{"id":936,"date":"2016-07-07T23:36:39","date_gmt":"2016-07-07T23:36:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=936"},"modified":"2016-07-07T23:36:39","modified_gmt":"2016-07-07T23:36:39","slug":"girls-lena-dunham-hbo-feminism-body-positivity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=936","title":{"rendered":"Loving My Love Handles Like Lena Dunham"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"container page-content\"><p><span class=\"dropcap\">I<\/span><\/p><\/div><p> stood under the shower with S, paralysed by the sudden surge of shame. After hours of cajoling and coaxing, I had agreed to shed my clothes, but had shed none of my inhibition. When I saw myself in the mirror, I didn\u2019t find the body I had grown up in. Instead, I found this huge pile of shapeless, hairy mess, which I was determined to dislike. I realised that when I stood straight and looked down, I couldn\u2019t see my vagina because my paunch disrupted the view.\n\nBody positivity was never really my thing. That is also because I had convinced myself that most of my friends, who were slimmer by virtue of having flat stomachs, were better off in every aspect just because they had better metabolisms. I mean, didn\u2019t men have this insane X-ray vision, which empowered them to see through your clothes and reject you for your zero thigh-gap even if you had an insane rack?\n\nI would never have been able to articulate my body insecurities if Lena Dunham hadn\u2019t happened. In a world of lithe, blonde supermodels, a different kind of woman had surfaced on the HBO television series <em>Girls<\/em>. She was still white, but hey, she looked like I did when I woke up in the morning \u2013 fazed and disinterested in everything life had to offer. She had the stretch marks, wobbly thighs, jiggly arms, and a full bush like I did. Except oddly, she liked it that way! The very idea was as life-changing as someone telling me potatoes didn\u2019t have carbs.\n\nI began watching <em>Girls<\/em> obsessively, with the eye of every Indian girl who has ever been mortified by the uncomfortable attention her body can draw. <em>Girls, <\/em>for me, was a growing-up manual, fodder for a burgeoning nervous energy which I didn\u2019t want to contain.\n\n<blockquote class=\"quote--center\"><p>The four girls \u2013 Hannah, Marnie, Jessa, and Shoshanna \u2013 are frequently narcissistic and selfish. They are almost irredeemable, but not once do they plead to come across as likeable<\/p><\/blockquote> \n\nDunham\u2019s obvious acclaim and attention stem from how she had empowered her actors to act through their bodies. There is a lot of nudity and sex scenes in the show but they aren\u2019t airbrushed or merely functional sets to bolster its TRPs. The angst of the characters in <em>Girls<\/em> is palpable maybe because it unabashedly draws from real life. There is absolutely no filter, no attempt at making things look Instagram-friendly. It allows you to watch television without the facade of dissolving into this no-man\u2019s land of happily-ever-afters. As the characters are coerced to face their problems, the viewer is perhaps nudged to acknowledge their own shortcomings.\n\nThe four girls \u2013 Hannah, Marnie, Jessa, and Shoshanna \u2013 are frequently narcissistic and selfish. They are almost irredeemable, but not once do they plead to come across as likeable. Therein lies the success of the unassumingly funny show, which changed the dynamic of how women could be on television. In sharp contrast to the Pennys, Rachels, and Robin Scherbatskys, who struggled to land a chuckle every minute, in the first episode of <em>Girls\u2019<\/em> final season, Hannah makes this inept declaration during a meeting with a magazine editor: \u201cI don&#8217;t give a shit about anything yet I simultaneously have opinions about everything.\u201d\n\nIn the season finale of the series, we see Hannah naked, one last time. A journey from the bathtub to her bedroom while arguing with her mother. She wipes herself, puts on her undies, a sweatshirt and a pair of jeans, and almost sprints out of the house, convinced that her new-born son hates her. That\u2019s a young mother struggling with postpartum depression: Her son is a metaphor for every man she has ever dated. I haven\u2019t seen a more honest depiction of a woman dealing with everything that life is throwing at her, than pulling on her undies and bolting. We\u2019ve all done it. We\u2019ve all been there. We know that there is no slow and sexy foreplay in wearing our \u201cpanties\u201d as every man no doubt imagines there is. In Lena\u2019s world, it is an undie, it is never a panty.\n\nIn the six years that I\u2019ve followed the show, it has made me not cringe at my own nudity. It has freed me from imagining how my body looks to S or any other man. But more than anything, it has enabled me to be kind and patient with myself and my body and look at it through my kind, loving eyes.\n\nYet, the body is only the first frontier for Girls. The show\u2019s effect percolates down to a much deeper understanding of what it means to be a woman: Not the bikini-waxed, hair-sprayed, prettified version of women that we are used to on our televisions. But our belching, farting, menstruating, hairy \u2013 and by extension, \u201cinappropriate\u201d \u2013 selves. These are the bodies of the people who occupy most of the world, but occupy very little of TV airtime. Girls taught me that it was OK to be inadequate \u2013 to score a 3 or a 5 or whoever-gives-a-fuck on the decorum scale. \n\nThis is why every Indian girl, who has been held back by the world\u2019s expectations of goodness, propriety, and unobjectionable fashion choices, should watch <em>Girls<\/em>. It is clever, poignant, messy, and utterly unpredictable. Just like we are.\n\nIt\u2019s like Shoshanna Shapiro would say: \u201cThank you, it\u2019s really helpful to know you were a fuck-up too.\u201d\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lena Dunham empowered her actors to act through their bodies. In the six years that I\u2019ve followed Girls, it has made me not cringe at my own nudity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":937,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[733,710,1699,1700,1462,1701,1702,1703,1704],"class_list":["post-936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop-culture","tag-body-positivity","tag-feminism","tag-girls","tag-hannah","tag-hbo","tag-jessa","tag-lena-dunham","tag-marnie","tag-shoshanna-shapiro"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Loving My Love Handles Like Lena Dunham<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Lena Dunham empowered her actors to act through their bodies. 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