{"id":109,"date":"2014-11-05T01:38:43","date_gmt":"2014-11-05T01:38:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.marcolian.com\/?p=109"},"modified":"2015-02-02T01:41:18","modified_gmt":"2015-02-02T01:41:18","slug":"not-that-kind-of-book-review-a-young-woman-tells-you-what-shes-learned-from-lena-dunham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marcolian.com\/?p=109","title":{"rendered":"Not that kind of book review: a young woman tells you what she\u2019s learned from Lena Dunham"},"content":{"rendered":"

Taylor Hanigosky<\/strong>
\ntmh004@marietta.edu<\/em><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the deal: I\u2019m not going to be snide and pretend I am under no influence of Ms. Lena Dunham. Her witty allure; her stick-it-to-the-man disposition; her unrivaled knack for rousing relatable emotions, regrets and anxieties. She\u2019s the voice of our generation, or at least, \u201ca<\/em> voice of a<\/em> generation,\u201d as Dunham\u2019s alter ego Hannah Horvath quips in the pilot episode of HBO\u2019s \u201cGirls.\u201d In the hit TV show, Dunham details the musings and misfortunes of a band of privileged twenty-somethings in New York, igniting her popularity like a wildfire.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve entered the inter-web in the last year or so, you\u2019ve likely heard her name. Even more likely, you\u2019ve heard her critics. Faultfinders of Lena Dunham are numerous, opposed to everything from her upbringing as the coddled child of two New York artists, to her candid, tell-all style and her rise to fame on the cusp of her controversial brain-child, \u201cGirls.\u201d But Dunham responds to criticism well. Even when her show was accused of whitewashing the New York experience, she sympathized. Dunham countered that her characters are a reflection of her own upbringing, and to cast people of color would be to ignore their experiences and pretend she could relate. Although, that is no excuse, Dunham said.<\/p>\n

More recently, Dunham was slain for her memoir in a scathing review that appeared in the right-wing magazine, The National Review<\/em>. In his article, author Kevin D. Williamson accused Dunham of sexually abusing her younger sister. The experiences Williamson exploits are detailed in a chapter of Dunham\u2019s book, in which a 7-year-old Lena bribes her toddler sister for kisses. Dunham responded in a self-declared \u201crage spiral\u201d on Twitter by saying \u201c\u2026if you were a little kid and never looked at another little kid\u2019s vagina, well, congrats to you\u2026also, I wish my sister wasn\u2019t laughing so hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, if you can drown out the media\u2019s noise on Lena Dunham long enough to read her book Not That Kind Of Girl: A young woman tells you what she\u2019s \u201clearned,\u201d<\/em> you might find she\u2019s a refreshingly good writer.<\/p>\n

Dunham divulges her life-long obsession with telling secrets\u2014even those that aren\u2019t her own. Her tendency to over-share graces just about every page of her book. But Dunham reveals her life experiences in a way that encourages us all to stop being ashamed of our mistakes and to finally be at peace with even our weirdest private thoughts.<\/p>\n

In the introduction, Dunham writes, \u201cI\u2019m already predicting my future shame at thinking I had anything to offer you\u2026No, I am not a sexpert, a psychologist, or a dietitian. I am not a mother of three or the owner of a successful hosiery franchise. But I am a girl with a keen interest in having it all.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll admit, I got way more out of this book having already been an obsessive consumer of \u201cGirls.\u201d There\u2019s just something about Dunham\u2019s sarcastic flair and witty reveries that\u2019s more rewarding after you\u2019ve seen her breasts on TV. But don\u2019t worry, for all you Dunham novices, there\u2019s an entire chapter devoted to her feelings about getting naked on camera to help you connect the dots.<\/p>\n

The most memorable clips, for me, are both the pages that made me laugh out loud and those that made me look deeper into myself to unearth a breed of self-acceptance I didn\u2019t know I was capable of. My favorite chapters likely aren\u2019t the ones quoted in every other review, mostly because I responded best to the parts to which I relate. Such as the old-school, self-developed nude self-portraits Dunham found of her mother; \u201cImagine going to all that effort, just to find out what your bush looks like when paired with lime-green rain boots and shining aviators. This wasn\u2019t as simple as swinging your iPhone around and pushing your tits together. This took work.\u201d Or Dunham\u2019s appreciation of her womanhood: \u201cIt\u2019s a special kind of privilege to be born into the body you wanted, to embrace the essence of your gender even as your recognize what you are up against. Even as you seek to redefine it.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, what I think I took away most from this book are Dunham\u2019s weird, real and eye-opening incidents of anxiety. \u201cGirls\u201d character Hannah Horvath illuminates some of Dunham\u2019s struggles with obsessive compulsive disorder, but her memoir delves even deeper. Critics of Dunham are quick to categorize her trips to the therapist as the whiny moans of a privileged and over-pampered tween. But Dunham\u2019s disclosure of the interworkings of her consciousness bring much-needed attention to the insecurities and fears so many of us can relate to but that we often suppress for fear of alienation.<\/p>\n

Ms. Lena Dunham is a breath of fresh air amidst the bland faces the media thinks I need to know. Likewise, her book was an insightful and hilarious read that I will treasure as I wait for the next season of \u201cGirls\u201d to premiere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Taylor Hanigosky tmh004@marietta.edu Here\u2019s the deal: I\u2019m not going to be snide and pretend I am under no influence of Ms. Lena Dunham. Her witty allure; her stick-it-to-the-man disposition; her unrivaled knack for rousing relatable emotions, regrets and anxieties. She\u2019s the voice of our generation, or at least, \u201ca voice<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11,13],"tags":[51,50,17],"class_list":["post-109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","category-reviews","tag-book","tag-dunham","tag-review",""],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marcolian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marcolian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marcolian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marcolian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marcolian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=109"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.marcolian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":113,"href":"https:\/\/www.marcolian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109\/revisions\/113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marcolian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marcolian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marcolian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}