Jess Phillips is Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley and author of Everywoman (£14.99, Hutchinson), out 23 February, @jessphillips

“Dunham, along with artists like Beyoncé, is part of a tribe who have used their craft rather than just their platform to stand up for what they believe in. Both women clearly use their own voices, anger and frustration to give clarity to their political messages and are unrelentingly unapologetic to those who want them to write great but inoffensive pop songs or to phone in another drama about female friendships and cheery sorority. It is their politics that gives their art clarity and purpose, reaching across divides of class, race and geography. We can hear their voices rather than that of their producers, record companies or brand managers. And this honesty doesn’t just get their message across, it makes them more, not less, entertaining and extends their popularity to better spread their movement. This is political campaigning at its best.

Artists engaging with politics is nothing new of course. During the civil rights movement, the Vietnam war and the austerity of the Eighties, we saw many examples of politicisation of mainstream popular culture. For Dunham’s generation, however, coming of age in the Nineties and Noughties (a time of relative plenty and progress), popular culture was largely a vehicle of entertainment and aspiration rather than politics.

But Dunham wrote this show as a feminist pamphlet. A guide book for young women to sit up and recognise the intolerable everyday sh*t we put up with, from the sexual perversions demanded of us through to treating abortion as an everyday topic. The message is clear: abortion happens, because men and women have sex – get over it. Politicians could only dream of crafting such clear messages.”

Girls like us: we explore the impact of the groundbreaking show