I’d like to send out a personal thank you to Lena Dunham for getting people talking about the state of women in the United States today.

Anna Wintour may have felt a similar inkling of gratitude when she decided to put Lena Dunham on the cover of the Febuary issue of Vogue this year.  And despite the protests of many, Dunham certainly deserves to be there.

Many Vogue and fashion industry purists don’t want Dunham on the cover of an institutional magazine like Vogue in the first place. They argue such a coveted seat shouldn’t be given to the new kid on the block.

It seems like many adults regard young people as an odious group of whiners and Lena Dunham is their media representative. Her HBO comedy “Girls” has often been called trivial and merely a highlight reel of the adventures of privileged twenty-somethings.

The characters are all privileged, white and have nearly zero self-awareness. They also mysteriously manage to pay rent sans full time employment.

But should a woman who has managed to write, direct and star in a comedy-drama, and win awards for it too, be excluded from the cover of Vogue? Of course not.

Whether or not you agree with what she’s saying, Lena Dunham has a strong voice. Time magazine agreed when its executives named her one of the 100 most influential people.  With “Girls,” she’s managed to influence young women and prove their voices and experiences matter. Otherwise, HBO wouldn’t air a show about it.

Dunham’s character, Hannah Horvath, and real life Lena rebel against any sense of what’s expected of them. In an interview with The Guardian, Dunham said, “Girls are trained to say, ‘I wrote this, but it’s probably really stupid.’ Well, no, you wouldn’t write a novel if you thought it was really stupid.” Dunham embodies that quote with her work by going out on every possible creative limb.

The next limb is obviously Vogue.  Despite Vogue’s penchant for culture, timely issues and high society, it is primarily a fashion magazine. There’s an obvious dichotomy between how Dunham will be styled and photoshopped in the pages of a magazine and how she dresses in real life.

Last week, Jezebel.com offered $10,000 for the un-retouched images of Dunham from the Vogue shoot.  Photographer Annie Leibovitz offered them up easily. Vogue staffers tend to airbrush most their photos and have gotten flack for it before. But where photoshopping gets its power is the idea that people care more about how things look at first glance, than what images mean beyond surface level and what their accompanying article says.

As Dunham puts it, “Vogue isn’t the place that we go to look at realistic women, Vogue is the place that we go to look at beautiful clothes and fancy places and escapism…If they want to see what I really look like, go watch the show that I make every single week.”

Vogue isn’t a project of Dunham’s own design; it’s Anna Wintour and her entire staff putting together a project, as they do every month.

The things that have always mattered to Lena Dunham are what she says, what she writes and what she creates. The point of Lena Dunham’s Vogue cover isn’t to be the same as she is in real life, or on her series, but a celebration of her achievement.

And if you don’t like it, maybe you just shouldn’t buy it.

Cassie-lee Grimaldi is a senior television, radio and film major. Her column appears weekly. She can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @cassiegrimaldi.

Published on January 22, 2014 at 2:15 am