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! 
Thank you, do do dee doodoo.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
Moving to CS.
Mah Na Mah Na.
To do do dee doodoo, or not to do do dee doodoo. That is the question.
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?
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.
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.)
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!”
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.
But the peasant in Monty Python was actually being repressed though.
No, he was being annoying to elicit a response.
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”.
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]
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.
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.