Research by Moyer-Gusé et al., (2011) indicates
that when viewers identify with characters, narrative influence is stronger.
Pariera et al., (2014) cite multiple studies indicating that television is a
crucial source of health information for many viewers, and more than half
of viewers believe health information from prime-time television to be
accurate.
These successful shows by young women showrunners are loved for the
way they tell stories of young women’s daily lives, including details of bad
dates, good friends, boring jobs, and the minutiae of everyday life, includ-
ing women’s reproductive and sexual health: pregnancy scares, premenstr-
ual syndrome (PMS), sexually transmitted infection (STI) tests, and more.
Young women who write about these shows find the characters ‘relatable’
(Azad, 2012), and ‘relatable’ is the first word I hear from students when
these shows are discussed in my Women’s and Gender Studies and media
courses. In media effects scholarship, involvement with characters is an
important feature of entertainment-education theory (Moyer-Gusé, 2008;
Moyer-Gusé et al., 2011).
My interest in these shows is somewhere between the positions of
casual fan and gender and media scholar. Motivated by the frequent
occurrence of sexual and reproductive health issues in these shows,
I began to collect examples. I started to see ways that in addition to
providing factual information about women’s sexual and reproductive
health, these women characters interpellate viewers to identify with a
postfeminist, neoliberal subjectivity I had documented in previous studies
of media texts dealing with women’s reproductive health, specifically
advertisements and online discussions of birth control and menstruation
(Kissling, 2013, 2014).
These shows are seldom explicitly feminist in the way of 1970s US
television comedy starring women in lead roles, such as The Mary Tyler
Moore Show (1970–77), Maude (1972–78), Rhoda (1974–78), or their
1980s descendants like Murphy Brown (1988–98) and Designing Women
(1986–93). These earlier shows were intentionally developed to reach
female audiences ‘experiencing changes in their economic and familial
status with stories infused with consciousness-raising perspectives and
lifestyle politics’ (Lotz, 2001, p. 107). Contemporary shows are more
ALL POSTFEMINIST WOMEN DO: WOMEN’S SEXUAL AND REPRODUCTIVE… 211
aligned with the critical analyses of postfeminist programming of the late

1990s (McRobbie, 2008) where the young female audiences are inter-
pellated as independent, decision-making, sexual subjects, already liber-
ated women, in contrast to erstwhile portrayals of women as up-and-
coming, struggling in the workplace but ‘feisty’ (no one powerful is ever
described as feisty).
Postfeminist programming began to appear more frequently on US
television in the late 1990s with such shows as Ally McBeal (1997–2002),
Sex and the City (1998–2004), and Desperate Housewives (2004–12).
McRobbie defines postfeminism ‘as an active process by which feminist
gains of the 1970s and 80s come to be undermined’ (2004, p. 255) while
appearing to engage feminism, especially through tropes of freedom
and choice. The postfeminist sensibility of these texts – to borrow
Gill’s (2007) useful framing – is further characterised by the treatment
of femininity as a bodily property, a shift from sexual objectification of
women to representations of women as sexual subjects with desires of
their own, an emphasis on individualism and choice, the need for constant
self-monitoring and surveillance, a focus on consumption and commod-
ities, and a reassertion of the importance of sexual difference. Postfeminist
texts thus repudiate feminism and present women’s achievements as well
as their failures as products of individual effort rather than collective
action or structural impediments, making it well aligned with neoliberal
values of a consumer capitalist society.
Like other contemporary postfeminist media, these shows provide
a vehicle for constructing an ideal neoliberal, feminine subjectivity (Gill
2008b; Kissling, 2013, 2014):
Indeed, despite a much-touted emphasis on women’s freedom to do

whatever they desire, popular women’s genres feature ‘free’ women who
invariably end up making the same choice prescribed by normative culture,
willingly desiring the same normative heterosexual relationships and the
same sexy, eroticised and fashionably adorned female bodily charm that
always has been promoted by patriarchy and capitalism. (Chen, 2013,
p. 444)
As lead characters in these programmes, the women of these shows

exemplify this sensibility. All are single women actively seeking and reg-
ularly engaging in heterosexual relationships with men. This search is
frequently presented as a source of humour and dramatic tension, as
212 E.A. KISSLING
oppositional gender roles are core features of the postfeminist sensibility,

coupled with a constant need for self-improvement (and the accompany-
ing self-monitoring), usually framed as conducted ‘for myself’ or perhaps
for professional success (rather than for male approval).
While some of the programmes feature close female friendships as
central to women’s lives, none claims any solidarity or political identifica-
tion with feminist causes. These characters are televisual descendants of
Mary Tyler Moore and Murphy Brown, independent women living many
tenets of gender equality. While Mary’s sexual autonomy was implied,
theirs is explicit. Murphy Brown never discussed gynaecological concerns
with workmates.
This chapter focuses on three shows currently broadcasting: Girls,
The Mindy Project, and 2 Broke Girls. All three have women stars in
their 20s and 30s as well as women showrunners, and in two cases –
Girls and The Mindy Project — the showrunners also write, play the
lead characters, and frequently direct episodes. Both Lena Dunham
and Mindy Kaling, the respective creators and showrunners of these
shows, have received kudos and condemnation for their supposedly
unconventional (by Hollywood standards) appearance, which I suspect
is another feature of their relatability, but space prevents detailed
examination.
I examine selections from these programmes with a critical, feminist
lens, drawing upon Stuart Hall’s (1967) model of cultural analysis in three
interconnected phases: (1) close, textual analysis of cultural material;
(2) consideration of the effects of the cultural material on the society;
and (3) placement of the material in its specific social and cultural contexts
to produce an interpretation of cultural meaning and significance.
Following Gill (2008a, p. 41), this is a material-semiotic analysis ‘that
understands representations as not merely representing the world, but as
constitutive and generative’ (see also Tuana, 1996).
2 Broke Girls, created in 2011 by stand-up comic Whitney Cummings
and Michael Patrick King, is centred on the odd-couple friendship of two
women in their early 20s. One is a recent Wharton graduate who is newly
broke due to her wealthy father’s imprisonment for a Bernie Madoff-like
Ponzi scheme. The other woman was raised in poverty by a neglectful
single mother. The twosome, played by Beth Behr and Kat Demmings,
work as waitresses in a shabby diner in the Williamsburg neighbourhood
of Brooklyn. They also share an apartment and adventures in dating while
struggling to save money and open their own cupcake business. Despite
their poverty and personal histories, Caroline and Max remain convinced
that hard work and determination (combined with Max’s homemade
cupcakes and Caroline’s shrewd financial expertise and business acumen)
will lead them to financial independence and success.
The Mindy Project is named for the show’s creator and star, Mindy
Kaling, the first Southeast Asian person to headline a US television show,
and the only lead character in the genre who is not white. Kaling has
starred since 2012 as an obstetrician/gynaecologist in a group practice
with three white men. The show focuses more on her dating life than her
professional life, although several co-workers are her friends and in the
second season she dates another doctor in her practice. Her character is a
skilled and successful practitioner, but her personal life is a mess, and the
prime source of comedic energy in the show. She has trouble sustaining
relationships with men, and despite Kaling’s petite stature, there are
recurring jokes about her weight and overeating. She does not have
close female friends.
Girls also stars its creator and is the only one of these shows that
appears on premium cable; the others are all on network television. As
discussed in several other chapters in this book, this provides opportu-
nities for more explicit language and sex scenes than appear in the other
programmes, which the show has become known for. Dunham’s Hannah
Horvath is the central character among four post-university friends try-
ing to establish careers and relationships in New York. They struggle to
find professional employment and pay the bills in the Greenpoint neigh-
bourhood of Brooklyn, but the show focuses on their relationships with
men and each other.
ALL ADVENTUROUS WOMEN DO

Matters of women’s reproductive and sexual health appeared in the story-
lines of Girls right from the start. In the pilot, Jessa returns to New York
after a long absence, and among the first revelations to her friends about
her world travels is her unintended pregnancy. Much of Episode 2 (‘Vagina
panic’) takes place in the women’s health clinic where Marnie has sched-
uled an abortion for Jessa and an STI test for Hannah, at their respective
requests. Even though she has insisted on condom use in her burgeoning
relationship with Adam, news of Jessa’s pregnancy seems to have made
Hannah anxious about ‘things that get up around the side of condoms’ – at
least that’s what viewers are meant to infer from her Google searches.
214 E.A. KISSLING
While Jessa misses her abortion appointment, much to Marnie’s frus-

tration, Hannah nervously babbles through her exam and Pap smear.
Though she has no reason to think she’s been exposed, she fears she
may have contracted HIV. When she receives the phone call informing
her of an HPV+ diagnosis in the following episode, she is both relieved
and nonplussed, telling Adam, ‘That was my gynaecologist. She was call-
ing with some news about my vagina’. Both admit to knowing little about
HPV, but when Hannah suggests that Adam may have given her the virus,
he immediately and somewhat angrily assures her that’s not possible,
because he’s been tested: ‘My best dyke friend works for a dick doctor,
and I don’t have that shit’. He demands an apology (Season 1, Episode 3,
‘All adventurous women do’).
Hannah and Adam are typical of their demographic in their anxiety and
misunderstanding of the Human Papilloma Virus. HPV is believed to
be the most common STI in the USA (Daley et al., 2010; Garend &
Magloire, 2008; Sandfort & Pleasant, 2009). Survey research shows that
young people often have little to no awareness of their risk of contracting
HPV, or how common it is, or the virus’ role in cervical cancer (Garend &
Magloire, 2008; Sandfort & Pleasant, 2009).1 Women are more likely
than men to have at least minimal awareness, but even women who have
received the HPV vaccine do not accurately perceive the risk of acquiring
and spreading the virus (Licht et al., 2010). Cervical cancer rarely develops
from HPV, but the virus is the cause of nearly 100 per cent of cases,
provoking great anxiety in young women when they are provided with
basic information about HPV (Sandfort & Pleasant, 2009). Emotional
responses to receiving an HPV+ diagnosis among respondents in one
study included stigma, fear, self-blame, powerlessness, and anger. HPV+
women have also described feelings of being dirty and fear of partner
responses (Daley et al., 2010). In this and the following episode,
Hannah displays many of these behaviours and emotions.
Convinced that Adam did not give her the virus, Hannah seeks out her
only other recent sexual partner, her college boyfriend Elijah. She swal-
lows her sadness and anger, and finally tells him the reason for their
meeting:
Hannah: And also, I wanna let you know that the reason I brought you
here was not to discuss our past relationship, but to discuss
the fact that I have an STD and I’m pretty fucking sure you
gave it to me.
Elijah: Why would you think that?

