I’ve been thinking a lot on how people talk about women lately. The way my straight male friends talk about women; the way my guest lecturer talks about women; the way my parents talk about hypothetical women; and perhaps most of all, the way I talk about women. The reason I have been thinking about this is because of a couple recent moments of deeper cultural awareness. One involves a mid-February episode of HBO’s “Girls,” and the other has to do with a memo CBS sent out to attendees of the 2012 Grammy awards ceremony.
“Girls,” for the uninitiated, is a dramedy written by and starring 20-something auteur Lena Dunham about, surprise, aimless twenty-somethings in New York City. Hannah Horvath, the central protagonist of the show (portrayed by Dunham), has a curvier, fuller body type than leading TV roles tend to allow for (unless it’s the basis of the show’s humor, like CBS’ uproariously awful “Mike & Molly”). This, in tandem with Dunham’s frequent nudity on the show, has led critics like Brian McGreevy in New York Magazine to argue that Dunham is not “brave” for showing her body, but rather that “she is a writer-actor-director who is exceptionally well compensated … for exploiting her body as an artistic commodity.”
The mid-February episode that prompted my introspection and McGreevy’s article puts Hannah in the apartment and company of the successful and recently single doctor, Joshua (who is played by my straight-guy crush Patrick Wilson). Having only met at the beginning of the episode, the curvy Hannah and the uber-hot Joshua spend the course of the episode having passionate, on-camera sex and introducing themselves more to one another. At the end of the episode, Hannah lets herself out the door and Joshua’s life after getting a little too “real” in conversation with him the night before.
Coincidentally a few days before the airdate of this episode, CBS released a memo to attendees of the Grammys award ceremony instructing the female event-goers to “be sure that buttocks and female breasts are adequately covered,” among other guidelines on what was appropriate attire. Presumably a response to Beyonce’s wardrobe selection for the Super Bowl halftime show or a crisis of conscience regarding women’s choice of dress, CBS’ memo was widely discussed — and mocked. For example, Jennifer Lopez responded to the memo by wearing a thigh-revealing dress, quipping “they didn’t say anything about leg!”
Taking a different angle and assuming the best intentions of CBS (that they wanted to prevent “objectification”), writers at Bluestockings Magazine observed that in “assuming that female nudity and choice of dress is inherently objectifying, CBS is a complicit actor in objectification … By labeling certain things (namely the female body) as inappropriate, we send clear messages about what is ‘respectable.’” Bluestockings’ point is prescient – where does CBS, with only two female board members of 14 total seats, get the authority to label what parts of the female anatomy are kosher for public broadcast?
As it was with McGreevy’s and others’ criticism of “Girls,” it’s the labeling, categorization and re-packaging of the female body that has me thinking about women. On a college campus these concerns are equally prominent, especially given the institutionalized misogyny and commodification of women that exists in the fraternity scene. And where McGreevy joins the company of the frat stars is in his criticism of Dunham as not being “brave.” It’s obvious that scaling down the significance Dunham’s nakedness is nowhere near as misogynistic as CBS’ actions (or some Berkeley frat stories I have heard), but “brave” seems like a great word to me to describe Dunham’s linkage of her appearance to the artistic endeavor of the episode.
McGreevy is correct in diagnosing that Dunham is exploiting her body as an “artistic commodity.” And he is correct that she is exceedingly well-compensated for showing it to us. But I reject the idea that she is any less “brave” for doing so — Dunham is showing her body to us on her own terms (as HBO permits her, granted), and she does so without fear of judgment from CBS, Brian McGreevy or any other male viewer. And maybe what this means is that the best way for “us” to talk about women is to let them speak for themselves.
Image Source: akeg via Creative Commons
Contact Noah Kulwin at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter: @noahkulwin.