# Lena Dunham wrote a book. And now things are getting a bit ugly. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 4, 2014, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614 "2014-11-04T13:32:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Bouncer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9d8465/32.png) [@Bouncer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bouncer)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2014, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614/41 "2014-11-04T19:37:23Z")
> [@DinoR](#): > > Sweet. Reading this thread is the most attention I’ve paid to her. Part of the motivation was trying to figure out why I was even supposed to recognize the name. I have to admit, this was exactly my experience. And I’m going back to watching the muppets on the youtube now… Manah Manah. Regards, -Bouncer- PS: manah Manah is in your head now… my work in this thread, is done. do do dee doodoo! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![MichaelEmouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/michaelemouse/32/101_2.png) [@MichaelEmouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelEmouse)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2014, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614/42 "2014-11-04T19:53:56Z")
> [@Bouncer](#): > > PS: manah Manah is in your head now… my work in this thread, is done. do do dee doodoo! 😃 Thank you, do do dee doodoo. ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2014, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614/43 "2014-11-04T20:16:05Z")
> [@Soylent\_Juicy](#): > > I don’t know about you guys but I think she’s being pretty disrespectful to her sister for publishing what she did to her when she was a baby. Her sister also grew up a weird person in a weird family and does not think this stuff is weird (she’s commented a couple times on Twitter, at least). And being that they’re a weird and close family and Lena needs lots of validation, I have no problem thinking that her sister read all this stuff before it went to print. ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2014, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614/44 "2014-11-04T20:20:52Z")
Also, she apparently employs her sister on her show. She is her sister’s shot at fame and fortune of her own. A lot of people are willing to play along in that type of circumstance. ---
**Author:** ![bobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobot/32/21622_2.png) [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2014, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614/45 "2014-11-04T23:25:37Z")
I know that she has/had a show on Showtime or HBO, and that she hosted SNL. That’s all I know of her, so if she’s an attention whore, she’s not that good at the attention part. ---
**Author:** ![joyfool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/df788c/32.png) [@joyfool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/joyfool)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2014, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614/46 "2014-11-05T01:25:18Z")
I don’t have HBO, so I’ve never seen _Girls_. The only thing I know about Lena Dunham is what I’ve read in the gossip rags. That said, here’s my take on the quotes, considering the context (artsy, well off family) that it supposedly took place in: > [@not\_what\_you\_d\_expect](#): > > 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](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. Leaving off the actual logistics of whether this is possible or not, she was seven years old. Kids explore at that age, so as bizarre as this sounds, I don’t think it’s that weird on the face of it. > [@](#): > > 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. Now this one I can see people raising an eyebrow over, if nothing else because of her phrasing. No one calls themselves “basically… a sexual predator” in behavior without realizing it’s going to bring attention. She furthers this along with the “kiss on the lips” part. I’m sure lots of people enjoy being affectionate with their younger siblings, but like others have said, when you sexualize everything around something you’re recounting, don’t be surprised when everyone, in turns, sees it as something sexual. Duh, litigious Lena. > [@](#): > > 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? Why would you share that last bit? At seventeen, I can understand still maybe not knowing good boundaries. But telling others, at the age she is now, smacks to me of self-promotion as a provocateur. She absolutely knew how that would come across, so are we supposed to nod knowingly and go, “Oh that Lena. She so naughty!” and tsk tsk? Also, the imagery she uses to describe her _ten year old_ sister, for cripe’s sake, was intentionally loaded. No fool in what she’s doing, that one. But all that said, I can’t take any of that seriously. It’s just eye roll inducing and instead of pushing folks’ buttons to get ahead, I wish she’d use her talent. Because, from what I’ve read, she does sound like she’s intelligent and ambitious. Certainly that would take her further than playing the bad girl. ---
**Author:** ![Idle\_Thoughts](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/838e76/32.png) [@Idle\_Thoughts](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Idle_Thoughts)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2014, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614/47 "2014-11-05T01:29:53Z")
Moving to CS. ---