Hannah: Because I’ve been having protected sex with my current boy-
friend and also he doesn’t have HPV.
Elijah: HPV?
Hannah: He was tested and he doesn’t have it.
Elijah: Oh, your boyfriend was tested for HPV?
Hannah: Yes.
Elijah: Well, that’s absurd.
Hannah: And why is that absurd?
Elijah: Because there is no test for men. There is no way a man can be
tested for HPV and your boyfriend would know that, had he
even taken an intro level human sexuality workshop. (Season1,
Episode 3, ‘All adventurous women do’)
Elijah is correct: While men can get and spread HPV as easily as women
can, there is no US Food and Drug Administration-approved test for men,
and men rarely have health problems related to HPV (Centres for Disease
Control [CDC], 2012; 2014). There isn’t a direct test for women, either,
but women may discover they have HPV when they have abnormal Pap
test results or genital warts (CDC, 2014). Hannah has an appointment for
the following week ‘to have her cervix scraped’ and she is comforted by
Jessa’s casually tossed off phrase, ‘all adventurous women do’, about the
fact that she herself has ‘several strains’ of HPV.
This does not mean all adventurous women have STIs, of course, but
that adventurous, risk-taking women have a past, including a sexual his-
tory that is part of their current selves and shapes their present identity.
This attitude, among other elements, makes young women find the show
so ‘relatable.’ The phrase ‘all adventurous women do’ has become some-
thing of a totem to fans of the show, prompting at least one to have it
etched as a tattoo, in Lena Dunham’s own handwriting (Dries, 2013), and
there are numerous online sources for t-shirts bearing the phrase, emble-
matic of the neoliberal, postfeminist discourse of choice, agency, and
sexual self-determination that characterizes Girls’ representations of
young, white, heterosexual femininity.
Although less serious in tone than Girls, 2 Broke Girls also shines in its
portrayal of young women’s sexuality and female friendship. As an odd
couple, Caroline and Max represent a familiar television trope. The two
friends talk openly about sex, without shame. Sometimes, this prompts the
need for frank talk about sexual health. In Season 2, Caroline finds herself
with an uncomfortable rash in an uncomfortable place, not coincidentally
216 E.A. KISSLING
after a booty call with her ex-boyfriend Andy. As many people do, she
turns to Dr Google in search of the cause of her symptoms. As she and
Max peruse websites, Caroline determines that a rash isn’t so bad. Further
study indicates that a rash could be herpes, and Max offers to look, as
Caroline can’t bend over far enough to see it:
Max: Just let me see it.

Caroline: Max, I could not continue to live here if you ever saw it.
Max: Well, then definitely let me see it.
Max: It’s okay, I have one too, except mine has a ‘Welcome’ mat.
Caroline: I know, I’ll just take a picture of it. (Season 2, Episode 21, ‘And
the worst selfie ever’)
With this, Caroline squats behind the sofa and takes a picture of her crotch
with her phone. Max agrees it does not look good, and Caroline insists ‘on
the record’ that her vulva is normally ‘quite pretty’. She then decides her
best course of action is a visit to the free clinic.
This scene, and most of this episode, shows an intimacy between two
women friends dealing with a quotidian health issue in an almost-realistic
and humorous way, a contrast to topics used so often for dramatic effect
in more soapy televisual fare, such as pregnancy scares (which are not
nearly as frequent as soap operas and teen dramas might lead one to
believe). Caroline has an unfamiliar itch in a place one can’t confide to
just anyone and seeks help from her more experienced best girlfriend.
Max is such a good friend, she offers to examine the parts of Caroline’s
body she can’t see herself, and cracks jokes about her own sexuality while
doing so. Caroline’s assertion that her vulva is normally ‘quite pretty’
marks a departure from common attitudes if one considers the rising
frequency of labiaplasty procedures in the USA (more than 5,000 were
recorded by the American College of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons in 2013,
compared to 2140 in 2010 (American Society for Aesthetic Plastic
Surgery, 2013; O’Regan, 2013). Neither woman expresses any shame
about being sexually active; instead, they are fully formed instantiations of
postfeminism’s ‘new femininity’, as sexual subjects in their own right, free to
follow their own desires, only (apparently) coincidentally making the same
heteronormative sexual and fashion choices promoted by neoliberal, patri-
archal capitalism.
Fortunately for our destitute heroines, Caroline’s diagnosis is dermatitis –
a rash caused by an allergic reaction to soap or laundry detergent. Not so
fortunately for viewers, although the brochure Max read at the clinic accu-
rately claimed one of every six people in the USA has herpes, the show’s
representation of testing for the virus was misleading. Nurse Shirley correctly
explained to Caroline that the test for HSV-2 is a specific blood test, but
neglected to mention that the antibodies would not be present in her
bloodstream until three to six weeks after exposure (‘Getting tested for
herpes’, 2010).
JUST A CONCERNED ADULT WOMAN

Viewers can expect Dr Mindy Lahiri, an obstetrician-gynaecologist, to be
knowledgeable about women’s sexual and reproductive health, and The
Mindy Project provides frequent opportunities for her to display that exper-
tise. In Season 1, Mindy has an unexpected opportunity to lecture several
high school students at once. Mindy’s 15-year-old neighbour, Sophia, is a
friend and a patient and has asked her to prescribe birth control. Despite her
openness about sexuality and her attitudes about sexual freedom for herself,
Mindy is protective of Sophia and dismissive of the idea that she could need
birth control already. Eventually she relents and shows up at Sophia’s
school, catching Sophia at volleyball practice, and distributes condoms to
Sophia and her teammates, warning them of the dangers of herpes and
other STIs. When the coach intervenes and the camera cuts to a close-up of
a school safety officer putting Mindy’s wrists in plastic handcuffs, she says,
‘This feels excessive, and I bet if I were a white male, you wouldn’t . . .
okay, well, maybe you would.’ (Episode 7, ‘Teen patient’)
This scene, clocking in at just barely over two minutes, warns students
(and viewers) about an incurable STI, the importance of condoms for STI
protection as well as pregnancy prevention, and the shared (or is it
female?) responsibility for carrying condoms. It tries to grapple with the
question of sexual maturity, but recognises that adults can’t stop ‘crazy
bangable’ teens from having sex with each other. It also pokes gentle fun
at identity politics, a subject of postfeminist silence, noting one area where
white, male privilege would not be a get-out-of-trouble-free card.
For a gynaecologist, Dr Lahiri is surprisingly uncomfortable with the
idea of teen sex, at least for this patient. She insists on meeting Sophia’s
boyfriend, Henry, before issuing a prescription for contraception. Mindy
deems Henry lacking in maturity and ambition and again refuses to write
a prescription. This frustrates Sophia, who demands a reciprocal right
to interrogate Mindy’s boyfriend, as well as a right to her own sexual
218 E.A. KISSLING
subjectivity. Mindy has an epiphany and recognises Sophia’s right to make

her own (postfeminist) decisions, but the episode ends with Sophia and
Henry jointly deciding to postpone sex. This reads as a deliberate educa-
tional message for young viewers.
After Mindy recognises Sophia’s autonomy, she continues to give
advice about birth control to young women in the second season. Her
college-aged patient Jenny seeks advice about the pill: ‘I heard that birth
control makes you fat and cranky.’ Mindy replies, ‘So does pregnancy’.
She is later visited by the young woman’s father, who objects to his
daughter’s pill use. Mindy defends the young woman’s prescription and
her privacy: ‘it was her choice, because she’s an adult’ (Season 2, Episode
20, ‘An officer and a gynaecologist’). Their conversation continues in the
street outside the practice, and the father, also a police officer, seems to
know he is in the wrong and redirects his frustration by issuing Mindy a
ticket for ‘public female hysteria’, an archaic law he tells her is still on the
books. Mindy is outraged, and proclaims to bystanders that she has been
unfairly ticketed ‘for walking while being a person of color’.
Again, Dr Lahiri provides her patients and viewers with information
about birth control, and lampshades2 the accusations that her character is
racist. Many feminist viewers, especially women of colour, have criticised
how Kaling has dealt with race on the show (e.g. Khan, 2015), citing the
Mindy character’s preference for dating exclusively white men, black
stereotypes in the portrayal of the nurse Tamra, and attitudes displayed
by Mindy and other characters. It’s as if Mindy Lahiri is meant to live in a
world in which no one is racialised, except when Mindy Kaling and her
writing team find racialised identities to be a source of easy humour.
VAGINA PANIC
Girls is the only one of these shows that represents abortion, and it
manages to do so without shaming or killing off women who have
abortions. Sisson and Kimport’s 2014 census of the representation of
abortion stories in film and television found that 15.6% of cinematic and
televisual abortion plotlines ended in the woman’s death, with 9% attrib-
uted directly to the abortion, a figure that bears no relation to reality
as the mortality risk from legal abortion today is effectively zero (Pazol
et al., 2015).
As noted earlier, when Jessa discovers she is pregnant, Marnie arranges
for an abortion for her at the same time Hannah is tested for STIs. But
while Hannah nervously rambles about her fear of HIV/AIDS during her
exam, Jessa is a no-show. She’s picked up a stranger in a bar, and as they
grope one another in a public restroom, Jessa discovers that she is no
longer pregnant. It’s not quite clear if the audience is meant to interpret
this as a miscarriage or a late period, but Girls is off the hook for the time
being, in terms of telling an abortion story.
In Season 4 Girls finds a chance to tell an abortion story again as a
newly introduced minor character, Mimi-Rose, reveals to her boyfriend
Adam (now Hannah’s ex) that she can’t go running with him because she
had an abortion the day before. She calmly elaborates, ‘[A]nd I can’t take a
bath or use a tampon or have intercourse for like a week’. Adam throws a
tantrum, in keeping with his man-child persona, but this is a remarkable
exception to how abortion and women who choose to terminate preg-
nancy are typically portrayed in television. Mimi-Rose is calm and com-
posed, offering no tears, regret, or justification. When Adam demands to
know if it was a boy or girl, Mimi-Rose refuses to engage in emotional
warfare and says, ‘It was a ball of cells. It was smaller than a seed pearl.
It didn’t have a penis or a vagina’ (Season 4, Episode 6, ‘Close up’).
Confused and angry, Adam continues yelling, ‘I don’t understand how
you could do something like that without talking to me first . . . It’s,
that’s, evil!’ Mimi-Rose looks at him and nods twice, before responding,
‘You’re right. You don’t understand’. While one reading of this scene
is to label Mimi-Rose as postfeminist for her independence, failure to
consult with Adam about her decision, and seemingly casual, consumer
attitude toward abortion, in the US political climate where legal abor-
tion is continually restricted and threatened, this portrayal of a woman
refusing to be shamed for choosing abortion also reads as powerfully
feminist.
CONCLUSIONS
Sometimes, medical accuracy is sacrificed for brevity or humour, as in the
case with herpes testing in 2 Broke Girls, but the inclusion of examples of
female characters addressing sexual and reproductive health concerns in
television comedy may have constructive effects, in addition to being
‘relatable’. Fewer than half of US states require sex education in public
schools (Guttmacher Institute, 2014). Thus, television characters getting
tested for HPV and herpes and accessing contraception and abortion
serves as a source of basic health information for a largely uninformed
220 E.A. KISSLING
audience. The portrayal of these issues as unexceptional events reduces the

