I have a lot
of writers on my mind today.
For
Christmas, Robert snuck into my office, took note of every Philip Roth novel I
own, and then bought me all the ones I didn’t.
That pretty much takes care of my reading for the year.
Before the
holidays, I read Alice McDermott’s Someone. It’s one of those books you read slowly, so
you don’t finish it too fast. Beautiful.
Another
holiday present: my friend Jim sent me Tom Barbash’s Stay Up with Me, a terrific collection of short stories.
But the
writer I’m thinking about the most these days is Lena Dunham. For those of you who don’t know, she is the twenty-seven-year-old
creator of the HBO show “Girls.” She
writes and directs and stars in the show.
She has also made two movies (Creative
Nonfiction and Tiny Furniture). In her spare time, she writes for The New Yorker.
Twenty-seven.
When I was
twenty-seven, I was married, pregnant, and working (unhappily) for Bank of America. The closest I got to writing was drafting
incentive compensation plans.
Lena Dunham
gets a lot of flak for her appearance.
She is a perfectly lovely looking young woman who has a lot of tattoos
and does not appear to be a super- model.
But people are outraged—outraged—that
she dares to appear naked in “Girls.”
(By the way,
the people who are outraged by this are the same people who watch “Game of
Thrones” and tell their friends it’s quality television. Which it may be. But there are a lot of naked women in
it. Who look like super-models.)
Lena Dunham
is quick to talk about the people who vilify her. I follow her on Twitter. She seems mildly amused and incredulous about
the vitriol she inspires. She does not
appear detached; neither does she seem overly concerned or wounded.
Twenty-seven. Twenty-seven.
When Lena
Dunham is naked on “Girls,” it is often without reason. Like, she’s just walking around without a
shirt on. This leads people to complain
that there is unnecessary nudity on her show.
I
disagree. I believe that nowhere is
nudity more necessary than it is on “Girls.”
Here’s why: because Lena Dunham knows—at age twenty-seven—that her nudity inspires outrage and vitriol
and maliciousness and panic and senseless hatred. (Really. Check out the tweets at @LenaDunhamTroll if you want to be disgusted.) And she does it anyway.
Why panic? Because she is a real woman who is
comfortable with her nakedness. (Or
maybe she’s not, but she’s doing a fantastic job of acting as though she
is.) And this is just terrifying to men
AND women. I don’t have proof, but I’m
willing to assume that a lot of these outraged people aren’t really outraged by
Lena Dunham walking around naked. They’re
outraged by Lena Dunham walking around comfortably naked.
(By the way,
outraged people. If you think you look
better naked than Lena Dunham, think again.
I bet you don’t. Nobody
does. Unless you are Bar Refaeli, and
even then.)
I wish Lena
Dunham had been around when I was twenty-seven.
As it is, I’m glad she’s around for my twenty-four-year-old daughter and
her friends. I’m glad she’s out there
writing and speaking and cavorting naked and leaning in. And tweeting things like “Feminism is never a
matter of convenience, not for me and I hope not for anyone I admire.”
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