--- description: The HBO show enters its final season having made a much bigger mark on popular culture and society than its underwhelming ratings suggest. title: The Massive Influence of a Little Show Called 'Girls' image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3d479978a6c1ad4b/6988b98ecd1bba5ddd703edf/942efe84bae32e976fb85abbf7646f9965909dd8f3801427ce08c58bbf21ba3a.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) ## Entertainment Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # The Massive Influence of a Little Show Called _Girls_  by [Eliana Dockterman](/author/eliana-dockterman/)  ## Eliana Dockterman Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Correspondent Feb 10, 2017 2:00 PM CUT  Lena Dunham in Girls Lena Dunham in GirlsCraig Blankenhorn—HBO  by [Eliana Dockterman](/author/eliana-dockterman/)  ## Eliana Dockterman Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Correspondent Feb 10, 2017 2:00 PM CUT Not many people watched [_Girls_](http://time.com/4620850/girls-lena-durham-jemima-kirke-jessa-quit/ "undefined"). Lena Dunham’s HBO dramedy about four millennials stumbling toward adulthood in New York City [never reached](http://deadline.com/2015/01/hbo-ratings-girls-looking-season-premiere-togetherness-1201348361/ "undefined") more than about 1 million people each week. Little did it matter. The show touched on something essential and its influence echoed beyond its niche on a premium cable channel. As a woman in college planning on moving to the big city to make it as a writer—just like Dunham’s Hannah Horvath—and mooching off my parents’ HBO subscription, I initially tuned into the buzzy new show in 2012 expecting to see my future life: This is how 20-somethings in New York behave. I quickly learned that _Girls_ was less a crystal ball than the giant “caution” sign by the gap between the train and the platform at the Union Square subway stop. The show presented four young women utterly unprepared for the world. While I sympathized with their aimlessness—Am I meant to be a writer? A teacher? A barista?—they also proved as narcissistic as the male anti-heroes we’re used to seeing on television, from Tony Soprano to Don Draper. They were permitted to behave in a way that women on television couldn’t before, which made them unappealing to mimic but intriguing to watch. _Girls_ was the millennial generation’s TV debut, and not always a flattering one. Hannah’s declaration that she was the voice of the generation was partially true. Some older viewers treated the show as an anthropological study or, when it came to episodes about casual hookups or experiments with cocaine and raves, a reason for moral panic. Simultaneously self-aware and self-absorbed, the characters became memes for the hookup generation, the selfie generation, [the “me, me, me” generation](http://time.com/247/millennials-the-me-me-me-generation/ "undefined"). Along the way, many people—even those who never watched a single episode—[formed an opinion](https://www.buzzfeed.com/rosiegray/minnesota-republican-official-lena-dunham-video-p?utm%5Fterm=.rhNe7BG1G#.ghZ91ma5a "undefined") of co-creator and star Dunham. Those people also took the show at face-value, rather than reading it as a satire. For a younger generation, it was the way her show tackled subjects like sex and friendship—specifically how they fall apart—that struck a chord. The four main characters had the sort of tenuous bond formed in college that slowly strains and then disintegrates in the real world. And then there was the sex. Each season had at least one [boundary-pushing sex scene](http://time.com/how-tv-sex-got-real/ "undefined"): Adam Driver’s Adam committing what some called rape, Allison Williams’ Marnie on the receiving end of analingus. Like _Sex and the City, Girls_ offered an unabashed look at the sex lives of women. But unlike its HBO predecessor, Dunham used her platform to stage a one-woman revolution against norms of female beauty and sexuality. The show kept the camera trained on her body, and those of her male and female costars, when they were stripped down, not to have some romanticized version of sex, but to walk around the apartment, try on clothes or take a shower—all the normal, unsexy things we do every day. Dunham’s body, in particular, garnered attention. Rather than ignoring her body shamers, the actress used the opportunity to spark a conversation about our cultural obsession with thinness. She wrote about her body, [encouraged a debate over the use of Photoshop](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/03/04/lena-dunham-s-photoshop-flip-flop.html "undefined") and even [starred in an _Inside Amy Schumer_ sketch](http://ew.com/article/2016/05/15/inside-amy-schumer-lena-dunham-sketch-body-shamers/ "undefined") about body