# 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:** 7
**Author:** ![Mr.Nylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/77aa72/32.png) [@Mr.Nylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Nylock)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2014, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614/121 "2014-11-08T16:40:44Z")
> [@CarnalK](#): > > Ok, whatever. I think there’s enough overlap that the difference between pry and spread (in the context of finding pebbles in someone’s hooha) is not that big a deal and you are way overreacting. If you can not write a quote accurately, do not use quotation marks, just paraphrase; it is very simple. Overlap or whatever sophistry you want to provide as a response is irrelevant, if you are misquoting people you just lose legitimacy. The fact that you _personally_ do not care is not really the point I see DSeid making ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2014, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614/122 "2014-11-08T17:34:00Z")
> [@Mr.Nylock](#): > > If you can not write a quote accurately, do not use quotation marks, just paraphrase; it is very simple. Overlap or whatever sophistry you want to provide as a response is irrelevant, if you are misquoting people you just lose legitimacy. The fact that you _personally_ do not care is not really the point I see DSeid making Yeah. I get it. ---
**Author:** ![Sherrerd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sherrerd/32/8_2.png) [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2014, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614/123 "2014-11-08T22:33:37Z")
> [@Loach](#): > > 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. > [@Frylock](#): > > 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”. I agree with both these ideas: that Dunham deliberately set out to evoke the ‘\*this sounds pedophilic’ \*response, and that she thought she’d get a sort of Artist’s Pass for so doing. As others have mentioned, there’s an _'am I not just the naughtiest!!!_’ sort of feel to the passages. Personally I find her decision to present this material, in this way, to be thoughtless and unpleasant. It smacks of exploitation. She’s building her ‘gee I’m _sooooo_ edgy’ cred by referencing phenomena that cause real pain to those whose childhoods were blasted by genuine abuse. > [@DSeid](#): > > Some of us (and that includes me) are not her target audience… What nerve has Ms. Dunham hit that so many here respond so strongly about her? This all seems fair to me; I’m another who is not part of her target audience. What she’s selling, I’m not buying. At the same time, however, I can’t help wondering about the sustained and concerted hostility that she evokes. I suspect that Dunham may be doing a useful cultural service in declining to be a Traditional Woman who behaves in Expected Ways. Hostility to that enterprise is to be expected, unfortunately–we humans don’t take kindly to subversion of the status quo. The hostility is, in itself, worth examination. But I do wish that Dunham would put less effort into trying to craft descriptions of normal childhood sexual-curiosity incidents so as to maximize the pedo-creepiness. Surely she has better things to do. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Nylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/77aa72/32.png) [@Mr.Nylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Nylock)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2014, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614/124 "2014-11-08T23:06:35Z")
> [@Sherrerd](#): > > This all seems fair to me; I’m another who is not part of her target audience. What she’s selling, I’m not buying. > > At the same time, however, I can’t help wondering about the sustained and concerted hostility that she evokes. I suspect that Dunham may be doing a useful cultural service in declining to be a Traditional Woman who behaves in Expected Ways. Hostility to that enterprise is to be expected, unfortunately–we humans don’t take kindly to subversion of the status quo. The hostility is, in itself, worth examination. > > But I do wish that Dunham would put less effort into trying to craft descriptions of normal childhood sexual-curiosity incidents so as to maximize the pedo-creepiness. Surely she has better things to do. Dunham does not really upset me to a large extent; but I think the hostility is more in response to someone succeeding and occupying cultural space by appealing to the most crass and base elements. People do not get rewarded for being good or doing soon the something good for humanity when it comes to fame, they just get attention for being able to arouse interest. A murderer or serial killer could also write a book and it could go to the top of the best seller list based upon the author’s notoriousness. Also, look at the movie Jackass for another example of this. I don’t really see anything more deep than that here. I think the idea that Durham is even trying to pass herself off as having something other than this type of low common denominator entertainment is what sort of really pours the salt on the wounds of people who can’t stand her to begin with. ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2014, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614/125 "2014-11-09T00:00:10Z")
> [@Sherrerd](#): > > At the same time, however, I can’t help wondering about the sustained and concerted hostility that she evokes. I suspect that Dunham may be doing a useful cultural service in declining to be a Traditional Woman who behaves in Expected Ways. Hostility to that enterprise is to be expected, unfortunately–we humans don’t take kindly to subversion of the status quo. The hostility is, in itself, worth examination. > > But I do wish that Dunham would put less effort into trying to craft descriptions of normal childhood sexual-curiosity incidents so as to maximize the pedo-creepiness. Surely she has better things to do. But that edginess is what she’s clearly going for. Her lawsuit threats kind of throw me off butboutside of that her game plan isn’t overly new. ---
**Author:** ![Sherrerd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sherrerd/32/8_2.png) [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2014, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614/126 "2014-11-09T00:12:13Z")
Well, there’s _'genuinely subversive and thought-provoking edginess_’ and then there’s ‘_cheap, shoddy, easy edginess_.’ The location of the dividing line between the two, of course, is bound to be disputable. ---
