ABSTRACT
Lena Dunham’s HBO show Girls explores social media as a tool by which characters wrestle for control over both the corporeal self and the “selfveillance” of the curated image (digitally documenting one’s self). Hannah recurrently documents her physical body via iPhone or tweets about a physical ailment, a compulsion arising out of sexual mishaps or simply to elide her social anxiety; social media allows Hannah to (re)gain or (re)assert her autonomy in moments where she lacks physical or figurative control. Additionally, Lena Dunham markets herself through venues such as her Instagram, her memoir, her podcast, and her launching “Lenny Letter” alongside Girls’ executive producer Jenni Konner. Dunham’s media-savvy not only promotes her show, but also allows her the control over her self-image and her public perception that Hannah, Marnie, and Shoshanna desperately attempt to attain (or assay). Last month Dunham criticized a Spanish magazine on Instagram for Photoshopping her body; yet, the magazine denied airbrushing or altering the image. Here author and creation collide in Dunham’s (mis)recognition of self; the distinction between Dunham and Dunham as Hannah often collapse in terms of personal similarities, social media (mis)use, and the ways in which both women navigate social and sexual politics through technology. In this chapter, Bonner completes a close textual analysis of several Girls sequences in connection with Dunham’s social media as a mode of authorship, selfveillance, and autonomy.
