Lena Dunham is blissfully untroubled by self-awareness. It’s a quality that might be endearing in someone less repulsive. But in a recent interview [1] with Grantland’s Bill Simmons it comes off as the obnoxiousness of a spoiled brat.
Take, for instance, when the 28-year-old, who’s currently flogging her memoir (even Obama had the decency to wait until his early 30s), and much of who’s work in “Girls” is at least somewhat autobiographical said, “I never want to become someone where like what’s happening to me becomes the entirety of the reality of the world.”
She was talking to Simmons about the controversy over her memoir, in which she recounted doing creepy things to her baby sister’s vagina, referred to herself as “doing all the things a sexual predator would do,” and detailed a “rape” that may or may not have happened [2] by a campus conservative named Barry who wasn’t really named Barry and didn’t fit the description of anybody who attended Oberlin College with Dunham. The obsequious Simmons called the reaction to her book “a giant backlash/smear campaign/everyone trying to gut everything they can out of whatever …” (Like he guts the English language)
Anyway, Dunham, who never wants herself to be the “entirety of the reality of the world,” said that the criticism led to a realization: “I come from this very liberal and very specific pocket of the world. I grew up around, you know, artists and weirdoes and performance artists and political people in a world where, sort of, the complexity of human sexuality was openly discussed.” How enlightened! But it did have a down-side; the yokels weren’t ready for her:
Even though I’m aware of sort of what the values of much of America are, I’ve been so sheltered from them that it was like, I was genuinely surprised by certain reactions. And part of that is because my parents instilled in me such a lack of shame about my body, about sexuality … that level of openness was a part of my life from childhood, and so then to see that elicit so much rage and fear in other people was, you know – I’m not throwing myself a pity party but it definitely had its challenging moments.
Good thing she’s not sorry for herself, because there are dark forces against her. While it was “painful” to have “a natural childhood experience in curiosity vilified,” Dunham’s smart enough to why: “I never cease to be surprised by what can be construed as offensive, especially coming out of the mouth of a woman,” she told Simmons.
Yep. Nobody would ever call out a man for writing about how he liked to explore his sister’s private parts. It’s the notorious glass ceiling for pervs.
And misogyny’s all the worse when it’s orchestrated. She noted that the original article criticizing her book came out “the day after I launched the Planned Parenthood Campaign and the day before the mid-term elections, so … right wing websites – they’re good at what they do.”
So the vast right wing conspiracy sought to sew up the midterm elections by targeting a TV actress? And is there a shadowy Koch-funded operation out there keeping tabs on whether Dunham is cutting PSAs for Planned Parenthood? Regardless, she’ll soldier on:
I don’t care what conservative white men think about me, but I do care if anything I write is painful for survivors of sexual abuse, if anything I write is painful for … other feminists … The difference between not caring about what your sort of enemy party thinks of you and caring about how you affect people whose values line up with yours is very vast.
Wait, values like booty-eating [3]?