Fatimah Asghar's Brown Girls

Time profiles Fatimah Asghar, the co-creator (with Sam Bailey) of Brown Girls, a webseries based on the real-life friendship of Asghar and the series's music consultant, which "explores storylines the creators feel are rarely covered in mainstream television—namely, nuanced relationships between women of color." More from Mahita Gajanan:

The first episode opens as Leila (Nabila Hossain) has an intense phone conversation with her aunt, who lectures her about sex and urges her to go to the mosque—all while another woman lies naked in Leila's bed. As a queer South Asian Muslim woman, Asghar, 27, had never seen a character like that before on television.

"A lot of people come from intersections that get erased on media platforms," she said. "If we can shed light that these people exist and are real, and have many different personalities, it will expand the definition of what some of these identities mean."

Muslim characters have long been under-represented on the big and small screen, and after the Sept. 11 attacks, they were "confined to roles like terrorists and gas station owners," Asghar said. Things have shifted slightly over the past few years, with the popularity of shows like Atlanta, Master of None, Insecure and The Mindy Project—but Asghar still hasn't seen characters that represented her specific experience.

Series co-creator and director Sam Bailey said it was important to show diverse characters that are not treated as "vessels for pain."

"When there are stories about people of color, it flirts with trauma porn," Bailey said. "There's definitely bad stuff that happens. I just want to add to the narrative that shows they get to be happy. These are people that we know."

Read more about Brown Girls at Time, and keep up with the show here.