Abstract
Considering how Dunham pushes the boundaries of current debates through her engagement with past and present discourses of feminism and postfeminism, this chapter positions her mediated identity within discourses of individualism and neoiberalism. Seaton’s analysis explores how Dunham’s creative outputs and social media engagements communicate a problematic feminist position through a white, privileged, and ironic lens, but argues that her self-reflexive narratives offer a new discursive space for feminism, on and off-screen. Focusing on the articulations between Dunham’s ‘real’ self and fictional selves in Girls, as well as her use of commercialised sites such as Instagram and Lenny Letter, this chapter draws attention to Dunham’s (re)negotiation of such mediated spaces, offering a revision of current understandings of feminism as shaped by celebrity.
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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 profile 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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Seaton, W. (2017). ‘Doing Her Best With What She’s Got’: Authorship, Irony, and Mediating Feminist Identities in Lena Dunham’s Girls . In: Nash, M., Whelehan, I. (eds) Reading Lena Dunham’s Girls. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52971-4_11
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