Lena Dunham wrote a book. And now things are getting a bit ugly.

Have you read the book? It’s titled Not That Kind of Girl.

I haven’t read it, but there is some controversy brewing about some of the things she wrote, regarding some sexual play with her younger sister.

Here’s one cite: http://www.truthrevolt.org/commentary/lena-dunham-threatens-sue-truth-revolt-quoting-her

And a few excerpts from the above article are here:

We assume that both Ms. Dunham and her attorneys are capable of reading Ms. Dunham’s book, which contains the following direct excerpts:

“Do we all have uteruses?” I asked my mother when I was seven.

“Yes,” she told me. “We’re born with them, and with all our eggs, but they start out very small. And they aren’t ready to make babies until we’re older.”

I looked at my sister, now a slim, tough one-year-old, and at her tiny belly. I imagined her eggs inside her, like the sack of spider eggs in Charlotte’s Web, and her uterus, the size of a thimble.

“Does her vagina look like mine?”

“I guess so,” my mother said. “Just smaller.”

One day, as I sat in our driveway in Long Island playing with blocks and buckets, my curiosity got the best of me. Grace was sitting up, babbling and smiling, and I leaned down between her legs and carefully spread open her vagina. She didn’t resist, and when I saw what was inside I shrieked. “My mother came running. “Mama, Mama! Grace has something in there!”

My mother didn’t bother asking why I had opened Grace’s vagina. This was within the spectrum of things that I did. She just got on her knees and looked for herself. It quickly became apparent that Grace had stuffed six or seven pebbles in there. My mother removed them patiently while Grace cackled, thrilled that her prank had been such a success.

And this:

As she grew, I took to bribing her for her time and affection: one dollar in quarters if I could do her makeup like a “motorcycle chick.” Three pieces of candy if I could kiss her on the lips for five seconds. Whatever she wanted to watch on TV if she would just “relax on me.” Basically, anything a sexual predator might do to woo a small suburban girl I was trying.

And this:

I shared a bed with my sister, Grace, until I was seventeen years old. She was afraid to sleep alone and would begin asking me around 5:00 P.M. every day whether she could sleep with me. I put on a big show of saying no, taking pleasure in watching her beg and sulk, but eventually I always relented. Her sticky, muscly little body thrashed beside me every night as I read Anne Sexton, watched reruns of SNL, sometimes even as I slipped my hand into my underwear to figure some stuff out.

So, what do you guys think about this?

She’s an attention whore. Wouldn’t be surprised if it is all fake.

Lena Dunham sexualizes everything. There may be some truth to the stories (she very well may have shared a bed with her sister) but she has to twist it to make herself seem interesting and special. We all go through a phase in which we concoct a version of ourselves which makes us seem unique and noteworthy. Most of us eventually realize that we’re not really unique and we abandon the made-up self. Lena Dunham never abandoned hers - she has created an industry around her invented self.

I don’t get this… are all famous women “attention whores”? Just the ones who aren’t conventionally Hollywood “hot”? The ones who talk about personal stuff? The ones who write books about themselves?

It sounds like run-of-the-mill childhood weirdness to me. Kids act weird, especially when they’re figuring out sex and gender stuff.

Not really. Meryl Streep seems to be a normal mom and wife who happens to have a high profile job. Lena Dunham makes everything about herself. Not the character, Lena. I’ve gone back and forth with her. I have heard interviews where she comes across as witty and charming. And other times when she is smug and pretentious. So far smug and pretentious is winning.

How does any of this make her an “attention whore”, and not just, say, an actress/comedian with a shtick?

She also came from a house where sexuality was very open. Her father NSFW link makes a living painting pictures of giant hairy vaginas and and men with dicks for noses. Really awful stuff but what do I know.

That would definitely have the possibility to make childhood a whole lot weirder, but I don’t see it as “awful” necessarily.

I think Loach just thought the art itself was awful.

Her shtick is being an attention whore.

Ok that’s just a line. I wasn’t the one who used the term I was just addressing it. She made a show based basically on her life. At 28 she already writes her memoirs about her long and eventful life. She appears naked often on her show usually in a purposely unflattering way obviously for effect then gets angry and defensive when you ask her about what effect she is trying for. But sometimes she can be light hearted and joke about it too. To me she is a spoiled rich kid who makes everything about herself. Kind of like Kim Kardashian except with talent. And that is the frustrating part. She obviously has talent. She just needs to stop navel gazing. Or she can continue to do what she is doing since she has a nice niche and is doing well for herself.

She is literally the most boring person alive. It’s also pathetic how desperate she is to be sensational. DNFTT.

She obviously learned from her father that if you don’t have any talent you can make yourself known by revolving your career around sex so incessantly and disgustingly it starts to seem edgy.

Yep. She seems like she’d be tiresome and unpleasant to know in real life, to boot.

Yes sorry. I guess I didn’t write that well enough. From everything I heard her say, particularly in the interview with Marc Maron, she had a very nice childhood. Certainly foreign to my experiences but not bad. What I meant was that her father’s art was some of the worst shit I have ever seen. Her mother’s photography, while not my cup of tea, shows a lot of talent IMHO.

Ones who write autobiographies when they are 28, yes. Men who do that, too (although I suspect it is only the women whom you think should not be criticized).

My point is that women are disparately criticized for things like this.

This.

She’s straight out of the most useless generation on the planet, and writes like it. Talentless, unless you call self-promotion a talent. The sooner people go back to ignoring her, the better. She’s not incisive or witty, and she can’t act. Perfect candidate for stardom.

Really? How many things like this are there?

I think everytime someone mentions in a book how they used their younger sibling for sexual exploration they get criticized. And then when they sue someone for mentioning it they get criticized also. Can you point out the exceptions for men?

I was talking about the perjorative “attention whore”.

She’s been a hate figure before a single episode of her show aired. For being privileged, young, the beneficiary of powerful connections, fat, a hipster, opinionated, etc.

Most of the ‘attention’ she gets is negative attention she didn’t particularly ask for.