{"id":1002,"date":"2025-07-11T08:10:02","date_gmt":"2025-07-11T08:10:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/1002\/"},"modified":"2025-07-11T08:10:02","modified_gmt":"2025-07-11T08:10:02","slug":"lena-dunham-wasnt-shocked-by-magas-rise-because-of-girls-backlash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/1002\/","title":{"rendered":"Lena Dunham Wasn’t Shocked By MAGA’s Rise Because Of ‘Girls’ Backlash"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWhen it premiered on HBO<\/a> in 2012, Lena Dunham<\/a>\u2018s Girls<\/a> \u2014 about the trials and tribulations of a squad of 20-something privileged, often self-involved friends in New York City \u2014 was the talk of the town, the subject of many thinkpieces, critiques and praise before it became a seminal series and eventual stand-in for Sex and the City for the Millennial woman.<\/p>\n

\n\tThough the creator and star of the two-time Emmy-winning dramedy has previously acknowledged some of the show\u2019s pitfalls, namely its lack of diversity<\/a>, Dunham recently addressed a different kind of backlash she faced as Girls was on the air.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was always partially tuned into what people were saying,\u201d Dunham began on a recent episode of the Girls Rewatch podcast<\/a>. \u201cI knew enough to know kind of the direction it was going \u2014 it was impossible to ignore \u2014 and I knew that people would tell me what it meant to them, but I also knew that there were people that were angry.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe creator of Netflix\u2019s just-debuted Too Much<\/a> explained that much of the ire stemmed from alt-right circles. Indeed, some of the backlash toward Girls included body-shaming and fatphobic comments from viewers, which Dunham has discussed in the past.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere were so many people who, when the voices of \u2014 whatever we want to call it \u2014 really alt-right, or MAGA, or conservative voices, Proud Boys or whatever started to rise, and people were like, \u2018I\u2019m so shocked by the way people are talking.\u2019 I was like, \u2018I\u2019m not,’\u201d she said. \u201cThose voices were in a comment section; I was experiencing those voices in 2012 in the way that there were so many angry seemingly men and some women dissecting the show in these incredibly conservative terms.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWith that, however, Dunham recognizes and accepts criticism from audiences who found the show\u2019s titular girls\u2019 lives \u201cflippant and absurd\u201d despite the series aiming to partially satirize \u201ca certain kind of upper-middle class, upwardly mobile reality.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere were people in Brooklyn who found us irritating or liberal people who took issue with the access of the show, and I always had a lot more respect for that,\u201d Dunham explained, \u201cbut there was also a big contingent of conservative people really looking at it as almost like evidence of a certain kind of moral decrepitude, and also making big judgments about our physical bodies, our sexualities. It was really interesting to realize kind of what a surprise that was to some people even in like 2016 or 2018 because it didn\u2019t feel like a surprise to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tReflecting on that, Dunham also said she felt the series came at a time where there was a narrow \u201cwindow\u201d of opportunity to make subversive or risqu\u00e9 television, which she alluded promptly closed amid the first Donald Trump<\/a> era.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When it premiered on HBO in 2012, Lena Dunham\u2018s Girls \u2014 about the trials and tribulations of a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1003,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[236,12,88,1248,1035,1066,1249],"class_list":{"0":"post-1002","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-girls","12":"tag-hbo","13":"tag-lena-dunham","14":"tag-too-much"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}