**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 9, 2014, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614/127 "2014-11-09T04:27:55Z")
And I have no opinion about where Dunham sits in relation to that line, literally never having seen a thing she’s done. But boy, if those three bits (examining her toddler sister’s vagina when she was early school age, paying to kiss her sister, and masturbating while co-sleeping with her), out of a whole book of putatively edgy provocative essays about sexuality and power and societal expectations and awkwardness and discomfort, are the worst her haters can come up with, then it does _not_ seem that her focus is on “appealing to the most crass and base elements.” If that was her focus there would a lot more and worse in there than that. I don’t _think_ she occupies the same space as “Jackass” or Miley Cyrus or Kim Kardashian even. It’s really the opposite from I can deduce (again at a disadvantage given my lack of personal knowledge of her work) - in order to appeal to us the crass and base should tiitilate and not make us uncomfortable about watching it - her schtick seems to be using the crass and base in service of inducing discomfort about what tittlilates us - apparently that is supposed to be making some points about expectations that young women have of themselves and that society has of them. Or at least pretending to in a way that has sold it to a fairly large group of fans. I don’t read about this level of hostility towards “Jackass” or Kardashian or Cyrus and others who appeal/market to the crass and base in the usual ways … more mockery and eyerolling … or just ignoring it if it is not your thing … this is different. If merely succeeding by appealing to the crass and baseless induced this level of hostility then we’d have a huge bunch more hostility around about a lot more in the public eye than we have. There is more to the reactions to her than that. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Nylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/77aa72/32.png) [@Mr.Nylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Nylock)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2014, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614/128 "2014-11-09T05:03:02Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > And I have no opinion about where Dunham sits in relation to that line, literally never having seen a thing she’s done. But boy, if those three bits (examining her toddler sister’s vagina when she was early school age, paying to kiss her sister, and masturbating while co-sleeping with herI don’t read about this level of hostility towards “Jackass” or Kardashian or Cyrus and others who appeal/market to the crass and base in the usual ways … more mockery and eyerolling … or just ignoring it if it is not your thing … this is different. If merely succeeding by appealing to the crass and baseless induced this level of hostility then we’d have a huge bunch more hostility around about a lot more in the public eye than we have. There is more to the reactions to her than that. I’m kind of in the same boat as you really; I can’t say I have seen enough of her work to have a lengthy discussion on the topic. Mostly I was making more of a speculation about the nature of the negative reactions people have to her. I think you make a good point about the differences between reactions to her and “Jackass.” ---
**Author:** ![Hello\_Again](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/85e7bf/32.png) [@Hello\_Again](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hello_Again)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2014, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614/129 "2014-11-09T14:25:43Z")
Jackass, crass and disgusting though it may be, never pretends to be anything but what it is. A show about idiots having idiotic fun. Lena Dunham wants you to know that if you think she’s boring and trite, it’s because you don’t _understand_ how _insightful_ she is. You just can’t handle her _realness_! Just like how she can’t just go down to the pound and get a dog, no she has to _rescue_ a dog because she’s a _dog rescuer_ with _something to say_. And you know, being pretentious like that makes some people think she possesses genuine insight, and makes other people want to punch her in the face. See also, Dave Eggers. ---
**Author:** ![outlierrn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/outlierrn/32/3005_2.png) [@outlierrn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/outlierrn)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2014, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614/130 "2014-11-09T15:56:45Z")
She certainly has something to say, she’s trying to leverage her 15 min into a position as a social and political commentator, she knows that what she has to say is _important_ and _insightful._ She’s more performance artist than writer or actor, IMO. ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2014, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614/131 "2014-11-09T16:06:04Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > And I have no opinion about where Dunham sits in relation to that line, literally never having seen a thing she’s done. Wow. Keep up the well informed insights though. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2014, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614/132 "2014-11-09T16:21:55Z")
> [@Hello\_Again](#): > > Lena Dunham wants you to know that if you think she’s boring and trite, it’s because you don’t _understand_ how _insightful_ she is. You just can’t handle her _realness_! Just like how she can’t just go down to the pound and get a dog, no she has to _rescue_ a dog because she’s a _dog rescuer_ with _something to say_. You know that the pounds themselves started that by using the euphemism “rescue shelter” right? As objectionable as I find Dunham, “adopting a rescue dog” is how the shelters would describe what you’re doing. ---
