When it premiered on HBO in 2012, Lena Dunham‘s Women — in regards to the trials and tribulations of a squad of 20-something privileged, typically self-involved associates in New York Metropolis — was the discuss of the city, the topic of many thinkpieces, critiques and reward earlier than it grew to become a seminal collection and eventual stand-in for Intercourse and the Metropolis for the Millennial lady.
Although the creator and star of the two-time Emmy-winning dramedy has beforehand acknowledged among the present’s pitfalls, specifically its lack of variety, Dunham not too long ago addressed a unique form of backlash she confronted as Women was on the air.
“I used to be all the time partially tuned into what individuals have been saying,” Dunham started on a current episode of the Women Rewatch podcast. “I knew sufficient to know form of the route it was going — it was not possible to disregard — and I knew that individuals would inform me what it meant to them, however I additionally knew that there have been people who have been indignant.”
The creator of Netflix’s just-debuted Too A lot defined that a lot of the ire stemmed from alt-right circles. Certainly, among the backlash towards Women included body-shaming and fatphobic feedback from viewers, which Dunham has mentioned up to now.
“There have been so many individuals who, when the voices of — no matter we wish to name it — actually alt-right, or MAGA, or conservative voices, Proud Boys or no matter began to rise, and other people have been like, ‘I’m so shocked by the best way individuals are speaking.’ I used to be like, ‘I’m not,’” she stated. “These voices have been in a remark part; I used to be experiencing these voices in 2012 in the best way that there have been so many indignant seemingly males and a few girls dissecting the present in these extremely conservative phrases.”
With that, nevertheless, Dunham acknowledges and accepts criticism from audiences who discovered the present’s titular women’ lives “flippant and absurd” regardless of the collection aiming to partially satirize “a sure form of upper-middle class, upwardly cell actuality.”
“There have been individuals in Brooklyn who discovered us irritating or liberal individuals who took challenge with the entry of the present, and I all the time had much more respect for that,” Dunham defined, “however there was additionally an enormous contingent of conservative individuals actually it as virtually like proof of a sure form of ethical decrepitude, and in addition making large judgments about our bodily our bodies, our sexualities. It was actually fascinating to comprehend form of what a shock that was to some individuals even in like 2016 or 2018 as a result of it didn’t really feel like a shock to me.”
Reflecting on that, Dunham additionally stated she felt the collection got here at a time the place there was a slim “window” of alternative to make subversive or risqué tv, which she alluded promptly closed amid the primary Donald Trump period.
