Lena Dunham looks back on 'Girls' body-shaming: There is still 'resentment toward women'

They may be deflowered, but they’re not devalued.

Thanks in part to TikTok, Gen Z has finally discovered “Girls,” the lightning-rod HBO dramedy that ended its six-season run in 2017. Created by and starring Lena Dunham, the series revolved around four twentysomething women in New York as they navigated work, dating and the harsh realization that they maybe shouldn’t be friends after all.

Recent reappraisals have rightly recognized the show as a satire of millennial narcissism. (For the final time, Dunham did not literally mean she’s the voice of her generation.) But those of us who were in the trenches, watching the series as it aired, remember the vitriol “Girls” received from critics and viewers alike, especially for the Season 2 episode “One Man’s Trash,” in which Hannah (Dunham) spends a weekend hooking up with a slightly older, wealthier man named Joshua (Patrick Wilson).

Interview:Lena Dunham talks new movie 'Treasure,' learning she's related to Glenn Close

That 2013 episode ignited an appalling online debate, with some journalists arguing that Dunham is too “ugly,” that the storyline is pure “wish fulfillment,” and that it was a stretch to buy that Joshua is “somehow attracted to Hannah.” The takes were vile at the time, but certainly wouldn’t fly in 2024, as conversations around sex and body positivity have evolved.

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Dunham, 38, currently stars in the new drama “Treasure” (now in theaters), that follows a young woman named Ruth who travels to Poland with her Holocaust survivor dad (Stephen Fry). During a recent Zoom call to promote the film, she reflected on the often toxic discourse around “Girls.”

“It’s funny, I was just emailing with Patrick Wilson and his wife, Dagmara (Domińczyk), who defended me so beautifully at the time,” Dunham says. “It is wild to think (about). There are aspects of the discourse around the show that would absolutely happen today, and there are aspects of it that would fall under new and very important categories about body-shaming and slut-shaming that people younger and wiser than our generation have figured out and coined.

“The biggest lesson that I learned is that once your work is in the world, people are going to have the conversation they're going to have,” Dunham continues. “I try to hear when people have something valid to say, but also to disconnect from it enough that I can continue to make my work. If I read everything that was written about ‘One Man's Trash,’ I would never get to play a character like Ruth because I would feel too self-conscious to put my body on the screen.”

But she notes that body-shaming still exists, even if it’s delivered in more backhanded ways. She refers to a review in The Hollywood Reporter after "Treasure" premiered at February's Berlin Film Festival, in which the critic flippantly wrote that "true to form," Dunham is "unafraid to get semi-naked for the camera."

“There was one review that was like, ‘Lena Dunham, flashing that flesh again! You go, girl!’” Dunham recalls. “Some faux sassy quote about a scene where my character takes a bath. And I was like, people still do have so much quiet resentment toward women – especially women who do not fit a Hollywood norm – feeling comfortable in their bodies and talking about what it feels like to live in their bodies. And I think that will be a topic that’s important to me and in my work for the rest of my life.”

Nevertheless, Dunham says it’s “really special” to see how “Girls” continues to be embraced by both Gen Z and millennials. The Season 3 episode “Beach House,” about a Long Island getaway from hell, is held in especially high esteem as one of the show's very best.

“That was one of the greatest filming experiences ever,” Dunham recalls. “Rain ended up keeping us there for three times longer than we were supposed to be, so we just had the ‘Beach House’ episode in real life, minus the fighting. It was a total joy. But I retired my online-ness about six years ago, so I have to be sent memes or (be) reminded of things. And three quarters of the memes I’m sent, I’m like, I need someone under 30 to translate this for me. But the fact that anyone still cares about this show will never cease to amaze me.”

The 2013 episode also spawned one of the series’ perpetually quotable moments: Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet), rebuffing Hannah’s suggestion that she is “unstimulating.” (“What are we, in like a Jane Austen novel?”)

“Unstimulating!” Dunham says with a laugh. “That is a really rude thing to say, now that I’m looking back on it. If someone called me unstimulating, they would never be invited to my home again. Those girls forgave each other a lot, bless them.”