shame, fear, and stigma that frequently accompany these topics and other
aspects of sexual health. Even when the medical information is incomplete,
audiences may still derive these benefits. They may be inspired to seek
additional information from other sources.
The postfeminist sensibility of this genre of television for women and its
neoliberal values remain in place and the reification of gender difference
and importance of individualism places responsibility for birth control and
for STI awareness, testing, and treatment on the shoulders of young
women. These independent, postfeminist, heterosexual women of televi-
sion comedy, like their viewers, live in a neoliberal, sexualised world,
where sexual autonomy means also being responsible for not-so-indepen-
dent (heterosexual) men who can’t be relied upon to carry and use con-
doms or to know they may be carriers of HPV even if they can’t be tested.
This likely increases ‘relatabilty’ of the characters, making them easier for
young women to identify with and making it possible for these pro-
grammes to work as entertainment-education about sex and reproductive
health and about gender politics. Moyer-Gusé (2008) posits that greater
identification with characters and greater narrative involvement, combined
with less explicitly persuasive messages, are likely to produce more effective
intentional educational effects. I suggest that unintentional educational
effects are equally likely and these shows are reproducing cultural memes
and ideals. Postfeminist television may be making up for inadequate sex
education, but postfeminism is no substitute for real feminist politics and
gender equality.
Acknowledgements The author wishes to thank Patty Chantrill, Imelda

Whelehan, Meredith Nash, and Lyn Millett for valuable feedback on previous
drafts of this chapter.
NOTES
1. In a recent screening of clips from this episode in my Gender and Media
class, I discovered that this is true of students at my university. Many did not
know what the cervix is, which led to an impromptu sex education lecture.
2. Lampshade hanging refers to the common television, film, and theatre trope
of making explicit reference to audience’s willing suspension of disbelief. It
lets the viewer know that the author knows there is an unrealistic gap in plot
development or that they’re in on the joke (Lampshade hanging, n.d.).
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Elizabeth Arveda Kissling is a Professor of Women’s Studies and of

Communication at Eastern Washington University in the US, with research inter-
ests in women’s health, sexuality, and feminism. She is especially interested in how
these issues are represented in mass media and the relationship between media and
subjectivity. Kissling is the author of Capitalizing on the Curse: The Business of
Menstruation (2006, Lynne Rienner Publishers), and numerous scholarly articles.
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research and other projects can be found at drkissling.com.
CHAPTER 16
Afterword: Girls: Notes on Authenticity,

Ambivalence and Imperfection
Rosalind Gill
This interesting collection makes a valuable contribution to the growing

body of literature about Girls, and the wider popular cultural engagement
(in journalism, on social media) with the HBO series, currently numbering
five seasons. Discussions have focused on the racial politics and exclusions
of the show (e.g. Stewart, 2012; Wortham, 2012; Watson et al., 2015); on
class, work, and generation (e.g. the normalisation of unpaid internships
as the entry-level route into employment for young people in North
America [Lowrey, 2013; Shade & Jacobson, 2015]; on questions of Lena
Dunham’s reflexive ‘auteurship’ and the ‘political economy’ of the series as
flagship in HBO’s attempt to attract a youthful, college-educated, female
audience (Nygaard, 2013); and – of course – on the issue of how the series
is situated politically and ideologically in relation to feminism (Fuller &
Driscoll, 2015). This collection develops some of these arguments, whilst
also generating new work centred on education (Witherington 2017,
Chapter 8) and the role of music in Girls (Sergeant 2017, Chapter 10).
Mostly, however, it foregrounds an overlapping but slightly different set of
issues centred – as I see it – on the body, sex and intimacy, and postfemin-
ism. It is on these themes that I reflect in this concluding chapter, as well as
R. Gill (*)
Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis, City, University of London,
London, UK
e-mail: rosalind.gill.2@city.ac.uk

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-52971-4_16
226 R. GILL
on questions of authenticity, vulnerability, and imperfection. I draw on my

readings of the chapters that make up this book; various forms of media by
and about Lena Dunham, including her memoir Not That Kind of Girl;
and my own engagement with the show.
A ‘PRODUCTIVE IRRITANT’: MAKING

‘POSTFEMINISM’ CRITICAL
A few years ago Imelda Whelehan (2010) wrote an article that asked why
postfeminism had become so ‘boring’ and expressed her ‘frustration’ and
‘ennui’ with the term. The activity of analysing postfeminist cultural texts,
she argued, can quickly become tedious since ‘the message requires little
unpacking and lies prominently on the surface of these narratives’
(p. 159). It is interesting, then, to read this current collection in which
the notion is so prominent. For many of the contributors Girls is both a
feminist and a postfeminist show, and one that makes both terms live
again. As Sean Fuller and Catherine Driscoll (2015) have put it, in Girls,
feminism refuses to recede into the past:
Girls is a story about girls who are both products and the subjects of
feminism, incorporating validation, problematisation and critique of the
forms of education, work, sex and romance currently available to girls.
And it is a story about the important role played by popular culture in the
history of disseminating feminism and keeping it at the forefront of debating
our ‘contemporary anxieties’. (p. 261)
Yet it is also a show shaped by postfeminism – an idea that Fuller and

Driscoll (2015, p. 253) regard as a source of ‘productive irritation’. It
remains a key term within feminist media studies – one that is highly
contested, speaking to a wide range of different issues and topics, its very
‘overload’ signalling that there is something worth fighting about. If this
volume is anything to go by, if the term didn’t exist it would have to be
invented, since it is used to index so many different things: a zeitgeist, an
ideology, a sensibility, a set of assumptions, a particular kind of subjectiv-
ity, a relationship, etc. This proliferation of different conceptualisations is
certainly irritating, but might it also be (pace Fuller & Driscoll, 2015)
productive?
For Whelehan, Girls is interesting precisely because it is not just another
‘quality postfeminist text’ but rather encourages surface readings that are
AFTERWORD: GIRLS: NOTES ON AUTHENTICITY, AMBIVALENCE… 227
then undermined by the representational strategies deployed on-screen.

It thus ‘makes the activity of feminist critique interesting once more’
(Whelehan 2017, Chapter 3). It is this very complexity of Girls that
captures the imagination of many writers. For Meredith Nash and Ruby
Grant (2015, p. 988) the show performs ‘feminist engagement with post-
feminism’. They argue (Grant & Nash 2017, Chapter 5) that Girls allows a
rearticulation of postfeminism for a millennial generation. It remains part
of a neoliberal refashioning of contemporary femininity, but one that is
changing significantly. Their analysis implicitly suggests the need for period-
isations of postfeminism (see Dejmanee, 2015), to acknowledge the way
that it is transforming. They suggest adding an interrogative to the word –
post? feminism – to symbolise that ‘feminist engagement is multiple and
shifting and that the breadth of issues involved in feminist identification is
much more complex today’ (Grant & Nash 2017, Chapter 5). Another
productive engagement with the term is found in Catherine McDermott’s
(2017) use of Lauren Berlant’s work to argue that postfeminism is a relation
of ‘cruel optimism’, tying women to hopes or desires that cannot be met
(see Chapter 4). For McDermott what we see in Girls is an ‘enactment and
unravelling’ of conventional postfeminist fantasies, which points viewers to
critical understandings of the way that feminine desires have been directed
toward ‘patently false promises’. Stephanie Genz’s chapter also directs us to
the need to continue to work with and develop the notion of postfeminism
(see Chapter 2). Responding to Diane Negra and Yvonne Tasker’s (2014)
challenge to think about postfeminism in relation to recession and austerity,
Genz (2017) argues that:
I suggest that the larger cultural climate and ethos of neo-liberal post-
feminism needs to be recalibrated and reassessed in the aftermath of the
boom-and-bust economic model. Certainly, if late twentieth and early
twenty-first-century post-feminism was marked by optimism, entitlement
and the opportunity of prosperity, such articulations have become more
doubtful and less celebratory in a post-2008 recessionary environment
where the neo-liberal mantra of choice and self-determination is still present
but becomes inflected with the experiences of precarity, risk, and the insis-
tence on self-responsibilisation [ . . . ].
What is striking about this and almost all the engagements with postfe-
minism in this volume is their attempt to hold on to and develop the
term – that is, to make it more productive both for analysing Girls and
228 R. GILL
more generally. To these contributions I would add some of my own.

First, the need to use postfeminism as a critical term. I argue that post-
feminist media culture should be an object of analysis rather than a position
or a perspective. In this sense, I see myself as an analyst of postfeminism
rather than a postfeminist analyst – something that brings a clear critical
intent to our projects, and avoids some of the confusion that besets some
discussions. Second, and in line with several authors here, I believe we
need to use the term with far greater specificity – whether that applies to
generation, to class, to historical periods or to place. A key strength of
recent writing about postfeminism has been its development in relation to
intersectional perspectives that do not simply assume that postfeminism
interpellates only white, straight, and middle-class women, but instead
asks how race and ethnicity, age, sexuality, and nationality are consti-
tuted in postfeminism. The work of Jess Butler (2013), Simidele
Dosekun (2015) and Isis Giraldo (2016) has been central in challenging
assumptions about both the whiteness and Westernness of the concept,
whilst a growing body of work has examined its classed dimensions
(Nathanson, 2013; Negra & Tasker, 2014) and challenged its apparently
exclusive focus on youthful luminosities (Jermyn & Holmes, 2015;
Whelehan & Gwynne, 2014). There should be more productive engage-
ments between queer theorists and analysts of postfeminism, but this
is beginning (Ferreday, 2008; McCann, 2015; Gill & Flood, under
review). These developments are valuable in interrogating the ‘reach’
of a postfeminist sensibility and in delineating its variable and changing
forms of address – thus helping to facilitate greater rigour in our use of
the term.
Another part of this project involves specifying the nature of the rela-
tionship between postfeminism and other key terms – most notably per-
haps feminism and neoliberalism. An early definition of postfeminism was
of ‘an emerging culture and ideology that simultaneously incorporates,
revises, and depoliticises many of the fundamental issues advanced by
feminism’ (Rosenfelt & Stacey, 1987, p. 77). How does this definition
hold up today? Is it appropriate to define postfeminism only in relation to
feminism – what about in places that seem to be marked by a postfeminist
sensibility but have not been through the ‘waves’ of feminism that this
model assumes? How might postfeminism be understood also in relation
to neoliberalism? And how should we understand the recent upsurge of
feminist writing, activism, and cultural production of which Girls forms a
part? Does the renewed visibility of feminism in the UK, USA, and
elsewhere call into question our older critical vocabularies – including the
term postfeminism? More concretely, if we take for granted Angela
McRobbie’s (2009) key argument about the entanglement of feminism
and postfeminism then how can we refine our analytical tools in order to
unpack and specify the different forms this may take? It is crucial that our
conceptualisations are dynamic enough to be able to take account of the
way that postfeminism changes. I have suggested elsewhere (Gill, 2016)
that contemporary postfeminist logics may, in fact, operate through a
celebration of feminism, rather than its repudiation (see also Rottenberg,
2014 on neoliberal feminism).
THE AFFECTIVE AND PSYCHIC LIFE OF POSTFEMINISM

