Let me start this with a confession: I've never seen an episode of "Girls."
But I do feel like I know Lena Dunham. She's a feminist who's my age, who's consistently outspoken and honest about her experience with endometriosis (something I know very well). That was when I started paying attention to her, actually – when I realized she was one of the few well known women actually being vocal about the disease (this essay, especially). Soon after, I signed up for Lenny Letter, Dunham's email newsletter project with Jenni Konner. It became the one e-newsletter I dependably open. The interviews are fabulous, and the illustrations are usually just this side of new, pointing in the direction of what is going to be design-y and cool next week.
So, her book. I was maybe a tiny bit amused at the idea of reading the memoirs of a twenty-something, and then immediately checked myself. I mean, look how much has fit into my twenty-something years! (Trust me, that could provide plenty for a book.) Plus, she's pretty wry about that aspect herself. Dunham's experience as a woman writing, directing, and acting in Hollywood adds a fascinating/enlightening/frustrating dimension. Her childhood anecdotes create the visible frame for this future feminist. And her witty, sardonic writing had me cackling out loud more than once.
The best part, though? Her frankness. Dunham knows what she knows, and what she knows is usually perfect and a little funny and exactly what you needed to read right then.
Here's who it's okay to share your bed with:
Your sister if you're a girl, your brother if you're a boy, your mom if you're a girl, and your dad if you're under twelve or he's over 90. Your best friend. A carpenter you picked up at the key-lime-pie stand in Red Hook. A bellhop you met in the business center of a hotel in Colorado. A Spanish model, a puppy, a kitten, one of those domesticated minigoats. A heating pad. An empty bag of pita chips. The love of your life.
Here's who it's not okay to share a bed with:
Anyone who makes you feel like you're invading their space. Anyone who tells you they "just can't be alone right now." Anyone who doesn't make you feel like sharing a bed is the coziest and most sensual activity they could possibly be undertaking (unless, of course, it is one of those aforementioned relatives; in that case, they should act lovingly but also reserved/slightly annoyed.
I loved the writing about her child- and teenage-hood. We shared so many of the same anxieties. It was kinda nice to imagine that she was out there being weird and awkward at just the same time I was, hiding from my summer camp counselors so I could read Harry Potter alone instead of doing group activities or, you know, making friends. Dunham writes about her heady online relationships, shares old letters written to boyfriends (with lengthy new footnotes), openly describes sexual experiences that didn't feel safe. It all felt so familiar – but was so much better written than my memories!
She's so unapologetic in this book, which makes me envious. To be so sure of oneself, so safe in one's knowledge and convictions. So cool. I don't know if it's fair to project so much onto a person you don't actually know, just because they seemed that way in their memoirs. Especially because in said memoirs, she's admittedly not really that confident.
I still think she's cool. I'm really glad she wrote this book. I'm really glad someone my age wrote out all these beautiful, simple, but sometimes weirdly hard-to-say statements about being a young feminist, and a young woman, and a person with a past. It makes me think our generation has actually got it together – that we're headed for a future of talking about periods and sexual health and all the things that have happened to us without having to say, I don't know, something like "TMI" first.
Oh! And let me just point something out. I don't know if this is in the paperback copy, but the illustrations inside the jacket of the hardcover book (by Joana Avillez) are so intricate and beautiful. My mom and my aunt and I pored over them together at the kitchen table in Maine after I read all the passages I'd underlined out loud. I want them as wallpaper.
What I underlined:
(Describing the pain of endometriosis): "I imagined the worst: a flesh-eating bacteria acquired in India making its way up my urethra, soon to turn me into a bag of bones. A tiny tumor, like a pea, sitting high up inside me. An imperceptible scratch from a sandy tampon."
"Sometimes I lie in bed next to my sleeping boyfriend and puff out my stomach, imagine that he is protecting me and I am protecting our child."
"I have watched men order at dinner, ask for shitty wine and extra bread with a confidence I could never muster, and thought, What a treat that must be. But I also consider being female such a unique gift, such a sacred joy, in ways that run so deep I can't articulate them. It's a special kind of privilege to be born into the body you wanted, to embrace the essence of your gender even as you recognize what you are up against. Even as you seek to define it."
(Part of a guide to running away for nine-year-old girls): "In terms of packing, all you need is clean underwear and a loaf of bread."
[This will be described as] "an era when women in Hollywood were treated like the paper thingies that protect glasses in hotel bathrooms – necessary but infinitely disposable."
