Another season of Girls, another instance of controversy. The latest instance comes from the Television Critics Association Girls panel yesterday, where Lena Dunham, Judd Apatow, and executive producer Jenni Konner answered questions about what to expect in the upcoming third season of the series. The problems began when The Wrap writer Tim Molloy asked why Dunham is naked so much on the show. Seriously. That was the question.
"I don’t get the purpose of all the nudity on the show," Molloy said, according to the article he posted on The Wrap after the incident. "By you particularly. I feel like I’m walking into a trap where you say no one complains about the nudity on Game of Thrones, but I get why they’re doing it. They’re doing it to be salacious. To titillate people. And your character is often naked at random times for no reason."
Dunham was, understandably, miffed at the question. "Yeah. It’s because it’s a realistic expression of what it’s like to be alive, I think, and I totally get it. If you are not into me, that’s your problem."
Apatow chimed in moments later, asking if Molloy has a girlfriend. When Molloy answers that he does, Apatow responds: "Let’s see how she likes you when you quote that with your question and just write the whole question… and tell me how it goes tonight." Konner later added that she didn't understand why Molloy thought he could "talk to a woman" that way.
So, Molloy claims that he was motivated to ask the question just because he doesn't "get the artistic reason behind it," and wanted to find out why, as a writer, Dunham made the creative decision to have her character be naked—not because he was opposed to her nudity on the series or had any malicious intent about it.
Whether or not this is true doesn't matter, though, because the reality here is that it's pretty fucked up that people are still asking Dunham this same question at the start of the third season of her show. Shouldn't it be understood by now that the nudity is apart of Dunham's artistic project? Shouldn't it be understood by now that this is not a question that would be posed to the writers of Game of Thrones when Emilia Clarke is frequently nude, or to the writers of True Blood when every single one of their characters is simulating sex that looks more like something out of a softcore adult film than a television show. Does anyone bat an eye when there's a raunchy sex scene on either of these shows?
No, they don't. But unfortunately, Dunham is only asked this question time and time again because, for some reason, some viewers still haven't been able to understand the concept behind a show employing sex scenes and female nudity in a way that is not supposed to serve to and attract the average male viewer.
Later in his piece, Molloy once again tries to clarify his question:
None
That's the thing, though: Even if the intent behind Molloy's question was as innocent as this and not the "why are you making us all look at you naked" that it sounds like, Dunham's nudity on Girls (really, any nudity on Girls) is not meant for the audience—so why should anyone even be able to ask about it? It's not meant to arouse, and it's not meant to incite any other feelings in the viewer apart from this is the life of a twentysomething. Twentysomethings are naked sometimes. Twentysomethings have sex sometimes. If Girls' aim from the start has always been to showcase a realistic portrayal of a 20-something's life, then it's obvious that nudity and sex will be involved—there's no question to ask here, nor should one be asked. The nudity is not anything other than Dunham's show itself.
Yet, everyone has asked this very question since the start of the show, and even gone so far as to criticize and judge Dunham's for even "daring" to take her clothes off on television, just because her appearance doesn't physically match the standard of beauty we're force-fed by fashion magazines from birth. It's completely understandable that Dunham, Apatow, and Konner were pissed off by Molloy's question.
And really, what is there to "understand" about woman without her clothes on anyway?
Molloy ends his piece with an exchange he had with Apatow after the panel, about whether or not the question was sexist:
None
Bottom line: If you're at all concerned with the nudity in Girls, you are watching Girls wrong.