**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 9, 2014, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614/133 "2014-11-09T16:24:50Z")
> [@Hello\_Again](#): > > … being pretentious like that makes some people think she possesses genuine insight, and makes other people want to punch her in the face. > > See also, Dave Eggers. Okay, so her being pretentious is what makes people hate her so … just like they hate Eggers. And that motivates some to go through her book and find, in the whole “edgy” book three bits that seem enough to make some hay with, to portray a story of a seven year old allegedly looking in her sister’s vagina as “sexually abusing her little sister.” Clearly her pretentiousness (and I’ll believe you that she is) was what you were talking about here: > [@Hello\_Again](#): > > 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. I can see pretentiousness (like Dave Eggers) evoking this charge: > [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > She’s an attention whore. But funny enough when I search up “Dave Eggers” with “attention whore” I only find things like [this](http://100timebooks.wordpress.com/2012/11/06/a-heartbreaking-work-of-staggering-genius-by-dave-eggers/): > [@](#): > > … probably the most unique – and terrifying – book I’ve ever read. … His joyous, humorous writing style ironically frames an extremely depressing life story of an extremely unlikable maniac attention whore. … Oddly when people lambast Eggers for being pretentious they use words like “pretentious” … not “whore.” I’ve heard Eggers criticized … but not with the same vehemance I hear in relation to Dunham. I think that **outlierrn** is on to something. She is doing performance art and performance art usually has causing discomfort as its mainstay. People are reacting to the discomfort she induces in them. And it is interesting to examine what exactly she does that does that so well. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2014, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614/134 "2014-11-09T16:28:35Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > The evidence would suggest you know quite a bit less about publishing books than the professionals do. Dunham’s book is selling well, as in fact almost anyone who knows who Lena Dunham is could have predicted. It’s not some mystery known only to the Jews than Dunham’s name is hot right now. I am sure you are equally sanguine about the success of Sookie’s New York Times bestseller. Big traditional publishers have a lot of marketing muscle, they apply it generously to books that have a pre-existing audience and little or not at all to books that don’t. They can astroturf a book to success sometimes. This is a bug, not a feature, of American culture, in my opinion. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2014, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614/135 "2014-11-09T18:06:09Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > I am sure you are equally sanguine about the success of Sookie’s New York Times bestseller. Big traditional publishers have a lot of marketing muscle, they apply it generously to books that have a pre-existing audience and little or not at all to books that don’t. They can astroturf a book to success sometimes. This is a bug, not a feature, of American culture, in my opinion. But that’s an insane way to look at it. Without hindsight, there’s no way to figure out ahead of time what will be a popular book because it comes from an already popular author versus one that was “astroturfed.” And who’s Sookie? Do you mean the True Blood novels? ---
**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 9, 2014, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614/136 "2014-11-09T18:12:38Z")
Snookie, of the Jersey Shore. ---
**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 9, 2014, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614/137 "2014-11-09T18:31:33Z")
> [@CarnalK](#): > > Wow. Keep up the well informed insights though. Thanks but they are not so insightful. In case you have not realized I am not at all interested in the quality or lack of quality of her work. Not a fan, not a hater. I _am_ fascinated as to why someone would publish something claiming that she discussed how she “sexually abused her younger sister” in her book when clearly she did no such thing. I am _puzzled_ as to why people have such strong opinions about her. So far I have heard it claimed that it is because she is crass, because she is boring, and because she is pretentious, yet the animus to her is outsized compared to others who are extremely crass, very boring, and probably just as pretentious. So it just does not ring true. And I have stepped into the pile that was **Evil Captor** ’s linked blog post which bemoans that she was “astroturfed” to success because insular, greedy, rich Jewish publishers (the German owned Random House?!?) decided to annoint one of their own (with the right connections). But nothing that explains why people would continue to consume and expose themselves to more than a taste of a product that they thought was tasteless or vile. Again, if this was a Trump or a Karashian, I could get it … they are like the strong cheap perfume being sprayed at you against your will in a department store … you can’t avoid it. But Dunham is easy to avoid; just don’t seek her out. I don’t actively avoid and have never read a word she has written or seen a thing she has done. I don’t need to be familiar with her work to be able to evaluate and question the response to it. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2014, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614/138 "2014-11-09T18:45:24Z")
> [@ZipperJJ](#): > > Snookie, of the Jersey Shore. Ah. OK, that’s an even worse example. Snooki’s book (which was a novel set in a fictional world very similar to Jersey Shore) was popular because she was already popular. The people who read it are people who don’t read many books and picked it up solely because she wrote it. It was not somehow “astroturfed” into popularity because it didn’t need to be. For that, you’re talking self-help gurus buying a trillion copies and then giving them away to anyone with the purchase of a ticket to their talks. Or politicians who write a “memoir” (most often a thinly veiled expansion of the policies page of their website) and buy up a bunch of copies to give away at fundraising dinners. Those are kinds of people who are manipulating rankings of popularity like the Best Seller’s List. You don’t need to do that with an already popular TV personality selling to her already rabid fanbase. Like Snookie. And like Lena Dunham. ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2014, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614/139 "2014-11-09T19:12:31Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > I don’t need to be familiar with her work to be able to evaluate and question the response to it. True but it is pretty lame to do so. ---
**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 9, 2014, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614/140 "2014-11-09T19:16:07Z")
> [@CarnalK](#): > > True but it is pretty lame to do so. Seriously, why? Editted to add - if I was a fan my interest would be biased by the fact I am a defender of her work. It isn’t. This is exclusively an interest in why some respond the way they do; not motivated by defending her worth. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lena-dunham-wrote-a-book-and-now-things-are-getting-a-bit-ugly/703614.md?page=8)