**Author:** ![Hamlet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hamlet/32/2818_2.png) [@Hamlet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hamlet)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2014, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614/48 "2014-11-05T01:37:50Z")
Mah Na Mah Na. ---
**Author:** ![MichaelEmouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/michaelemouse/32/101_2.png) [@MichaelEmouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelEmouse)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2014, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614/49 "2014-11-05T01:47:02Z")
> [@Hamlet](#): > > Mah Na Mah Na. To do do dee doodoo, or not to do do dee doodoo. That is the question. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2014, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614/50 "2014-11-05T05:07:41Z")
FWIW I see girl preschoolers who have stuck things in their vaginas in my practce. Whether or not her story is factual the scenario is not too odd. Sometimes the presentation is a smelly vaginal discharge. Pebbles though sticking in a one year old’s introitus? Really not a deep enough space. And few one year olds are “slim and tough” … maybe if the sister was actually 2 1/2. But childhood memories are often remembered with some imprecision, so we can cut some slack. A seven or eight year old older sibling curiously investigating the anatomy of a younger sib? Not so odd and not overtly sexual. A teen aged girl covertly masturbating while co-sleeping (and likely when not co-sleeping even more often)? Also not out of range. Yeah the bribes for kisses are a bit over the top. But let’s face it, do any of us believe that everything David Sedaris wrote happened exactly as written either? Another attention whore I guess, the difference being that I have actually read what he has written (and laughed at it too). People pay whores because they want what they are selling afterall. (Not so sure that all that Twain wrote in _Innocents Abroad_ and other books were always gospel truth either. Damn these attention whores!) These are writers and entertainers, people! Real life is a starting point for a story that makes the point you want to make and that contributes to the character you are creating that you have labelled as yourself. And stories with TMI and chockfulla insecurites and inappropriateness, real, imagined, or exaggerated, sell a lot better than knowing your boundries. Who wants to read _that_? Some of us (and that includes me) are not her target audience. Fine. I haven’t seen anything she’s done and have not read her book. (Bigger fan honestly of her boyfriend, the musician Jack Antonoff.) OTOH any artist that I say I don’t follow who has still managed to evoke within me some strong response to their work, must be hitting some kind of nerve. What nerve has Ms. Dunham hit that so many here respond so strongly about her? ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2014, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614/51 "2014-11-05T05:15:13Z")
My four year old son keeps interrupting my wife in the shower to look for her penis(spoiler she doesn’t have one). Anyway my point was little kids have whacky non-PC ideas about sexuality, welcome to life. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2014, 7:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614/52 "2014-11-05T07:57:26Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > FWIW I see girl preschoolers who have stuck things in their vaginas in my practce. Whether or not her story is factual the scenario is not too odd. Sometimes the presentation is a smelly vaginal discharge. Pebbles though sticking in a one year old’s introitus? Really not a deep enough space. And few one year olds are “slim and tough” … maybe if the sister was actually 2 1/2. But childhood memories are often remembered with some imprecision, so we can cut some slack. > > A seven or eight year old older sibling curiously investigating the anatomy of a younger sib? Not so odd and not overtly sexual. > > A teen aged girl covertly masturbating while co-sleeping (and likely when not co-sleeping even more often)? Also not out of range. > > Yeah the bribes for kisses are a bit over the top. > > But let’s face it, do any of us believe that everything David Sedaris wrote happened exactly as written either? Another attention whore I guess, the difference being that I have actually read what he has written (and laughed at it too). People pay whores because they want what they are selling afterall. (Not so sure that all that Twain wrote in _Innocents Abroad_ and other books were always gospel truth either. Damn these attention whores!) > > These are writers and entertainers, people! Real life is a starting point for a story that makes the point you want to make and that contributes to the character you are creating that you have labelled as yourself. And stories with TMI and chockfulla insecurites and inappropriateness, real, imagined, or exaggerated, sell a lot better than knowing your boundries. Who wants to read _that_? > > Some of us (and that includes me) are not her target audience. Fine. I haven’t seen anything she’s done and have not read her book. (Bigger fan honestly of her boyfriend, the musician Jack Antonoff.) OTOH any artist that I say I don’t follow who has still managed to evoke within me some strong response to their work, must be hitting some kind of nerve. What nerve has Ms. Dunham hit that so many here respond so strongly about her? I had no problem with her until I read about this. I don’t know why incestuous pedophilia is being passed off as weird and quirky. Yes, I can see the situations being described as not being pedophilia. But they are deliberately being described as