Analysis of postfeminist culture would also be enhanced by more careful
attention to its affective and psychic life – that is, the way it is taken up and
lived (or resisted), and comes to shape the kinds of subjectivities we
inhabit, and our emotional landscapes. Whilst not using this psychosocial
vocabulary, nor drawing on any audience research, this volume offers
several instructive discussions for those of us interested in the relationship
between culture and subjectivity. Several contributors note that Girls
breaks with what some see as more optimistic iterations of postfeminism
(Negra & Tasker, 2014; see also Genz, Chapter 2). I am not sure that
I would ever have characterised postfeminism as an optimistic sensibility,
since it has been so tied to individualism and to repudiating the need for
radical social transformation. However, I accept that some iterations –
particularly those connected to girl power (Harris & Dobson, 2015) –
were at times celebratory, glossy, and shiny – though often marked by a
sense of brittleness.
Akane Kanai (forthcoming) has done important work on the affective
features of postfeminism, arguing that ‘Young women are subject
to intensified requirements to demonstrate resilient individuality whilst
also enacting a pleasing, approachable femininity’. Drawing on Arlie
Hochschild’s work she argues that neoliberal or postfeminist ‘feeling
rules’ shape how young women are allowed to be and to feel, inciting
them to deal with difficulties through ‘humorous, upbeat quips’ in which
pain and struggle must be rendered into ‘safe, funny “girl friendly”’
anecdotes. As I have argued elsewhere (Gill, 2008), it is clear that
postfeminist regulation not only shapes conduct, but also psychic life:
it produces a ‘structure of feeling’ in which women must disavow a whole
230 R. GILL
range of experiences and emotions – notably insecurity, neediness, and

anger. In my analysis of sex and relationship advice in Glamour magazine
(Gill, 2009) – targeted at middle-class, heterosexual women in their
20s – a similar demographic to the young women of Girls – I showed
the double-bind in which women were placed: relentlessly scrutinised
and apprised of all the different ways in which they could get things
wrong, yet treated with contempt if they were to admit to feeling any-
thing less than completely confident all the time. Advice warned: ‘Don’t
EVER ask us if your bum looks big in anything because you’ll sound
needy and desperate, which is one of the biggest turn-offs for any man’
(see also García-Favaro, 2017). As Shani Orgad and I (2015, p. 339)
have argued, ‘if confidence is “the new sexy” than insecurity is the new
ugly’, presented as a toxic emotional state for women, who must put
forward a happy, upbeat facade all the time regardless of how they
actually feel.
Girls breaks with this. There is an emphasis upon failure, disappoint-
ment, and vulnerability in Girls that is quite different from many other
postfeminist texts – even from the confessional style of something like
Bridget Jones’s Diary (Fielding, 1996). The ‘postfeminist masquerade’
(McRobbie, 2009) is cracked and tarnished in Girls. Rather than
‘Anita Harris’ “can-do” girls, they are girls who should be able to but
don’t’, Fuller and Driscoll argue (2015, p. 257). Instead vulnerability is
allowed – even celebrated. Not That Kind of Girl, Lena Dunham’s
(2014) autobiography, makes a fetish out of failure. Subtitled ‘a young
woman tells you what she’s ‘learned’, it immediately marks itself out
from other postfeminist memoirs or conduct manuals through its inver-
sion of familiar narrative strategies that move from confusion to wisdom,
loneliness to happy relationships, or which express a desire that others
should learn from the author’s experiences. The chapter on dieting, for
example, starts with Dunham’s fear of being anorexic, moving on to her
spell as ‘the world’s least successful occasional bulimic’ (2014, p. 87),
followed by several tedious pages of itemised food consumption: ‘2 sips
of ginger ale’, ‘one quarter of a peach’ etc., and ending abruptly with a
one-line note saying: ‘I went totally nuts and ate all the things’. This is
the antithesis of ‘self-help’ and successful ‘makeover’. There is no
growth, no self-improvement, and no metamorphosis into responsibi-
lised neo-liberal adulthood. Indeed, the book jacket tells us that
Dunham is already anticipating her ‘future shame at thinking I had
anything to offer you’.
AUTHENTICITY AND IMPERFECTION

Wallis Seaton (2017, Chapter 11) argues that a significant part of Lena
Dunham’s ‘brand’ is her failings – which are foregrounded in the show
through Hannah’s character. Seaton argues that irony and self-reflection
permeate the show, even being used to attack the quality of Dunham’s
writing via a storyline (Season 4, Episode 2, ‘Triggering’) that has Hannah
at a writing workshop being pulled apart for her ‘privilege’, ‘stunted
feminist ideas’, and ‘insensitivity’. Dunham’s Instagram feed also asks
that we accept her failings – taglined ‘doing her best with what she’s
got’ – even in relation to the problematic racial politics of the show.
Arguably, Hannah’s racist ‘colour blindness’ – when she is dating Sandy
and claims, ‘I never thought about the fact that you were black once’ –
ironically and reflexively presents her/Dunham for mockery (McCann,
Chapter 7) – a bold move particularly in the wake of the extensive criticism
of the show for its ‘hipster racism’ (Watson, 2015).
More broadly, it is clear that the persona of Lena Dunham/Hannah
Horvath is constructed around marketable authenticity as her ‘self work
becomes a branding exercise aiming to produce a saleable identity that can
be traded and consumed by others’ (Genz, Chapter 2; see also Banet-
Weiser, 2012). Everything that happens to her becomes material for her
book. All her relationships and experiences are commodified, or, in the
parlance of the sharing economy, ‘financialisable’; she is willing to act out
her boyfriend’s rape fantasies, to proposition her employer and to ‘do a
whole bunch of coke, and just write about it’. It is all ‘good material’.
Here – as in Dunham’s memoir – imperfection is also to the fore, breaking
the hold of ‘the perfect’ which some have argued has become a defining
feature of postfeminism (McRobbie, 2015). It is interesting to consider
whether this offers some kind of critique or challenge – or whether
postfeminism is flexible enough to absorb and re-signify imperfection –
as we have seen for example in the more accessible forms of ‘cool’ on offer
in the tropes of ‘love your body’ messages (in advertising, magazines, and
reality TV). Melanie Waters (Chapter 6) dubs it ‘imperfect feminism’.
Girls is also striking for the way it may challenge the ‘postfeminist
melancholia’ eloquently discussed by Angela McRobbie, centred on the
normalisation of female distress – low self-esteem, self-harm, eating dis-
orders, etc. As McRobbie (2009, p. 112) argues, these have come to be
regarded as ‘predictable, treatable things to be managed medically rather
than subjected to sustained social scrutiny’. She suggests that ‘popular
232 R. GILL
culture is asking young women to get used to gender melancholia, and

to recognise themselves and each other within its terms’ (p. 115). Girls
certainly features plentiful examples of female distress, perhaps also nor-
malising these – or at least treating them as unremarkable within the
universe of middle-class, white 20-something life in New York City. But
this doesn’t produce the ‘illegible rage’ McRobbie discussed. On the
contrary, disappointments, confusion, and hurt are made legible all the
time – not glossed over or sanitised, but repeatedly highlighted. This is
especially clear in relation to sex (discussed below). It is also notable at
times that the show actively refuses feminine pathologisation and shaming
of women – particularly in relation to abortion, an issue explored well in
this volume (e.g. Grant & Nash 2017, Chapter 5; Waters 2017,
Chapter 6; Kissling 2017, Chapter 15).
Dunham’s vulnerability is often so raw that it is painful to witness –
something also evident in the important contemporary BBC drama
Fleabag, centred on another unhappy young woman, which deserves
scholarly attention alongside Girls. Dunham’s (2014) autobiography
opens with the phrase: ‘I am twenty years old and I hate myself’ and
goes on to explain that ‘I cover up this hatred with a kind of aggressive
self-acceptance’. This dynamic animates the book – it is what Emma
Renold and Jessica Ringrose (2011) would call a ‘schizoid’ femininity –
lurching between excoriating self-hatred and defensive cheerfulness from
one moment to the next. Dunham (2014) writes of ‘the perverse, looping
thoughts that come unbidden: I am hideous. I am going to be living in a
mental hospital by the time I am twenty-nine. I will never amount to
anything’. But then in the next sentence: ‘You wouldn’t know it to see me
at a party [ . . . ] In a crowd I am recklessly cheerful [ . . . ] I dance the
hardest, laugh the hardest at my own jokes, and make casual reference to
my vagina, like it’s a car or a chest of drawers’ (p. xii). The complexities of
these affective dynamics urgently require study.
BODIES THAT MATTER

If issues of choice and reproductive rights centre feminist concerns in
Girls, then another major vehicle for feminist expression is the body –
particularly Hannah’s/Dunham’s body. It has generated vast amounts of
debate and commentary, much of it hostile, including multiple social
media forums dedicated to attacking her nudity through what Breanne
Fahs (2017) calls the ‘regulatory politics of disgust’ (e.g. Put Your Clothes
On Lena Dunham). In a notorious interview with Dunham, TV critic Tim

