All These Girls Season 2 Marketing Partnerships Are Ughhh

A recent New York Times article about Girls’ on-point (rather than glossy and unrealistic) costume design only throws the following into sharp relief:

Where Sex and the City created a high-end designer-driven fantasy, Girls strives above all else for authenticity. [Says Dunham:] “We were really concerned about realism, verisimilitude.”

Ironically, this piece came just on the heels of a few major (and decidedly intentional) deals made by the people behind Marnie’s J-Lo-at-the-Grammys-dress and Hannah Horvath’s crazy yellow mesh shirt: for one thing, costume designer Jenn Rogien has signed on to be the fit-and-style expert for American Eagle’s intimates line, Aerie.

But that’s not all: now that HBO’s more than aware that Lena Dunham’s paen to bougie twenty-something angst has hit a nerve (to put it mildly), they’re going all out with promo deals and freebies targeted to The Female Medium-Youngs to promote Girls’ second season, which premieres on January 13th. On Thursday, one such opportunity for Girls fans—a free blowout at a reasonably-priced, trendy blow-dry salon called Drybar for three days only—was so popular that it crashed the salon’s damn website. (Drybar’s founder Alli Webb sent out an apologetic mass email: “We dramatically underestimated the response here.”)

SoulCycle, the premiere spin class to drip with sweat next to, say, Bradley Cooper, is offering a series of “Free Girls” events in New York and Los Angeles, during which participants will spin to the Girls theme song. (See the invitation.) And Urban Outfitters is also joining up to promote the second season with “character-inspired nail art appliques and codes to download episodes from the first season,” plus social media contests that will award the winners “free rent for a year and gift cards to Urban Outfitters.”

Maybe I’m overreacting to a bunch of free shit, but I have sort of a problem with all this. However you feel about the show, the tone of Girls is refreshing because it lacks precisely that kind of consumer-driven, I’m-supposed-to-want-her-purse aspirational shit that lurks in the background of basically every other female-driven show on television. Take Louie, the show that Girls is most often compared to. Are we going to see any cutesy campaigns to Steal Louie’s Wardrobe!!!11 anytime soon? Hell no.

Oh, and Jessa obviously wouldn’t be caught dead at Urban Outfitters, but that’s besides the point.

‘Would ‘Girls’ Characters Hannah or Marnie Shop at Urban Outfitters?’ [Ad Age]
‘Drybar Founder Alli Webb On GIRLS Promotional Snafu: ‘I Feel Really Awful’ [Forbes]