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American College Girls
By Marilyn Penn

Two different representations of American college girls have made their respective impressions in the media recently. One is in the movie Tiny Furniture, created entirely by Lena Dunham and acted by her and some family members along with other actors. This is a movie that has been generally acclaimed and apparently stimulated interest by HBO for a series to be written by Ms. Dunham and produced by Hollywood’s Judd Apatow.

The protagonist of the movie, played by Ms. Dunham, is a just-graduated young woman leaving the cocoon of college and returning to her family with no concrete plans for the future, no boyfriend and a heightened sense of entitlement in place of a sense of reality.  Aura, as she is called, is a plain Jane, overweight exhibitionist whose sense of daring is first manifested by her willingness to show us her chubby thighs and cascading midriff.

That’s hardly a shocker nowadays when plump girls are finally on t.v. ads for Playtex bras and in numerous sit-coms where their size is not their only talent.  As the movie progresses, we witness a series of domestic scenes in which Aura regresses not to adolescence but to genuinely infantile behavior such as knocking things off a kitchen counter and crawling into bed with “mommy,” played by Dunham’s real-life mother, a sophisticated, successful artist in fact and film.

The squabbles with her younger, taller and ostensibly brighter sister descend to the level of pre-pubescent tantrums and her relationship with her childhood friend is characterized by a flood of “omigods” and stereotypical valley-speak. Though this is both dull and insipid, it’s not the worst offense the movie has to offer.  In a climactic scene, Aura has unprotected, robotic sex with a guy who has a live-in girlfriend;  they each avow that they don’t have AIDS or herpes and proceed without a condom inside a vacant pipe on a desolate street.

Aura later confesses this to her mother who barely reacts except to suggest that Aura take better care of herself. What’s most troubling about this movie is that Aura’s increasingly aberrant behavior is seen as a sociological comment instead of a sign of psychological disturbance.

Somehow, we are meant to see her as a budding artist constrained by a society where her size and aptitudes preclude an easy fit. Though this might have been the case in Kansas some generations ago, it’s both bogus and risible in the wealthy lofts of Tribeca and the movie remains a sophomoric attempt to epater le bourgeois.