Molloy (2014) professed:
I don’t get the purpose of all the nudity on the show. By you particularly.
I feel like I’m walking into a trap where you say no one complains about the
nudity on Game of Thrones, but I get why they’re doing it. They’re doing it
to be salacious. To titillate people. And your character is often naked at
random times for no reason.
The – not even barely concealed – sexist subtext here was not an antipathy
to nudity per se, but a judgement on Dunham’s unattractiveness and thus
her ‘right’ to ‘exhibit’ her body. It is striking how even sympathetic
coverage of Dunham speaks of her ‘exhibitionism’ – something she was
asked about so much that she wrote a chapter about it in her book,
remarking facetiously on being repeatedly called ‘brave’: ‘The subtext
there is definitely how am I brave enough to reveal my imperfect body
since I doubt Blake Lively would be subject to the same line of inquiry’
(2014, p. 105, emphasis in original).
Dunham’s response to Molloy’s question was to say: ‘It’s because it’s a
realistic expression of what it’s like to be alive, I think, and I totally get it.
If you are not into me, that’s your problem’. Others, however, have read
the presentation of Hannah’s body in ways that go far beyond realism.
Jocelyn Bailey (2015) argues that Girls grants subjectivity to the female
body in ways that are new for television. In turn, Michelle Dean (2014), in
a much-cited piece from Flavorwire, calls Lena Dunham’s body ‘weapo-
nized’. ‘Lena Dunham’s nakedness on ‘Girls is revolutionary and needs to
be applauded, without reservation’, Dean argued. ‘The show, by consis-
tently putting that “imperfection” in front of us, is demanding that we
interrogate our devotion to our beauty standards.’ Similarly, Whelehan
(Chapter 3) contends: ‘Dulled as we are to the exposure of the nude
female body on-screen, we sure as hell wake up when that body doesn’t
equate to the airbrushed and toned perfection we have come to expect’.
This is true, yet there is something troubling, too, in the hyperbolically
positive reception Dunham’s body has received. On the one hand, its very
shock value and putatively ‘revolutionary’ characteristics underscore the
sheer force of bodily regulation to which women are subject. Yet, on the
other, Dunham’s body is not that different from contemporary feminine
ideals. As Deborah Thomas (2017, Chapter 13) notes, it is ‘pale, a little
pudgy, tattooed’. It is not obese, it is not disfigured, it is not disabled. It is
234 R. GILL
in fact likely to be significantly smaller than the average American female’s

body. In treating it as utterly extraordinary are we not in danger of
reinforcing the very norms that it – mildly – challenges?
Rather like the ‘love your body’ (LYB) trope in Dove’s and others’
advertising – which has been extensively critiqued (Gill & Elias, 2014;
Murphy & Jackson, 2011; Murray, 2012) – the commentary suggests that
we are seeing something much more different and much more subversive
than we actually are – minor differences are depicted as radical transgres-
sions. This is seen more and more in media coverage of female celebrities
more generally, in which tiny gestures (e.g. going out without a bra or
allowing a visible panty line to show) are treated as if they are ‘rad’
‘badass’ attacks on the entire fashion-beauty complex as we know it
(see Elias et al., 2017).
The resemblance in representational styles between Girls and LYB was
underscored in the video the cast did in support of the Stanford rape
victim/survivor in 2016. All four ‘girls’ were located in an empty, blank
room; they were barefoot, presented as un-made-up, holding hands, and
dressed simply in jeans and plain t-shirts. Each spoke in turn, using phrases
such as ‘You have the choice to make things better’ and ‘You already have
the power to create a safer, healthier environment for women’. The same
words are flashed on screen in a simple white font. The video ends with
each cast-member saying in turn, ‘Because she is someone’. It is an
important video that speaks out against violence against women. But it
is also strikingly similar to many of the commercial messages that make
up the contemporary mediascape: ‘Because you’re worth it’ (L’Oreal),
‘You are more beautiful than you think’ (Dove), ‘This girl can’ (Sports
England), ‘Awaken your incredible’ (Weight Watchers). It resonates
aesthetically (the bodies, hair and styling of the ‘girls’, the pared back
mise en scène, the direct-to-camera speech, the use of text) but it also
resonates politically, seeming to be part of a feminist-inflected yet indivi-
dualist, neoliberal-friendly, postfeminist framing (‘you have the choice’,
‘you have the power’, ‘just being there makes it better’). These sutures
between feminism, postfeminism and neoliberalism deserve much more
attention – not least the way they seem to be figured through the apparent
defiance and rebellion offered by particular bodies.
It is also important to note that it is just one body that is the focus
of nearly all the discussion. The reception of Girls focuses disproportio-
nately upon Hannah, and this is even more emphatic in discussions
of embodiment. Yet the three other main female characters are slim and
conventionally attractive, hardly deviating from current standards of fem-

inine heterosexual desirability – a fact that rarely gets discussed. But there
are established conventions of popular cultural texts allowing one character
that is ‘different’ – a permissible transgression if all the others conform or
‘over-achieve’ in heterosexiness and/or if that body can also carry those
meanings – as in the cases of Rebel Wilson and Amy Schumer. How
‘revolutionary’ is it to have one kooky, hipster, white, female character
who could be considered a few pounds overweight? Which bodies matter?
And why does Hannah’s seem to matter more than the others?
Finally, it is perhaps problematic the way that Dunham’s body is
identified as ‘carrying’ the feminism of the show, as having its own sub-
jectivity and voice. This raises questions about how and whether the body
can speak, and, if so, how we read its utterances? In my view, we move
onto difficult and potentially essentialist territory if we start to argue
that some bodies are inherently subversive or transgressive and others –
implicitly – compliant. Just as having a fat body does not necessarily signify
a rejection of beauty standards or bodily norms, nor does having a thin
body equate with acceptance and conformity. In fact, in many of
Dunham’s interviews and in her book she talks about her body as being
what it is despite her attempts to discipline it. This suggests a need for
caution in reading the body, as well as a need to interrogate the standard
feminist inversions seen in debates about ‘positive images’ in which one set
of ‘problematic’ representations is simply substituted for an alternative
set that is assumed to be inherently more feminist (see Gill, 2007).
MEDIATED INTIMACY/AWKWARD SEX

In Not That Kind of Girl, Dunham wrote of her frustration with repre-
sentations of sex in the media: ‘Everything I saw as a child from 90210
to The Bridges of Madison County, had led me to believe that sex was a
cringey, warmly-lit event where two smooth-skinned, gooey-eyed losers
achieved mutual orgasm by breathing on each other’s faces’ (2014,
p. 103). The effect of this, she argued, was destructive: ‘Between porn
and studio romantic comedies, we get the message loud and clear that we
are doing it all wrong. Our bedsheets aren’t right. Our moves aren’t right.
Our bodies aren’t right’ (p. 103). She wanted to produce something more
‘honest’, and this is arguably one of the most significant and groundbreak-
ing features of the show – extensively discussed in this collection. In Girls,
sex is not stylish, nor beautifully lit, nor artfully filmed. It does not – unlike
236 R. GILL
so many other sitcoms or romcoms – feature actresses who have signed the
now ubiquitous underwear contracts, which means that almost all sex
scenes feature women wearing bras. At the representational level, this is
a significant departure producing sex scenes that seem authentic, clumsy
and often awkward – challenging standard TV and Hollywood sex.
But the attempts at verisimilitude do not end there: Girls also aspires to
emotional realism, offering us what Grant and Nash (2017, Chapter 5)
dub ‘emotional and experiential fumbling’.
Issues of consent and desire and power are central to the sex in Girls,
which demands that we engage with complexity and ambivalence. The
depictions of sex are informed by – and also kick off against – several widely
circulating and competing constructions of women. From one perspective,
as Waters (Chapter 6) discusses, the show foregrounds the significance of
pornography, particularly in shaping Adam’s desires. From another,
Dunham is understood as a provocauteur in the mould of Catherine
Breillat, her representation of sex a powerful form of ‘feminist critique’
(San Filippo 2017, Chapter 12) Constructions are also arguably indebted
to queer theory, as Christopher Lloyd argues (2017, Chapter 14). Lloyd’s
point is that the narrow socio-cultural demographic of the show – its
whiteness, (upper-) middle-classness and straightness – does not preclude
moments of queer disruptiveness entering it. Indeed, he argues that queer
theory has often failed to engage with the complex machinations of sexual
acts and fantasies – but Girls does just this.
Another co-existing construction is a more traditional one, personified by
Marnie, who is depicted as not wanting to have sex with her boyfriend
Charlie, yet doing so anyway. In one scene from the very first episode he
asks her ‘what would turn you on right now?’ She replies: ‘what would turn
you on?’ This might be read as a typical moment of ‘man-pleasing’ feminin-
ity, except that it is clear that the response derives from Marnie’s lack of
desire for Charlie yet her ambivalence about ending the relationship. She
continues to have lacklustre sex with him. This is seen again in the following
episode where they are depicted having slow, missionary-position inter-
course and Charlie asks how it is. ‘It feels good . . . fine’, Marnie responds
half-heartedly – the lexical correction from ‘good’ to ‘fine’ allowing the
audience to see clearly what Charlie cannot: that she is not really into him. As
Frederick Dhaenens argues (2017, Chapter 9), the difficulties of this rela-
tionship are presented in part as a consequence of Charlie’s divergence from
hegemonic masculine ideals – something that Dhaenens suggests is more
troubling for the women than for the men of Girls.
The show has provoked controversy with its depictions of non-consen-

sual sex – particularly in Adam and Natalia’s relationship in Season 2. This
is discussed with care and sensitivity in this collection (see especially Grant
and Nash 2017, Chapter 5; Waters 2017, Chapter 6), and also raises
questions about how a TV show is to represent the reality of sexual
relationships – when those relationships are heavily freighted by gendered
(and other) power relations – without being accused of making rape into
‘entertainment’. Given that, according to the video about sexual violence
discussed above, one in five women will be sexually assaulted in her life-
time, and the vast majority of those cases will involve a man she knows,
then to present sex as unproblematically consensual would be to misre-
present the many and varied forms of coercion that are sometimes involved
– and end up presenting a misleading and inauthentic portrait of young
people’s sexual lives. This is what McCann (Chapter 7) discusses as ‘the
problem of representation’ or the ‘representational bind’. The politics of
this comes down to not if or if not sexual coercion should be presented,
but exactly how it is presented – which demands a much more subtle and
complex engagement. Some of the arguments put forward in this volume
begin that work – pointing variously to the show’s ability to deal with ‘the
unspoken realities of women’s sexual experiences’ (Grant & Nash 2017,
Chapter 5) and to the significance of Natalia’s experience being made
available for the viewer to see and understand. As Waters notes, we see a
close up of Natalia’s face and ‘in the space of a few seconds, her face
registers a spectrum of emotions, encompassing surprise and discomfort,
hesitancy and resignation’ (Chapter 6). We also hear Natalia’s ‘no’, and
her experience is again centred when she tells Adam, with trembling lips,
‘I really didn’t like that’. The politics of the scene are, as Waters succinctly
puts it, ‘stubbornly resistant to tidying’, yet the show seems to break new
ground in depicting the complexities of sexual dynamics, and women’s
experiences of them. As Grant & Nash argue, ‘the embodiment of femi-
nine heterosexuality in Girls is experienced as an endless negotiation of
objectification and subjectification that perhaps more closely reflects the
experiences of young Western women’ (Chapter 5).
Three other significant features of the representation of sex in Girls
are worth noting, too. First, the show accords women full sexual
subjecthood, and takes for granted their sexual histories, without in
any way narratively punishing or condemning them (‘All adventurous
women do’). This is still relatively novel and worth celebrating. Second,
the show foregrounds women’s own desires and frames them in their
238 R. GILL
own terms. In Girls there is no ‘missing discourse of desire’ (Fine, 1988);