shaming. The show clearly influenced the television that came after. _Girls_ was one of the first shows created by and starring a young woman, a trend that’s since grown. Female creators including _Transparent_’s [Jill Soloway](http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/transparents-jill-soloway-her-inspiration-802598 "undefined") and _Crazy Ex-Girlfriend_’s [Rachel Bloom](http://www.vulture.com/2016/04/crazy-ex-girlfriend-influences-breaking-bad-lena-dunham.html "undefined") have cited Dunham and _Girls_ as inspiration for aspects of their shows. The television landscape is now populated by a number of women run-and-led shows like _Broad City_, _The Mindy Project_, _Insecure_ and _Inside Amy Schumer_. Other showrunners picked up on some of _Girls_’ theme of millennial malaise, _Search Party_, _Master of None_, _Looking_ and _Love_ among them. Critics now compare every new show about millennials to _Girls_, fairly or not. Certainly, _Girls_ had its faults. The show was criticized for its lack of racial diversity, for its tendency to naval gaze, for its myopic obsession with First World Problems. But at its best, _Girls_ excelled at presenting fresh ideas and, yes, stoking controversy. Take for example, the season five episode in which the leads attend Adam’s interactive play based on the story of Kitty Genovese. In 1964, the [28-year-old woman](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/11/us/remembering-kitty-genovese.html "undefined") was murdered in Queens, ignored by neighbors as she screamed from the street. The play asks how such a tragedy could occur—were the people surrounding Kitty too self-absorbed to notice her cries? In a sort of meta-commentary, the _Girls_ characters, caught up in their petty fights and rudely interrupting the actors, are too narcissistic to notice the narcissism of the characters in the play. That sort of self-awareness about the show, including critiques of the series and millennials as a group, did double duty in calling attention to a real issue—the safety of women—while skewering the audience’s own ignorance. It was revolutionary. But so, in her own way, is Dunham. She and her co-creator Jenni Konner have used their perspective as young feminists to make social commentary an integral part of the series. Off-camera, Dunham used her memoir _Not That Kind of Girl_ to share a [very personal story about sexual assault on college campuses](http://time.com/3445018/lena-dunham-not-that-kind-of-girl-rape-essay/ "undefined") and campaigned tirelessly for [Hillary Clinton](http://time.com/4306966/lena-dunham-hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders/ "undefined") and [Planned Parenthood](http://time.com/4637206/lena-dunham-planned-parenthood-abortion/ "undefined"). Countless young girls now call themselves feminists thanks to Dunham’s friendship with [Taylor Swift](http://time.com/3165825/taylor-swift-feminist-lena-dunham/ "undefined"). And her newsletter, [Lenny](http://www.lennyletter.com/ "undefined"), offers A-listers a platform to write on subjects from the [pay gap](http://www.lennyletter.com/work/a147/jennifer-lawrence-why-do-i-make-less-than-my-male-costars/ "undefined") to politics. When _Girls_ ends this season, Dunham will surely continue to make waves—just not necessarily on a weekly basis as she did with the show. Love it or hate it, audiences will miss the ripple effect of _Girls_ when it’s gone. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4665930/girls-final-season-lena-dunham/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4665930/girls-final-season-lena-dunham/"},"headline":"The Massive Influence of a Little Show Called Girls","datePublished":"2017-02-10T14:00:07.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-23T03:14:47.162Z","description":"The HBO show enters its final season having made a much bigger mark than its ratings suggest","url":"https://time.com/4665930/girls-final-season-lena-dunham/","keywords":["Television"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3d479978a6c1ad4b/6988b98ecd1bba5ddd703edf/942efe84bae32e976fb85abbf7646f9965909dd8f3801427ce08c58bbf21ba3a.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Eliana Dockterman","jobTitle":"Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/eliana-dockterman/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3d479978a6c1ad4b/6988b98ecd1bba5ddd703edf/942efe84bae32e976fb85abbf7646f9965909dd8f3801427ce08c58bbf21ba3a.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"942efe84bae32e976fb85abbf7646f9965909dd8f3801427ce08c58bbf21ba3a","caption":"Lena Dunham in Girls","creditText":"Craig Blankenhorn—HBO","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4665930/girls-final-season-lena-dunham/","name":"The Massive Influence of a Little Show Called Girls"}}]}] ```