As a new series of *Girls *arrives, so does a new bunch of critics wanting to know why Lena Dunham deigns to go naked despite being neither a size 6 nor bestowed with a twerk-ready hourglass figure.
After a critic told Lena Dunham at an industry event that he didn’t ‘get the purpose’ of her nudity in the show, she responded pretty sassily that being naked is ‘a realistic expression of what it's like to be alive.’
According to Time, the writer-actress of the hit HBO drama continued: ‘I totally get it. If you are not into me, that's your problem and you're going to have to work that out with professionals.’
Following the obvious furore this caused, someone went to the trouble of logging all the nudity in* Girls*. (Actually, if it meant re-watching Girls for work, it can't be that bad for a job, apart from having to re-watch that scene when Marnie sings at that app launch thing. That was just painful.) As it turns out, a naked person only gets 6% of the show’s screentime, and for 51% of that time, it’s nothing to do with sex. It’s to do with peeing, batheing, going to bed, having fun, or because Hannah’s mashed on coke and wearing a string vest with no bra underneath.
It's no surprise that Hannah is the most naked character, making up for 64% of the show’s nudity. But then again, she is the lead character of all the episodes. Or, at least, one of the lead characters, of one episode. (JK… she totally is the protagonist of the show.)
Counter this nudity with a recent study conducted by the University of Pennsylvania, which found that, of the top grossing films in the US in 2012, 31% of them featured women in some state of undress. So, actually, it’s not that Lena and the Girls girls are constantly getting naked, it’s just that their nudity is all the more marked because Hannah's body stands out for being a shape we're used to seeing naked on our screens. Or something like that.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.