women are able to articulate their own desires, even when they differ from
their partner’s (e.g. Hannah’s refusal to have anal sex with Adam). Third,
Girls breaks with the automatic requirement to place men’s sexual plea-
sure or judgements above those of women. Sex and the City has been
heralded as groundbreaking in its depictions of sex, but it still frequently
did so on men’s terms – e.g. ‘if he goes up your butt, will he respect you
more or less?’ as Miranda asked in Season 1 – showing the persistent force
of the sexual double standard and the need to please men sexually whilst
also not losing their ‘respect’. In Girls, by contrast, the heterosexual
landscape is not only or singularly shaped by men’s desires and the need
to please them. Taken together these features make for representations of
intimate relationships that – while still disappointingly heteronormative –
open up new spaces of hope, possibility and complexity.
Acknowledgements I am grateful to Shani Orgad and Roisin Ryan Flood for

their helpful comments on this piece.
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Rosalind Gill is Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at City, University of

London. Her research focuses on gender, sexuality, intimacy and work, with a
strong focus on power and subjectivity. She is author or editor of ten books
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Research Process (Taylor & Francis, 2009, with Roisin Ryan Flood), and New
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with Christina Scharff). Her latest books are Mediated Intimacy: Sex Advice in
Media Culture (Polity, 2017, with Meg-John Barker & Laura Harvey) and
Aesthetic Labour: Beauty Politics in Neoliberalism (Palgrave, 2017).
INDEX
A sex with Hannah, 66, 76, 79, 131,

Abortion, 8, 11, 33, 68, 77, 82–83, 200–201, 204
85, 150, 213, 218, 232 sex with Natalia, 67, 80–82
Lauren Berlant, 78 Adulthood
Redstockings, 84 identity fears, 113
See also Choice, reproductive making choices, 115
Adam Sackler (Adam Driver), 3, 9, 39, Ally McBeal, 3, 131, 136
41–42, 53, 70, 166 postfeminist programming, 211
on abortion, 68, 84–85, 219 Anderson, Eric, 50, 121, 124
affluence and debt, 112, 126 homohysteria, 130
analingus, 80 homosocial intimacy, 129
anal sex, 189, 200 inclusive masculinity, 126
anger and destructiveness, 52 Apatow, Judd, 3, 42, 152, 181
authentic self, 26 ‘bromance’ comedies, 189
class and status, 110 Austerity, 20
condoms, 213 and social obligation, 6
Hannah as sexual object, 205 Authenticity, 2, 26, 143, 152
homosociality, 129 as commodity, 6
HPV (human papilloma virus), 214 the gendering of, 24
‘knight in shining armour’, 52, 55 in self-actualisation, 48
masculinity, 126–127, 131 sexual, 18
masturbation, 131
and Mimi-Rose, 109
and neoliberal society, 127 B
rape scene, 33 Bauman, Zygmunt, 17, 24
relationship with Hannah, 175, 203 Beasly, Chris, 123

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-52971-4
244 INDEX
Berlant, Lauren, 7, 11, 76–77, 82, 99, Cattrall, Kim, 62

199, 205 Charlotte York (Kristin Davis), 62
cruel optimism, 47, 99 reproductive choice, 69
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, 114 and ‘the rabbit’, 65
Body, 233 Choice, 32
antierotic, 27 activism, 151, 156, 166, 172
authentic, 26, 34 choice narratives, 2
bodily management in Girls, 70 and feminism, in Sex and the City, 62
bodily management in Sex and the and freedom, 176, 211
City, 70 limits, 9
commodified, 22 and neoliberalism, 18–19, 23, 216
Hannah/Lena, 232 personal responsibility, 115,
materiality-feminist and 177, 218
poststructuralist, 123 postfeminist, 33, 38, 62, 64, 67,
nakedness and control, 172 154, 187, 215
nudity, (see Chapter 13) reproductive, 7, 61, 68, 71, 83, 85
nudity and cultural visibility, 184 Roe vs. Wade (1973), 85
ordinary bodies, 185 and self-regulation, 187, 211
performance of self, 177 sexual, 68
postfeminist, 234 transformative, 174
sexuality and representation, 200 Class, 2, 95, 108, 114, 152, 236
site of resistance, 173, 184 beauty norms, 26
vehicle for feminist expression, 232 changed meanings, 4
Bourdieu, Pierre, 109 cultural capital, 107
education as cultural product, 108 and education, 110
Breillat, Catherine employment, 39
Anatomy of Hell, 167, 171 expectations, 126
Easy Man, 167 and femininity, 136
The Opening, 167 and feminism, 158
Pornocratie, 167 in Lena Dunham’s digital work, 156
A Real Young Girl, 167, 171 and masculinity, 125
Romance, 167, 171 men and power, 123
self-knowledge and norms, 93
self-acceptance, 174 politics, 100
Bridget Jones’s Diary, 6, 22, 230 and precarity, 47
Brooklyn, 20, 126, 182, 212 privilege and postfeminism, 3
and race privilege, 39
the sheltered middle-class, 24
C status and privilege, 4, 47, 92,
Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica 107, 117
Parker), 51, 62, 65 and success, 20
abortion, 69 Commodification, 23, 64, 231
INDEX 245
of authenticity, 6, 18 classed digital engagement, 156

of feminism, 158 commodified self, 231
and neoliberalism, 19–20 contemporary feminism, 33–34, 39,
of the self, 25 51, 75, 150–151, 156, 166
of sexual identity, 129 creative intervention in reality, 32
Connell, Raewyn, 124 Creative Non-Fiction, 191
masculinities, 121–122 critical responses, 2, 34, 38, 155,
neoliberalism, 123 172–173, 183, 185–186,
Consumerism, 23, 25, 64, 125 212, 233
and identity, 40 critiquing the millenial plight, 4
neoliberal, 18, 151 Delusional Downtown Divas, 191
postfeminist, 211 depicting sex, 197
self-actualisation, 48 destabilising the erotic gaze, 185
Sex and the City, 50 digital projects, 150, 155
Crisis, 47 disrupting the genre, 55, 67, 91,
everyday catastrophe, 56 93, 167
financial, 4, 20, 49, 96, 101, 125, female comedy, 190
(see also Recession-postfeminism and celebrity, 149
recession) feminist identities, 157
of masculinity, 124, 127 The Fountain, 166–167, 192
‘rape-crisis feminists’, 78 Girls as consciousness-raising
tool, 71
Gloria Steinem interview, 157
D identity and persona, 150–152, 156,
Daalmans, Serena 158, 173, 176, 190–191
privilege and entitlement, 37 Instagram, 155, 157
Davis, Kristin, 62 intersectionality, 3
Desi Harperin (Ebon Lenny Letter, 150, 157
Moss-Bachrach), 39 media collusion or resistance, 42
analingus, 189 music and creativity, 135
and Marnie, 143 norms of femininity, 51, 136
Dramedy, 1, 5, 18, 42 Not That Kind of Girl, 32, 34, 150,
alienation, parody and farce, 37 153, 166, 182, 191, 235
Dunham, Lena, 1, 93 nudity and awkward sex as
on abortion, 83 signature, 192
antierotic sex and nudity, 166 nudity-social media sites, 186
authentic self, 48, 231 the personal is political, 71, 83,
beauty and feminism, 36 156, 159
‘Biblical Movie Girl’-Saturday Planned Parenthood, 83, 150
Night Live, 185 politics and technology, 158
body, nakedness and politics, 34, polysemic nudity, 189
170, 182, 184, 192 on pornography, 170
246 INDEX
Dunham, Lena (cont.) ‘helicopter’ parents and race, 111

postfeminism, 71 heuristic of academic
postfeminist ‘girlification’, 63 distinction, 106–108
Pressure, 191 humanities, 106–108
privatised politics, 83 humanities as esoteric, 112
privilege, 152–153, 209 Iowa State University, 108
race, class and feminism, 158 Ivy League and second tier
representing race, 100 universities, 111
representing the body, 70 Michigan State University, 108,
responding to critiques, 96–97, 111, 113
154, 156, 176–177, in the millennial
181, 233 bildungsroman, 105
revealing the ‘real’, 176 New York University (NYU),
self-knowledge and self- 108, 111
acceptance, 174 Oberlin, 108
Sex and the City, 62 personal status hierarchy, 109
sexual degradation, 175 privilege, 21, 107–109, 111
sexual verisimilitude, 81, 189 and race, 107
Tight Shots, 191 Rhode Island School of
Tiny Furniture, 166, 191–192 Design, 108–109
‘unruly women’, 171 sex education, 210, 218–219
voice of a generation, 91 status and debt, 112
whiteness in Girls, 3 STIs and contraception, (see
Women of the Hour, 150 Chapter 15)
Dworkin, Andrea university as stunting, 105
Intercourse, 78 US statistics, 106
via entertainment, 209
Elijah Krantz (Andrew Rannells), 9,
E 39, 175
Eat, Pray, Love, 39 affluence and debt, 126
Economic crisis authentic self, 26, 129
austerity and neoliberalism, 20 class, 108, 111, 116
reshaping masculinity, 125 coming out, 128, 140
Education masculinity, 126, 129, 131
Barnard College, 108–109 STIs (sexually transmitted
City University of New York system infections), 214
(CUNY), 108, 111 Empowerment, 2, 22, 71
Columbia University, 107, 110 agency, 65
expensive caprice, 115 and choice, 33
Hannah and her friends, (see consumerism, 50
Chapter 8) narrative of the self, 26
Harvard University, 107, 110 neoliberalism, 151
INDEX 247
sexual, 62, 66–67 feminist television of the 1970s, 210

