Lena Dunham Daring To Exist Is Starting This Awful Woman-Shaming Spiral Of Something

2013 HBO Golden Globes PartyUGH, I am going to turn off my computer and crawl into a hole because of this whole Lena Dunham thing.There is a layer to the Lena Dunham thing. The first layer is this conversation about how a woman who dares to be a size eight (Yes, an eight. A size eight, which in real life is medium. Normal. Smaller than normal) dares to take off her clothing on television or who doesn’t dare to hide her size eight/sometimes size six body or something because she is seen wearing shorts or sleeveless tops on occasion. The majority of talk about Lena Dunham – Oberlin graduate, Golden Globe winner, writer, actress- is her appearance.  For the record, Lena Dunham is fucking gorgeous. She is sublime. She is 26-year-old flawless skin and gigantic Bambi eyes and a rosebud mouth and edgy manicures and a cool haircut. Whatever. The girl is lovely.

The next layer of this conversation drags into it the fact that on the last episode of the HBO show Girls, which is Lena’s creation, her character has a weekend fling with a character played by actor Patrick Wilson, so everyone and their dog now needs to discuss this and how “unrealistic” it is and blah blah and they all miss the point but then they bring it back to me, because the next layer of this conversation drags into it Wilson’s real life spouse, Dagmara Dominczyk, and the basic sentiment behind this conversation is “No, of course it’s likely that Patrick Wilson’s character could have a fling with Lena Dunham’s character because have you seen Patrick’s wife?”

From Slate:

or a double-dog dare for me to ask, How can a girl like that get a guy like this? Am I small-minded if I’m stuck on how this fantasy is too much of a fantasy and remembering what Patrick Wilson’s real-life partner looks like?*

 

And in all of these articles, Wilson’s wife Dagmara gets dragged into the equation because ” and that after two kids and hitting 35 she’s gained a bit of weight” so it makes sense that Wilson’s character would boink Dunham’s character because in real life Wilson is married to a woman who is also not a size zero and on occasion wears a frumpy blouse and has been photographed not wearing airbrushed makeup.

This entire conversation is so soul-destroying.

Lena is gorgeous. Dagmara is gorgeous. These two women are both successful, interesting, smart, accomplished and they both seem like good people. But if the entire world is hell-bent on reducing them to their dress size than what about the rest of us women, who could never even hope to look as lovely as either of these two look on their worst hair days?

So Lena gets appearance-shamed for being Lena, and Dagmara gets appearance shamed for being Dagmara, but with the added layer of having kids and not being 26-years-old. Meanwhile, in the real-not-television word, I’m a 43 year old woman with stretch marks and wrinkles and grey starting to streak my hair and yeah, that hair is currently piled on top of my head in a stretchy headband and a Hello Kitty barrette my daughter put in there and FFS, Dagmara Dominczyk is so beautiful.

When can we stop having this conversation, where the layers and layers even drag down the real-life spouse of an actor who probably doesn’t even belong in the conversation to begin with? Why are we having this conversation to begin with? Maybe that’s the end game. Maybe the audacity of Lena Dunham just being Lena Dunham and daring to be Lena Dunham (which to me isn’t even that brave to begin with, considering the fact she is beautiful) will bring all the normal women to our TV screens and those of us who are even more normal than these well-above normal women can start to feel like we actually deserve to exist on this earth. Because all these conversations do is make those of us below what society is referring to as “average” feel really shitty. Even on our good hair days.

(Photo: WENN)

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