ONE OF THE GIRLS
With Malia Obama interning on Lena Dunham’s show, we imagine the conversation around the White House dinner table,
Late last week, the New York Post’s Page Six published a photo of Malia Obama on the Brooklyn set of Girls, the hit HBO dramedy that is shooting its fifth season and that makes U.S. President Barack Obama’s brand of liberalism look positively puritanical.
Three days later, Us Weekly reported that the elder Obama daughter is in fact working as in intern on Girls, delivering coffees and keeping nosy onlookers away from the super private set (it’s something she should know a lot about, having spent almost half her life with a security detail). Neither HBO nor the White House will confirm the story, though we do know that the first daughter expressed her admiration for Girls star and creator Lena Dunham when Dunham visited the White House. What follows is the conversation we imagined took place at the Obama family dinner table following the publication of that photo.
Michelle Obama: So, Malia, what did you learn on the set of Girls today? Barack Obama: Oh! Oh! Let me guess: how to disappoint your parents by turning down an internship at the United Nations. Michelle: Barack . . . Barack: What, Michelle? I had to pull a lot of strings with Ban Kimoon to get her that job. And instead she wants to spend her summer with a bunch of co-bathing Brooklyn hipsters?
Malia Obama: Daaaad, don’t be so judgmental. Lena Dunham campaigned for you! She made a YouTube video where she likened voting for the first time to having sex for the first time!
Barack: I’m pretty sure she was Team Hillary until the end of the 2008 primaries, but . . .
Michelle: Not the point, Barack. Listen, honey, we think Lena is a very nice girl. We loved having her at the White House. It’s just that she seems to liken a lot of things to sex, including sex! We just worry that a television set is a mature place for an impressionable young woman.
Malia: You guys didn’t mind when I was an intern on the set of Extant last summer.
Barack: Last time I checked, Extant didn’t have a scene starring Halle Berry’s bare butt. Malia: Dad! Michelle: Barack! How do you even? . . . Look, honey, we’re not getting off to a very good start here. We were just surprised to see those photos of you in the Post. The jean shorts you were wearing were awfully short. What happened to all of those stylish but affordable shift dresses I got you from J. Crew?
Malia: God, Mom, nobody’s worn a shift dress in the White House since Monica Lewinsky. Besides, it’s not like you hear me giving Dad a hard time about his mom jeans.
Barack: When you rule of the free world, you can decide what kind of denim you wear. Until then, I don’t want you in anything that looks like it was purchased from the Miley Cyrus collection for teenage trollops.
(White House server enters with hamburgers.) Malia: Ugh. Hamburgers again?! Michelle: But Malia, you love hamburgers. They’re wholesome, they’re all-American, they’re . . .
Malia: Actually, Mom, Stella McCartney says they’re murder. I’m a vegan now. Just like Aunt Beyoncé.
Michelle: We’re just surprised, sweetheart. Didn’t you have a hotdog last weekend at our Independence Day BBQ?
Malia: Yes, Mother, but then I turned 17. I’m not a kid anymore. Lena says I need to start making my own decisions. And that includes what I do with my body.
Barack: I suppose that means you’re going to start snorting cocaine, wearing mesh belly tops with no bra and demanding that the men in your life demean you sexually to show affection?
Malia: That is her character, Hannah Horvarth. Since when do you know so much about Girls, anyway dad?
Barack: I, uh, I just . . . I . . . OK fine. When I told everyone that I was sneaking off to my private study on Sundays to watch Homeland, I was actually watching Girls. What reads better with the public: president obsessed with prestige drama on Middle Eastern intelligence or president obsessed with the sexual antics of overprivileged Oberlin grads?
Malia: You see, that’s just it. You guys care so much about what everybody thinks of us. Did you ever think that it’s not so easy being your daughter? Everybody’s always wondering: Is she going to get her mom’s arms? Is she going to get her dad’s singing voice?
Barack: Really? People are really talking about my singing voice?
Michelle: I don’t think your career as a gospel singer is what we’re talking about right now.
Barack: I keep telling you, Michelle, we don’t have Clinton money! We need to start planning for the next chapter. Two million people have watched that YouTube video. That’s a hit record right there. Michelle: And you wonder why your daughter has stars in her eyes?
Barack: Typical. When she’s making straight As and volunteering at the food bank, she’s your daughter. When she’s alienating the religious right, she’s mine.
Malia: You know, you guys are making way too big of a deal out of this. When Jenna Bush was first daughter, she was sneaking out and slamming back Texas six-packs. I just want to work on the set of my favourite TV show. Why do you even care? It’s not like you have to win another election.
Michelle: When you’re a mother, you’ll understand.
Malia: Actually, I’ve been thinking about it and I’m not sure if I even want kids. The notion that women are put on this earth just to procreate is positively archaic. No offence, Mom.
Michelle: (Lips smiling, teeth grinding) None taken, honey. Wha — is that a tattoo?
Malia: ( Looks down at ankle bearing a tattoo of a peace sign) Jeez Mom, it’s just a peace sign. It’s nothing. Everyone on the set of Girls has one. Lena has, like, a bagillion.
Michelle: Actually, dear, that’s a Mercedes Benz logo.
Barack: You see, you see what happens when we let our children “explore their own identities.”
Malia: Oh, and I was thinking, it’s probably time for me to go on the pill.
Michelle: ( Shoves entire hamburger into her mouth)
Barack: “Amaaaziing Grace . . .”