Tag: Lena Dunham

Lena Dunham Claims Fame Makes Her Sick… Plus a Few Numbers

It’s like with all chronic irritants: just when you seem to forget about them altogether, something random will cause them to flare up… In a casual conversation Lena Dunham’s new memoir popped up. I wouldn’t know anything about it… But now… I got triggered. And you know how it is with mosquito bites—once you start scratching, you can’t stop.


It just had to happened, didn’t it?

It’s like with all chronic irritants: just when you seem to forget about them altogether, something random will cause them to flare up…

We were just talking about Beef‘s second season, my daughter and I. I remarked how shocking it was that the Ashley character was so obsessed with childbearing. An attitude rarely observed nowadays not only among gen-zers, but the millennials as well…

And that, somehow, prompted my daughter to tell me that Aubrey Plaza (six months my daughter’s senior) was expecting. With whom?—I wondered, since her husband passed away last year. Christoffer Abbott. Oh, he is cool. We saw him on Broadway in The House of Blue Leaves with Ben Stiller, Edie Falco, and Jennifer Jason Leigh back in 2011. He was also in the first season of The Sinner…

...And Girls…

As if I could ever forget! He is the one who left the show because he got fed up with Lena Dunham.

By the way—my daughter said—I just saw a clip of her on The Drew Barrymore Show. I don’t know why it was pushed to me. But some things she was talking about were quite…

Why, dammit?!! Lena Dunham—my personal symbol of undeserved attention and unrestrained nepotism! Please, stop!—I wanted to plea…

Yet… Why was she on Drew?—I asked. Is she promoting a new project? I mean, Too Much1 just came out last July… (I know because Netflix tried to push it on me.)

She wrote a new memoir…

All these tidbits are such peripheral, insignificant bleeps on the cultural radar. I wouldn’t know anything about them… But now… I got triggered. And you know how it is with mosquito bites—once you start scratching, you can’t stop. And now I am up to my ears in this…

The pushy dissemination.

My daughter shouldn’t have been surprised that Lean Dunham’s appearance on Drew was pushed at her after she decided to notice the news of Aubrey Plaza’s pregnancy. The actress starred in her late husband’s Jeff Baena‘s The Little Hours with one of the four Girls—Jemima Kirke. And there is zero degrees of separation from the future father. That’s how it works…

The only way we can stop the activity trackers from curating our content feeds is by quitting the whole online existence entirely. And there are probably brave and admirable people who do just that.

But I don’t think I have the emotional strength for such radical acts. I can bitch and moan about feeling like a fly stuck in the world-wide web, yet I continue to submit. And the stuff continues to be pushed…

Even Anna Wintour has soft spots.

Of course, I had to look up Lena’s book on Amazon… Just to see the title and the description. (I know, I know—we do it to ourselves, we do!)

Famesick… Ah, I see. Was pursuing her creative ambitions worth “all the pains of fame“?—she invites her readers to ponder… Fatigue, addictions, sex, and everything in between… The struggle is real!

Then, probably on the same day, I was on IMDb looking up the year The Prestige came out… It’s a regular thing for me. I am a cinephile…. Plus, I frequently feel compelled to rate what I watch… I’ve been using the site for decades now. Naturally, since Amazon acquired it in 1998, the interconnections became inescapable. I search for something on Amazon Prime and then I’m flooded with the ads for those items on IMDb.

This time, however, the sidebar invited me to checkout the collection of photos from Met Gala 2026—Fashion Is Art. Deep inside I knew. Of course, I knew. And there she was: in a feathery thing of the signature Valentino Red hue. Beyonce, Jay-Z, Rhianna… and Lena Dunham.

And that, actually, made perfect sense…

Truth be told, Lena Dunham has always had a good sense of style. As well as personal ties—cultivated through parental wealth and art connections—with haute-couture houses. But so are thousands of other people.

Did you know that Anna Wintour personally selects the 700 or so invitees to the Gala and approves their outfits? She’s been doing it for nearly 40 years now. And even though she stepped down as Vogue’s editor-in-chief last year, she still carries that particular responsibility on as Condé Nast’s Global Chief Content Officer.

Still, Anna Wintour—widely known as a demanding, exacting, and formidable media executive—has her soft spots too. They get softer when she is affected by strong PR, off-kilter cultural airs, and the liberal feminism…

She has always been partial to Lena, making Ms. Dunham probably the only memoirist and fringe movie-TV-maker to be a Met Gala invitee. In fact, I already wrote about it twelve years ago when Lena beat Kim Kardashian for the March 2014 cover of Vogue.

