If Lena Dunham jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge and drank opium pod tea, would you? more ›

There is smart criticism, and there is Andrea Peyser at the NY Post. Last night Lena Dunham and Judd Apatow's show Girls finally premiered on HBO, after months of hype-filled praise. And the show does live up to the hype, finally giving real, albeit privileged, "girls" a spotlight on the small screen. But Peyser is not a fan—in her latest vitriolic rant, Peyser calls the show "Sex And The City for ugly people," and the show's creator and star, Lena Dunham, "a fat chick." Some of her more disgusting quotes are below: more ›

The Lena Dunham-created, Judd Apatow-produced, highly anticipated HBO show Girls will premiere this coming Sunday, April 15th. We've seen the first three episodes, and can tell you it lives up to the intense amount of hype it's already been getting for months. more ›

Last night 'It Girl' Lena Dunham made a dramatic Tweet: "Sh%t got pretty real between Whit Stillman, Chris Eigeman & me @BAMcinematek tonight. Was left feeling WASPishly peeved/aroused." Dunham had hosted a screening of Stillman's The Last Days of Disco, which was followed with a Q&A between the aforementioned parties. According to cinephiles in the audience, the discussion was "feisty," and Dunham started off by saying the trio were in the middle of a "bloodbath argument." Sheesh, did someone use the wrong fork at dinner? more ›

On April 15th, Lena Dunham's show Girls (which is executive produced by Judd Apatow) will premiere on HBO, finally giving young women an accurate television mirror upon which to gaze, and it's about damn time. Where Candace Bushnell created an army of Manolo-wearing Carrie Bradshaw wannabes with Sex And The City, Dunham has written for an audience that already exists. She is "the voice of a generation... or a voice, of a generation," as her character Hannah declares in the first episode of the show. more ›

On April 15th, Lena Dunham's show Girls (which is executive produced by Judd Apatow) will premiere on HBO, finally giving young women an accurate television mirror upon which to gaze, and it's about damn time. Where Candace Bushnell created an army of Manolo-wearing Carrie Bradshaw wannabes with Sex And The City, Dunham has written for an audience that already exists. She is "the voice of a generation... or a voice, of a generation," as her character Hannah declares in the first episode of the show. more ›

Lena Dunham (along with co-executive producer Judd Apatow) will bring Girls to HBO this April, and in what is finally, hopefully, a post-Carrie Bradshaw New York City, we're already counting down the days. Even if we haven't been sent a screener and have only seen teasers. Here's why: more ›

Last fall, teen girls at LeRoy High School in upstate NY started exhibiting Tourette's-like symptoms. As WKBW reported, students were "shaking and jerking in their necks and heads. One student, who did not want to be identified, said it started when she woke up from a nap and could not speak because the shaking was so severe." Now, it seems that it was an outbreak of "mass hysteria". more ›

HBO's next foray into the "ladies in New York City" genre comes from Judd Apatow and Lena Dunham, the mumblecore queen who will star in the show Girls, which focuses on the twenty-something set in the big city. Alex Blagg gave some hopeful commentary this morning, saying, "Girls might have a reverse-Sex & the City effect on NYC, where everyone who moves there acts cool and funny and real." more ›

A few months ago, kid-focused salon Beehives and Buzzcuts opened on First Avenue near East 21st Street in Manhattan, offering manicures and pedicures, as well as blowouts, updos and braiding parties (there are also services for boys). Owner Karolyn Massey explained she wanted a fun place for kids to get their first haircuts, telling DNAinfo, "I don't plan to have it be like that show 'Toddlers & Tiaras.' It's a cute, fun little afternoon for a mother and her daughter." But today, the Post suggests it's dangerously playing into the fixation that females have on their outer beauty. Calling Naomi Wolf! more ›

Is the economy really so bad in the United States? Because apparently things are good enough for middle school girls to buy things like chandeliers, rugs, and "fashion bins" for their school lockers. The NY Times says that schools are now the "latest frontier in nesting.... Peek inside, and find lockers outfitted with miniature furry carpets, motion-sensor-equipped lamps that glow when the door opens, mirrors, decorative flowers, and magnetic wallpaper in floral and leopard-print patterns." Wow, our high school locker with the Twin Peaks paraphernalia seems so inadequate now. more ›

An all-female football league is coming to the city's public high schools, after girls expressed a strong interest in the sport, says a new report today. And perhaps one day we will see boys with pom-poms cheering them on! more ›

We receive a lot of e-mail. Most of these missives are carefully read, discussed at length among the editors, and courteously replied to in a timely fashion—except for the ones that are so bizarre and irrelevant that we're simply afraid to engage the sender. Instead, we'll share them with you. Behold, the eccentric underbelly of the Gothamist inbox: more ›

According to a CDC report, nearly 15 percent of Hispanic female teenagers in NYC tried to commit suicide in 2008, compared with 10 percent of all city high school girls. In particular, Brooklyn had a 21 percent rate of suicide attempts among teen Latinas. Officials are now trying to figure out why exactly that is...but we're wondering why they're only trying to figure this out now. more ›

Though girls have been surpassing boys in higher education for years, they're beginning to become overrepresented in elementary school classrooms. Currently, about 49% of the city's kindergartners are girls, but they represent 56% of the kindergarten "gifted" classes. Conversely, a 2002 study said boys are "overrepresented in programs for learning disabilities, mental retardation and emotional disturbance, and slightly underrepresented in gifted programs." “It’s kind of weird and stuff," said one boy in the New Explorations in Science and Technology and Math school for gifted children, remarking on his minority status. more ›

Click through for more on Thom Yorke's supergroup, Webster Hall-headlining Girls, a Rites of Spring Benefit featuring Bjork, and Columbia University's spring Bacchanal. more ›

Remember how last month we all had fun hating that "support group" Dating a Banker Anonymous [DABA], created by and for materialistic ladies freaking out about their suddenly penurious boyfriends? And then, after a NY Times article about the women led to an immediate book deal for the DABA co-founders—swiftly followed by talk of a movie and TV deal—we all gagged on our own bile? Well, as previously suspected, the whole thing was just a satirical put-on—there never was any support group, just a blog—and the Paper of Record has just issued a mea culpa, almost four weeks after the article was originally published:

An article on Jan. 28 about women who commiserated over dating Wall Street bankers caught in the financial crisis described a group they had formed, Dating a Banker Anonymous, as a support group. That is the name of their blog. Its creators originally told The Times that about 30 women had participated, but since publication, they have said that all involved were friends. Laney Crowell, one of the women who started the blog, said in the article that it was “very tongue in cheek;” she has since described it as a satire that embellishes true experiences for effect. Had the nature of the blog been made clear at the outset, the article would have described it accordingly, not as a support group.

MSNBC has a long trend-piece about how increasingly younger girls are getting bikini waxing. How young? Well, Wanda Stawczyk, who runs Wanda's European Skin Care on West 57th Street, offers discounts for clients as young as 8, and she says pre-teen business is booming, telling the Post that "in 10 years waxing children will be like taking them to the dentist or putting braces on their teeth." Her company’s website says it all:

"Virgin-waxing for children 8 years old and up who have never shaved before. Virgin hair can be waxed so successfully that growth can be permanently stopped in just 2 to 6 sessions. Save your child a lifetime of waxing... and put the money in the bank for her college education instead

In Warhol's days everyone was famous for 15 minutes, now everyone is famous for 15 blocks. Two twentysomethings have recently risen the bar, however, by getting a NYMag piece profiling their neighborhood "fame." more ›