For more explanation of this month’s theme, “millennials in thirty things,” check out this post.

I told my mom recently that I thought Lena Dunham was the voice of our generation. Her response was, “Really?”

The look on her face was not quite disgust, but definitely not admiration.

Lena Dunham is the voice behind the HBO series Girls. Dunham writes, directs and acts in the show, which has generated a fair amount of buzz, mostly due to its candid conversations, regular nudity and sex scenes that don’t fade to black.

Other comments I often hear:

“I’m sick of hearing about Lena Dunham and her body image.”

Yes, the majority of the show’s critiques have surrounded the lead actress, who aims to show a realistic view of young twenty-somethings in New York City who haven’t quite figured out their careers or relationships. Her characters don’t live on the unrealistic salaries of Sex and the City. Nor do they ride around Manhattan on roads that are mysteriously free of traffic and engage in relationships that are mysteriously free of STDs (see also, Gossip Girl.)

Dunham’s body is shown frequently on camera, and it is clear that she is not trying to hide any flaws or cover anything that others might find “unattractive.”

However, I encourage viewers to look past whatever redundant statement Dunham is trying to make about the non-traditional-movie-star body type, and instead examine their own willingness to witness real life experiences that aren’t necessarily sexy, but are real and relatable.

Lena Dunham plays the main character of the show, Hannah Horvath. In an episode where Hannah’s boyfriend tells her she is wrong to think she knows struggle because she is ten pounds overweight, Hannah declares, “I am thirteen pounds overweight, and it has been awful for me my whole life!”

Whiney, yes. But don’t tell me that something as trivial as your weight hasn’t crossed your mind as a “real life struggle” in a time of weakness or self-doubt. I know it has for me.

“I don’t like any of the characters.”

This is the complaint I hear the most about the show. I usually respond by agreeing. I don’t like everything about the characters either, but isn’t this the brilliance of Dunham? She created characters based on herself and her friends, while unashamedly revealing the worst aspects of herself and her generation. Hannah is self-centered and entitled. She doesn’t know how to conduct herself in professional settings because she has never really had a professional position. She knows what important issues should be in a relationship but doesn’t understand the right time to talk about them. She tells her serious boyfriend she may be moving away to attend the Iowa Writer’s Workshop right before his first Broadway debut. Immediately before. As in backstage.

Also, the cast does an excellent job. The dialogue isn’t overacted or scripted for punch lines. There are no flashbacks or flashforwards as there are in other comedies about millennials figuring out life, such as New Girl or How I Met Your Mother.

Ultimately, it is Dunham’s writing that makes Girls so enjoyable. It’s cringeworthy. But it is also realistic. I remember reading some cheesy teen book during my first breakup at the age of fifteen. Even then, I knew I was being overly selfish at dramatic, but the catharsis of reading a book narrated by another whiney teenager FELT SO GOOD. Sometimes you just need someone who gets it.

Her self-doubt mingled with entitlement is intoxicatingly accurate.  Upon a reunion with a friend, Hannah proclaims, “This haircut happened upon me at a very challenging time that you weren’t present for.  And I’m glad you like it, because I wake up every morning and I question it!”

“Adam is so weird.”

The male lead of the show is a part-time actor, part-time carpenter and socially awkward recovering alcoholic. He and Hannah have an on-again, off-again relationship. Adam is unpredictable at times, especially during the first season when he may ignore Hannah’s presence in one episode, and in the next graffiti “SORRY” countless times on the side of an abandoned building when she accuses him of not being a “good apologizer.” He isn’t the perfect boyfriend, nor is he the nice guy who you know will come around in the end, nor is he the best friend character who may become something more. He is just a real, complicated person. Like real people are.

***

What Dunham acknowledges is that our generation may not be respectable, but we are the inevitable future. And we are hopeful. A recent article in the New York Times quotes data from a Pew Research Center study that has found millennials to be a generation that believes “their own best days are ahead.” Maybe that’s why the words “The Best is Yet to Come” are posted in two out of the three bedrooms in my Brooklyn apartment.

Not That Kind of Girl, Lena Dunham’s memoir, comes out September 30. I’ve already pre-ordered it. Keep doing what you do, Lena. The best is yet to come.

1 Comment

  1. Andrew Knot

    Pretty certain I’ve made some version second critique before.

    Reply

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