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Feminism, Post-feminism, and Young Women’s Reactions to Lena Dunham’s Girls

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Abstract

This article explores how women in a junior-level Women and Sexuality class taught at a large US research university make sense of the HBO television show Girls. Data come from essays written in spring 2013 by 28 students in response to the first three episodes of Girls. The students’ essays illustrate their ability to actively respond to the show’s portrayal of women’s lives in a nuanced rather than one-dimensional way. The most common topics in these essays were the show’s portrayal of male dominance in relationships, female sexual agency, female body disciplines, and the costs women pay for sexual activity. The essays illustrate how the students mobilize feminist and post-feminist frames, both singly and jointly, as well as the difficulties involved in trying to separate these frames from each other in either media texts or women’s lives. In addition, the data shed light on the struggles young women face in dealing with gendered expectations for sexuality, femininity, and body discipline in contemporary neoliberal society.

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Notes

  1. HBO’s decision to sign Dunham was undoubtedly made easier by the fact that Judd Apatow would serve as executive producer.

  2. For example, a search of the database Communications and Mass Media Complete for the last 20 years yielded 701 scholarly journal articles under the subject heading “content analysis” but only 43 under “audience response.” (The database did not use “audience reception” as a subject heading.) Although not the focus of this article, textual analyses remain critical for grasping the nuances embedded in media productions, for putting productions in broader contexts, and for illuminating recurrent tropes (such as the “saved by a man” trope or the “prostitute with a heart of gold” trope).

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Acknowledgments

This manuscript benefitted greatly from the suggestions of Adrienne Trier-Bieniek and, especially, Karen Leong.

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  1. School of Social Transformation, Arizona State University, Box 87-6403, Tempe, AZ, 85287-6403, USA

    Rose Weitz

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  1. Rose Weitz
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Weitz, R. Feminism, Post-feminism, and Young Women’s Reactions to Lena Dunham’s Girls . Gend. Issues 33, 218–234 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12147-015-9149-y

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