That “Girls” was such a lightning rod for criticism in its day makes it especially rich to discuss a decade later, Ms. Gray said, especially now that more shows, like “Insecure” and “Fleabag,” have gone on to feature women who do not have it all figured out.
On her podcast, she revisited a Season 2 scene in which Hannah plays table tennis, naked, with a fling played by Patrick Wilson. Ms. Dunham’s nudity was often received with outrage or praise, but a decade later Ms. Gray said she saw it as radically neutral. Ms. Dunham was “not even doing it as a body-positive statement, just kind of, ‘this is my body, this is a normal person’s body,’” she said. “She was really ahead of her time there.”
But there are other aspects of the show that Ms. Gray thinks are still worthy of scrutiny. “Like, the token Black character is a Republican,” she said, referring to a love interest of Hannah’s in the second season played by Donald Glover. “What are you trying to say? It’s not working.”
Tameka Amado, 30, a consultant in Boston, had been wary of the show when it first aired because of some of these criticisms. She said she had skipped the show because she did not think it would speak to her, a college-age Black woman. “I always heard, like, Lena Dunham being this problematic fave,” she said.
But when she saw a clip of the show on TikTok in which Shoshanna, played by Zosia Mamet, tears down the other women’s egos in a beach house, she decided to watch for the first time. She was frustrated by the show’s dearth of Black characters, but she thought it captured privileged white women pretty well. “Although in the end I hated everyone, I hated everyone because the writing was so good,” she said.
Ms. Dunham is aware of the “Girls” renaissance. On a phone call from Berlin, she said she was honored and a bit baffled by viewers’ renewed interest, which she found out about through texts from friends. She said she hoped viewers would appreciate the show despite the fact that some jokes may not land in 2023.