pedophilic. The best case scenario is that she’d being an attention whore. The alternative is that it really was pedophilic for her. And, no, biographies are works of nonfiction. They are not supposed to be a platform for you share your fiction writing abilities. Yes, they unfortunately often have fake details, but no one looks at those and thinks “Wow, they’re untrue, but it’s so well written!” I was on her side before this revelation, thinking that she was smart for subverting the sexual expectations of nudity in her show, and felt sorry for her that so many people didn’t get it and lambasted her for it. But when you raise the specter of pedophilia, and then get offended by that bothering people? I’m starting to see the pattern. Do something provocative, then get offended when it provokes people. Try to make people feel sorry for you. At least, I hope that’s who she is, and she didn’t actually start exploring herself _because_ her sister, whom she wanted to kiss, was right next to her, all sticky and muscly. (The rocks thing is nothing, of course. Not sure why it’s being brought up.) ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2014, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614/53 "2014-11-05T13:28:33Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > What nerve has Ms. Dunham hit that so many here respond so strongly about her? As noted above it is not specifically the incidents that were written about. All can be seen as being normal curiosity while growing up. It is the fact that she wrote about it in a way made to illicit a strong response. She puts herself in the role of a sexual predator by using that exact phrase. So she gets that strong response. Fine. I would have no problem with any of that. Except now that she gets the strong response she is playing the victim and threatening to sue. That is the pattern that is really annoying. “Help help I’m being repressed!” ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2014, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614/54 "2014-11-05T13:39:16Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > I was on her side before this revelation, thinking that she was smart for subverting the sexual expectations of nudity in her show, and felt sorry for her that so many people didn’t get it and lambasted her for it. That is another example. She specifically uses nudity in her show to get a response. She does not have the ideal body for it and she is shown in various “bad naked” situations. She does it for a reason. Criticize her or agree with her that’s fine. She is eliciting the discussion. But when the discussion comes up she gets angry and lashes out. ---
**Author:** ![mr.jp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/48db29/32.png) [@mr.jp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mr.jp)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2014, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614/55 "2014-11-05T13:42:16Z")
> [@Loach](#): > > “Help help I’m being repressed!” But the peasant in Monty Python was actually being repressed though. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2014, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614/56 "2014-11-05T13:44:04Z")
> [@mr.jp](#): > > But the peasant in Monty Python was actually being repressed though. No, he was being annoying to elicit a response. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2014, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614/57 "2014-11-05T13:49:53Z")
I think she expected the “sexual predator” remark to be read as tongue-in-cheek, whistling-in-the-dark, “funny what this looks like but we all know that’s not what it was”. ---
**Author:** ![Hamlet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hamlet/32/2818_2.png) [@Hamlet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hamlet)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2014, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614/58 "2014-11-05T13:50:04Z")
> [@grude](#): > > My four year old son keeps interrupting my wife in the shower to look for her penis(spoiler she doesn’t have one). Goddamn it! I was waiting until your wife came out on Netflix so I could binge watch, and now you ruined the ending. Bastard! [sub]That’s a lot creepier than it sounded in my head[/sub] ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2014, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614/59 "2014-11-05T14:40:09Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > What nerve has Ms. Dunham hit that so many here respond so strongly about her? Oh, that’s an easy one. The same nerve that Donald Trump, Gweneth Paltrow, Kardashians, Miley Sirus, Justin Beiber, Taylor Swift and the rest of the self-involved, attention seeking, tone deaf trolls hit: The ‘Oh shut the fuck up and get over yourself!’ nerve. Whatever legitimate commentary Dunham had to make about society has been made a long time ago. Now she’s just attention whoring because that’s the only cheap parlor trick she has in her arsenal. And when that backfires, she’ll resort to whining like the spoiled and entitled brat that she is. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2014, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614/60 "2014-11-05T15:22:38Z")
It was because of Lena Dunham’s show that I got to see screen pics of Andrew Rannells naked. That concludes any use of or appreciation for Lena Dunham that I may have. The episode or two of GIRLS I’ve watched seemed targeted at people who didn’t think the characters on SEINFELD were too funny but not self involved and whiney enough. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614.md?page=4)