substitute for transformation, 62 ‘feminist’ topics, 33
Entitlement, 45, 93, 166 gendered discourse, 138, 143–144
education, 106 generational shifts, 158
Hannah, 32 the girl, 63, 76
millennials, 23 Gloria Steinem, 157
neoliberalism, 20 homogenising, 97
postfeminist, 18, 22, 38, 142 ‘imperfect’, 76, 86
and precarity, 47 Instagram, 155
Serena Daalmans, 37 ‘Jezebel’, 153
Entrepreneurs Lena Dunham-poster girl, 75
Homo oeconomicus, 19 Luce Irigaray, 137
sexual, 18, 27, 123 millennial, 3
multiple, 49
Nancy Fraser, 98
F new zeitgeist, 75
Fat Girl, 169 norms of femininity, 94
Femininity North American, 78
as bodily property, 69 outdated, 62
‘designer’, 22 and pleasure, 55
new meanings, 56 politics of embodiment, 36
norms, 35, 94 popular culture, 149
postfeminist, 216 and popular culture, 41
remaking, 64 pornography, 166
Feminism rape, 79
abortion, 69, 77, 84, 219 revitalising feminist critiques, 31
Angela McRobbie, 211 Rosalind Gill, 40, 151
anti-feminist discourses, 64 second-wave, 34, 42, 51, 62, 66, 71,
body, 123, 177, 187 77–78, 183
celebrating ordinary women, 185 second-wave and Sex and the
celebrity feminists, 157 City, 62
commodified, 158 sex, 65
consent, sex and power, 78 sexual choice, 68
contemporary, 33–34, 150–151, sexual subjugation, 166
156, 166 third-wave, 39, 157
cultural appropriation of ‘unruly women’ discourses, 190
feminism, 157 victim and power, 77
discourses, 156 See also Postfeminism
entitlement, 38 Finlay, Karen, 183
feminist ‘art porn’, 168 Foucault, Michel, 19
feminist female television Homo oeconomicus, 19
characters, 212 Fraser, Nancy, 98
248 INDEX
Freire, Paulo theorising postfeminism, 40, 49, 62,

Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 116 64, 69, 154, 211
Friends See also Hannah Horvath (Lena
sex education, 210 Dunham); Chapter 16
Girls, critical responses, 93, 95, 98,
153–154, 176, 181
G Giroux, Henry, 17
Game of Thrones Gurley Brown, Helen
nudity, 170, 181–182 Sex and the Single Girl, 34
sex and sexuality, 198
Gay
Elijah’s coming out, 26, 128 H
‘gay male sensibility’ in Sex and the Hannah Horvath (Lena Dunham),
City, 2 63, 213
Homohysteria and sexuality on abortion, 68, 83–84
hierarchy, 124 adult or infant, 203
homonegativity, 130 anal sex, 200
masculinities, 129, 131 authentic self, 26–27, 45, 48
Tad’s coming out, 39 authorial voice and authentic
television characters, 128 self, 176
Gender order, 122–123 awkward sex, 166
crisis, 127 bodily control, 70
Generation, 20, 71, 92, 94, 101 body, 76, 172–173, 182, 185, 188
generational promise, 47 the business of being a girl, 77
‘Generation me’, 19 child or adult, 114
Gen Y, 4 class and status, 108
Girls as a ‘generational commodification, 25
document’, 91 compared with Portnoy, 32
millennial, 2, 3, 7, 23–24, 37, 62, condoms and STIs (sexually
150, 152 transmitted infections), 213
postfeminist, 158 degrading sex, 175–176
second-wave feminism, 51 disliked character, 31, 33, 36,
‘zero generation-Zygmunt 40, 42
Bauman’, 17 education, 105
Gill, Rosalind, 41 entitlement, 23, 50
authentic self, 231 experience seeking, 24
‘girlification’, 63 female friendship, 140, 188
media and feminist feminine fulfilment, 51
debate, 151 ‘fleshy canvas’, 76
media archetypes, 65 the ‘good life’, 53
neoliberal feminine Hannah’s body, 34
subjectivity, 187, 211 Iowa State University, 108
INDEX 249
Iowa Writers’ Workshop, 108, 115, Homosexuality, 140

154, 176 Will & Grace, 128
journey to self-love, 41 Homosociality, 129
and masculinity, 39 How I Met Your Mother, 125
mental health, 52, 54, 185 Hypersexualisation, 22, 170
modern ‘disembedded’
individual, 21
‘mouseburger’ personified, 34 I
narcissism, 22, 24, 32 Identity, 69
nudity, 66, 189 authentic self, 27, 48
parents, 111, 113, 184, 201 commodified, 25
Patti LuPone, 111 masculinities, 39
politics, 100 Identity politics, 113, 115, 125,
precarity, 46, 49, 201 129–131, 141, 143, 150–151,
precursors, 32 155, 158, 177, 199, 217
‘Prima Donna’ mindset, 22 Nancy Fraser, 98
privilege, 47, 116 I Don’t Know How She Does It, 39
Ray’s critique of her writing, 27 Individualism, 40, 220
relationship with Adam, 53, 55, neoliberal, 6, 19, 23, 48
130, 175, 204 postfeminist, 34, 64, 211
relationship with Elijah, 140 private troubles not public
relationship with Sandy, 96 issues, 20
self-shattering, 202 written on the body, 177
sex, 183 Instagram, 9, 155, 192, 231
as sexual object, 205 Lena Dunham’s selfies, 156
sex with Adam, 66, 79, 131, 170, Intersectionality, 228
189, 200–201, 203 postfeminist, 64
speaking for Lena Dunham, 150 privilege and oppression, 3
stalking Mimi-Rose, 109 Intimacy
STIs (sexually transmitted and nudity, 188
infections), 215, 218 in women’s friendships, 216
teaching, 113, 116 Irigaray, Luce, 136–137
top girl, 22 gendered understandings of the
voice of a generation, 2, 24, 91, 152 world, 144
work, 23, 39, 112, 114 pleasure, 142
Heteronormativity, 62
Hipster
anti-hipster, 42 J
‘post-hipster cool’, 135 Jessa Johansson (Jemima Kirke), 40,
racism, 3 105, 116
slackers, 1 abortion, 68–69, 84, 213, 219
Homohysteria, 123, 130 and Adam, 41–42
250 INDEX
Jessa Johansson (Jemima Kirke) (cont.) embodying ‘postfeminist

‘adventurous women’ and STIs entitlement’, 142
(sexually transmitted female friendship, 140
infections), 215 ‘gendered registers of music’, 9
after rehab, 110 masturbation, 142
beauty norms, 26 narcissistic tendencies, 33
class and race privilege, 39 relationship with Booth
class and status, 108 Jonathon, 142
consumption and identity, 40 relationship with Charlie, 4, 121,
female friendship, 188 129–130, 140, 203
narcissistic tendencies, 33 relationship with Desi, 143
sexual ‘choice’, 68 self-expression via music, 142
weak female bonds, 142 sex with Booth Jonathon, 67
on work, 23 sex with Charlie, 202, 205, 236
Jones, Bridget, 6, 22 sex with Elijah, 128
in a state of becoming, 21
weak female bonds, 36–37
K Masculinities, 39, 122
Kirke, Jemima, 63, 84 diverging from the hegemonic, 121
Konner, Jenni, 3, 157 gay, 129, 131
Lenny Letter, 157 homosociality, 129
inclusive, 124, 126
negotiated, 130
L neoliberal, 123
Lee, Young Jean orthodox, 124
Untitled Feminist Show, 183 Raewyn Connell, 121
Lenny Letter, 9, 150, 156–157 television representations, 124
Masculinity
Adam, 127
M Charlie, 128, 130
Marnie Michaels (Allison Elijah, 128
Williams), 40, 63, 105, 184 gaze, 142
abortion, 84, 213, 218 hegemonic ideal, 131
analingus, 189 Luce Irigaray, 138
archetypical female performers, 143 Ray, 127, 131
authentic self, 143 sense of self, 4
awkward sex, 67 and sexuality, 129
beauty norms, 26 work, 126
class and status, 37, 108, 110, 114 Masturbation
communication, 204 Adam, 81, 131, 204
desiring a hegemonic masculine Marnie, 142
ideal, 128, 131–132 politics, 82, 142
INDEX 251
Portnoy’s Complaint and Girls, 32 femininity, 64

Maude, 210 gender discourses, 127
McIntosh, Peggy heteronormativity, 216
the ‘invisible knapsack’, 107 Lauren Berlant, 45
McRobbie, Angela, 132, 151, 231 masculinity, 127
bodily management, 70 Michel Foucault and Homo
critique of postfeminism, 211 oeconomicus, 19
‘cultural appropriation of and postfeminism, 18, 21, 49
feminism’, 157 precarity, 18
narrative landscapes, 155 projects of the self, 18–19, 22,
postfeminism, 3, 49, 61, 64, 211 27, 48
privilege in Girls, 157 Raewyn Connell, 123
‘top girls’, 18, 22 suppression of women, 123
Menstruation, 69, 85, 154, 210, 219 surveillance of the self, 187
shame, 171 See also Chapter 2; Chapter 15
Meritocracy Neolibersalism
American fantasies, 46 projects of the self, 24
Millett, Kate New York, 4, 11, 52, 54, 62, 84, 91,
Sexual Politics, 78 111, 114, 116, 197, 213
Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon), 62 demographics, 96
reproductive choice, 69 post-recessionary milieu, 20, 31
Misogyny, 155 precarity, 96
nostalgia for hierarchical gender Nixon, Cynthia, 62
order, 124 Not That Kind of Girl, 32, 34, 150,
and pornography, 170 153, 166, 182
Modern Family, 128 Nudity, 232
Murphy Brown, 210, 212 antierotic, 166
bodily authenticity, 27
bodily comportment, 10
N comedy of transgression, 189
Narcissism commodification, 182
Hannah, 32 critiques of the nudity in Girls, 183
Jessa, 33 the culturally visible body, 184
Marnie, 33 and embodiment, 171
Shoshanna, 33 erotic judgment, 186
Neoliberalism exhibitionism, 186
body, nakedness and politics, 187 feminist ‘art porn’, 10
consumerism, 151 hypersexualising, 170
cruel optimism, 99 normalising, 184
Darwinian shark-tank, 20 performance of the self, 177
‘disposability machine’, 17 politics, 36, 78, 82, 167, 172,
entitlement, 23 183–184, 187, 189
252 INDEX
Nudity (cont.) genre conventions, 46

