Feminists should boycott HBO's Girls!

After watching Girls, the new HBO show, I was left totally speechless. It was funny. I could relate to many different topics and issues that were brought up and confronted. But what sat out there like a huge elephant in the room was its almost stifling lack of diversity. I was completely flabbergasted by the lack of any people of color. And then of course came the critiques

of the show and then the apologists and then the actual apology or explanation by the creator herself, Lena Dunham. And then came the critique of her apology highlighting how she was totally clueless about what she was saying and she simply reaffirmed what most critics already thought, that her world was void of color. Look, I grew up in mostly white neighborhoods with mostly privileged kids and went to mostly white schools with mostly privileged kids. My college, UC Santa Cruz...mostly white, lots of privilege. Yet, my closest friends run the gamut of racial and socio-economic identities. This is not an accident. This is purposeful. I too call myself a writer (of both fiction and otherwise) and even when I am writing from my gut I still challenge myself to think outside my personal box, which is not white washed but none-the-less washed a certain way and often filled with like minded people. If all I did was creatively write about the people closest to me, well that wouldn't be very creative at all. Sure, as writers we can use our everyday lives to draw from and to inspire ourselves yet we can also look outside of ourselves, research a little, seek counsel from others we may not normally roll with and take the time to get to know other people who don't look or think exactly like us; and this sentiment is not limited to race or class. So while here I am taking Lena Dunham to task for her lack of imagination what I find equally astounding is HBO's willingness to put this show on! For HBO to make a corporate decision to support a show with such an extreme lack of diversity is insulting to the viewing public. It's actually a slap in the face to the young people of this world who know that Lena Dunham's world is the real minority and that diversity both racial and economic is the majority. So, I get that this is a cable TV show; it's not the real world. Yet, Lena Dunham is touting it as the real world being lived out "one mistake at a time." And that pisses me off. The show and it's creator reek of unawareness mixed with unearned privilege, the kind that is so off putting as to almost equal ignorance. I don't find the show to be empowering for girls or women. I find it to be overwhelmed with unapologetic whiteness and therefore worthy of the ridicule it has received and unworthy of the apologists rationalizations. As a feminist, a revolutionary citizen and a mother who is raising a girl, I say boycott Girls and tell Lena Dunham and HBO to step their game up. It's 2012!