GIRLS OF ALL SHAPES AND SIZES

Photo : Elle

I have a tendency to avoid doing certain things that I know people want me to do. This is not me being stubborn; I genuinely don’t know why it is. Potentially some sort of mild OCD related trait.
Anyway, the point is, I had been avoiding watching Girls since a friend introduced it to me a year and a half ago.

I kind of forgot about it, until recently when my sister started watching the series and re-recommend it to me. It still took me about a week to do it, but being bed bound due to illness gave me no more excuses. I clicked play on that first episode, and that was it. Four days and two and a half seasons later and I'm hooked. I love it.

I love Hannah, I love the quirky storylines, I love the humour, I love how relatable the characters are. In short, it’s just great.

It was towards the middle of Season 2, however, when I found myself becoming mildly irritated during one of Hannah’s naked scenes. I couldn’t really pinpoint why until, to my absolute disgrace, it dawned on me that it was because of her ‘unconventional’ body.

I was suddenly outraged at myself that such a feeling had even entered my mind, no matter how involuntarily it was. I’m all for feminism and female empowerment (hence the name of my blog being a bit of a tongue-in-cheek take on Urban Dictionary’s explanation of ‘girl brain’) so I began to question how, considering my own personal values, I had come to this subconscious conclusion.

Is it that drilled in to today’s generation that women are meant to have perfect bodies? Are we so used to seeing skinny, no-fat-anywhere types gracing our television screens that we are insulted by seeing any other shape and size? If so, this is something I find extremely worrying.

I applaud Lena Dunham for her bold, bare-all approach in Girls. Having come under an abundance of criticism (cough New York Post cough) for her body she has persevered and challenged societies perception of what a woman’s body should or shouldn’t look like.

Because some women do have a big bum and small boobs... :)