polysemic, 189 in Girls and Sex and the City, 7
sex-in-a-bra type characters, 67 individualism, 211
and taboo, 172, 185 intersectionality, 228
television, 182 neoliberalism, 18, 21, 49, 64, 228
See also Chapter 13 new femininity, 216
as object of analysis, 228
politics, (see Chapter 13)
P postfeminist programming-
Parker, Sarah Jessica, 62, 65 Desperate Housewives, 211
Pornography privileging the white middle-class, 3
driving niche sex, 76 promises of gendered
female pleasure-Catherine improvement, 7
Breillat, 168 revitalised by Girls, 159
Hannah and Adam, 79 revitalised feminist critique, 227
heterophallic, 168, 170 Rosalind Gill, 40, 49, 62, 64, 69,
inverted, 167 154, 211
Lauren Berlant, 78 self-regulation, 230
and misogyny, 170 Sex and the City, 61
reality and illusion, 168 sexual subjugation, 166
See also Chapter 12 television, 2
Postfeminism, 62, 71, 227 in television programming, 211
affective and psychic life, 229 theorising, 63
Angela McRobbie, 211 and youth, 4
anti or postfeminist heroes, 95 See also Chapter 5
apolitical consciousness, 71 Precarity, 2, 5, 23
body and nakedness, 187 class, 47
choice, 2, 187 economic, 6
consumerism, 50 and identity, 21
conventions, 46 for millennials, 126
critiques of Girls, 95 the ‘zero generation’, 17
cruel optimism, 49, 56, 227 Privilege, 71, 92, 201
depoliticised female subjects, 64 an intersectional postfeminist
embodied in Hannah, 36 approach, 3
engagement with feminism, 61–62, ‘authentic self’, 19
71, 78, 136, 143, 154, class, 4, 47, 97, 100, 107, 117
228, 234 contribution to Lena Dunham’s
entitlement, 23 success, 209
failure, 38 education, 21, 106–107
‘feeling rules’-Arlie Hochschild, 229 and feminism, 62, 68
femininity as bodily property, 69 heterosexuality, 124
gender constructions, 3 individual over collective, 156
INDEX 253
insecure, 113 Ray Ploshansky (Alex Karpovsky), 9,

Lena Dunham, 152–153 24, 110, 176
in Lena Dunham’s digital affluence and debt, 112, 126, 132
work, 156 homonegativity, 130
male, 123, 144, 217 homosociality, 129
neoliberal projects of the self, 6 masculinity, 126–127, 131
postfeminist, 158 realism, 235, 237
race, 39, 97, 100, 107, Recession–post-recession
116–117, 150 competitive workplaces, 20
Serena Daalmans, 37 creative intervention, 32
‘top girls’, 22 feminised workplaces, 32
unpacking, 4 gender discourses, 9, 17
navigating social and economic
realities, 37
Q neoliberal projects of the self, 6, 18,
Queer, 130, 236 22–23, 27, 31
contemporary televisual sex, 199 non-neoliberal ideals, 128
‘decolonising’ feminism, 97 postfeminist discourses, 49
sexuality, 129 unrealistic ambitions, 4, 18, 22–23,
‘shattering’ sexualities, 197 126–127
Tim Dean on queer theory, 199 Rhoda, 210
Queer as Folk, 198 Risk, 17
sex and sexuality, 198 and abortion, 218
and precarity, 18
and sex, 214
R Roe vs. Wade (1973), see Abortion;
Race, 95, 236 Choice, reproductive
African American character, 96 Romance, 168, 174
and class privilege, 39 Roth, Philip
Dangerous Minds, 116 Portnoy’s Complaint, 32
Girls as monocultural, 95
and higher education, 107 S
‘hipster’ racism, 231 Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall), 62
‘hipster racism’ in Girls, 3 bodily management, 70
the ‘invisible knapsack’, 107 empowerment and choice, 63
in Lena Dunham’s digital work, 156 reproductive choice, 69
‘magical negro’, 116 sexuality, 66
The Mindy Project, 218 Schneemann, Carolee, 183
postfeminist constructions, 3 Sex, 33, 52, 237
privilege, 97, 100, 116–117, 150 anal, 79, 130, 200
representing race in Girls, 100 antierotic, 166
Raval, Manish, 136 authenticity, 26
254 INDEX
Sex (cont.) See also Masturbation

awkward, 27, 65–67, 114, 166, Sex and the City, 1, 18, 22, 37, 39–40,
183, 191, 197, 200 50, 62, 76, 82, 93, 136
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, 114 ‘gay male sensibility’, 2
choice, 68 postfeminist programming, 211
commodity, 24 and second-wave feminism, 62
consent, 67, 77–80, 82–83, 176, sex and sexuality, 198
234, 236–237 See also Chapter 5
control, 174 Sex and the Single Girl, 63
countering pornographic Helen Gurley Brown, 34
versions, 170 Sex Is Comedy, 168–169, 177
cruel optimism, 201 Sexism
degrading, 175 inclusive masculinity, 124
domination and submission, 93, 176 and misogyny in social media, 155
education, (see Chapter 15) Sexuality, 150
fantasy, 76, 131, 189, 198, 2 Broke Girls, 215
200, 203 compulsory heterosexuality,
heteronormative, 62 124, 131
heteropatriachal, 170 and consumerism, 65
inherent cruelties, 206 dominance and control, 204
Lena Dunham’s depictions, 166 education and status, 10
like a man, 65–66 grey areas of heterosexuality, 76
multiple partners, 65–66 history of sex on screen, 200
normal, 197 identity formation, 141
the personal is political, 82 Lauren Berlant, 78
perversion and pleasure, 206 Marnie and masturbation, 142
pleasure, 101 Mindy in The Mindy Project, 217
queer theory, 199 norms of femininity, 94
rape fantasies, 231 politics, 36, 167
realism, 67, 78, 81, 167–168, 171, postfeminist constructions, 3, 67
176, 189, 191–192 privilege, 109–110
recreational, 66 pubescent, in A Real Young
self-degradation, 174 Girl, 171
self-shattering, 198 queer, 129, 198
sex talk in Sex and the City, 65 racial stereotypes, 156
Sigmund Freud, 206 Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall), 66
on television, 198–199 ‘self-shattering’, (see Chapter 14)
toys-the rabbit, 65 Sex and the City and Girls, 61, 65
unsatisfactory, 121, 128, 166, 205 as subject-Catherine Breillat, 165
wars, 76 television representations, 198, 209
women in control-Sex and the women in control in Girls, 71
City, 65 See also Chapter 12
INDEX 255
Shoshanna Shapiro (Zosia T

Mamet), 26, 40, 63, 105 The Mary Tyler Moore Show, 1,
consumption and identity, 40, 42, 61 210, 212
narcissistic tendencies, 33 The Mindy Project, 217
privilege, 39, 126–127, 132 Tiny Furniture, 166
relationship with Ray, 141 Two and a Half Men
weak female bonds, 22, 37, 142 patriarchal gender order, 125
work, 23
Sopranos, The, 170
Steinem, Gloria
feminist identities, 157 W
My Life on the Road, 158 Whiteness
race, class and feminism, 158 in Girls, 34, 150, 157, 209
STIs (sexually transmitted Will & Grace, 128
infections), 217–218 Wolf, Naomi
herpes, 216–217 Fire with Fire, 32
HPV (human papilloma virus), 213 Women of the Hour, 150

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Reading Lena Dunham’s Girls

ISBN 978-3-319-52970-7 ISBN 978-3-319-52971-4 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017940048

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

Cover image © REUTERS / Alamy Stock Photo

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

1 Why Girls? Why Now? 1

2 ‘I Have Work . . . I Am Busy . . . Trying to Become

3 Hating Hannah: Or Learning to Love (Post)Feminist

4 Genres of Impasse: Postfeminism as a Relation of Cruel

6 Bad Sex and the City? Feminist (Re)Awakenings in HBO’s

Part II Performing and Representing Millennial Identities

7 ‘A Voice of a Generation’: Girls and the Problem

8 HBO’s Girls and Twenty-First-Century Education 105

9 Reading the Boys of Girls 121

10 All Adventurous Women Sing: Articulating the Feminine

11 ‘Doing Her Best With What She’s Got’: Authorship,

Part III Sex, Sexuality, and Bodies

12 ‘Art Porn Provocauteurs’: Feminist Performances of

13 ‘You Shouldn’t be Doing That Because You Haven’t Got

14 Sexual Perversity in New York? 197

15 All Postfeminist Women Do: Women’s Sexual

16 Afterword: Girls: Notes on Authenticity,

Fig. 12.1 Distanciation merging with identiﬁcation: Breillat’s use

Why Girls? Why Now?

Meredith Nash and Imelda Whelehan

© The Author(s) 2017 1

underpinned two decades of populist postfeminism poses continuing

ORGANISATION OF THE VOLUME

“new” feminist zeitgeist’ (Waters, this volume). By asking what is at stake

PART II: PERFORMING AND REPRESENTING

opportunities and mounting debts. Most signiﬁcantly for Witherington,

selves in Girls and elsewhere, Seaton importantly draws attention to her

PART III: SEX, SEXUALITY, AND BODIES

sexuality and its ‘self-shattering’ effects. Following Linda Williams’s

McRobbie, A. (2009). The aftermath of feminism: Gender, culture and social

Meredith Nash is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Tasmania in

Imelda Whelehan was Professor in the Faculty of Arts at the University of

‘I Have Work . . . I Am Busy . . . Trying

‘We live in a time of deep foreboding’, Henry Giroux asserts in his

© The Author(s) 2017 17

In this chapter, I investigate the complex interplay of economic inse-

pornographic scripts and capitalising on the productive misery of the prota-

THE NEOLIBERAL LADDER AND GENERATION ME

Many commentators have criticised this neoliberal agenda that surren-

jobs/zero future’ predicament of the new precariat (Giroux, 2013,

SELF-BRANDING AND THE GENDERING OF AUTHENTICITY

and self-promotion – as her gauche, less market-savvy answer reveals,

and the ass of Rhianna’ (Season 1, Episode 4, ‘Hannah’s diary’) (see

to you’ (Season 2, Episode 6, ‘Boys’). Ultimately, the girls might have

Stéphanie Genz is Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at Nottingham Trent

Hating Hannah: Or Learning to Love

My ﬁrst introduction to Girls invoked instant revulsion for the central

© The Author(s) 2017 31

employment, responsible self-improving adult choices, and growth

much information’ is communicated on-screen, particularly in the sex

GIRLS AND CONTEMPORARY FEMINISM

blur in Dunham’s playful channelling of Hannah’s unrealised writing

to be salacious. To titillate people. And your character is often naked at

has been touching her inappropriately, to her opium-fuelled speech to her

(POST)FEMINIST ENTITLEMENT IN AN ERA

THE END OF FRIENDSHIP AND THE BEGINNING OF SELF-LOVE?

dialogue’ in its moments of ‘parodic brilliance’ (p. 366). Whether or