As per usual, a few numbers…

Let’s see… Since Amazon holds about 50% share of the printed books selling market and about 80% of ebooks, its data makes it easier for us to do some guesstimations.

The best selling rankings

The book came out on April 14th, 2026. Dunham’s publisher announces right there above the description that the memoir was an “instant #1 New York Times bestseller”. In non-fiction sector, of course. Definitely a certified hit. To make that rank a book usually sells about 3,000-4,000 copies a day in

all outlets combined.

I don’t know how long it stayed at #1, but in its fifth week, it was #5. So, the initial impact is diminishing. And it was listed as #3 in the memoir section of Amazon’s Charts as of May 18th. That translates into 1,500-3000 copies a day.

Let us be generous here. Let’s say that the memoir sold 4,000 copies a day for the first two weeks and 3,000 for the following three. That gives us total of 119,000.

The Amazon reviews

We can try to prove this number further. The book already has around 1,500 Amazon Reviews. Those can only come from verified purchasers. (Unlike Goodreads ratings that can be entered by anyone with a free account, whether they bought, read, or even saw the book cover.)

From the marketing POV, Amazon reviews are “engagements”. So, naturally there are statistical sales probabilities attached. The publishing industry consensus and author data indicate that only a small fraction of readers leave a review. Of course.

And the rule of thumb is the “50x multiplier”, or 2% of all readers. That gives us 75,000 copies sold in 5 weeks via Amazon. Still on the same wave of generosity, let’s say that it represents 60% of overall sales, yielding us 125,000 copies in total. Very close.

The royalties

I have experience with both the publishing-house (CFO Techniques) and the self-publishing royalties(I Built This Prison). So, let me tell you.

A publishing house, which carries the responsibility for production and marketing costs, usually pays author 10-15% of the list price of the printed books and 15-25% for the ebooks. We are going to go with the higher percentages. So, Lena’s royalties are about $4.50 per printed copies and $2.50 per digital version.

Believe it or not, people still prefer to hold a real book in their hands. Print books dominate with 80% market share. Multiply this and that: we come to the total 5-weeks yield due to Lena of $512,500.

Not I’m Glad My Mom Died, but, impressive for a niche celebrity memoir anyway. Not surprising, of course, considering all the PR efforts with the promo circuit that includes The Drew Barrymore Show and such.

And it also probably entirely irrelevant as I don’t believe that Lena Dunham would bother writing anything on spec2. Also, her agents wouldn’t allow that.

So, the advance...

I doubt, of course, that Random House would expose themselves again to the loss they experienced with Lena’s previous book Not That Kind of Girl. Back in October 2012—just three months after Season 1 of Girls ended—they got themselves into the bidding war, which they won with a highly publicized $3.7 million advance, hoping for at least 1 million of books to be sold. According to Nielsen BookScan, their expectations were fulfilled only by about 30%.

Understandably, the advance Lena received for Famesick wasn’t publicly disclosed at all. Nevertheless, we can safely extrapolate that she received at least $1 million at the contract signing. Less agents’ commissions, less taxes.

Still, a needful chunk of change probably. As I estimate that the residuals from Girls—still available for streaming on Max—are drying out by now. Considering that Ms. Dunham created, starred, and produced it, wrote about 70% of the episodes, and directed a third of them, they used to be quite sizable. But it’s been nine years since the show closed, so now it’s down to less than 2% of the original payout level.

…and my rhetorical questions.

Which I can’t help but ask.

What fame?

Of course “people” know her… In Hollywood and within New York’s arty intelligentsia circles. Especially among indie-obsessed cinema lovers such as yours truly. But what do you think the probability of a random person you stop on the street knowing who Lena Dunham is? Don’t even go to rural Nebraska—try the Bronx. I think it’s not very high. I dare you.

Actually, Lena always had a bit of an exaggerated take on her success. I remember back in the Girls days, there was an interview, in which she lamented about some TSA agent giving her hard time at the airport. She was actually expecting him to say something like, “Love the show”. I vividly remember my shock at her delusion.

The truth is, when Girls originally aired, the show’s viewership consistently averaged between 600,000 and 800,000 per episode. And I seem to recall that the latter seasons dropped to something like 300,000 viewers. I mean, there are 270 million adults in this country.

Of course, it would be ridiculous to compare such an intellectually introspective and socially esoteric show as Girls, aired on a paid premium channel, to mass-appeal broadcasting blockbusters. On the other hand, another HBO show, Game of Thrones —same time, same price—managed to draw over 10 million viewers per episode.

And here is another question:

If something really makes you sick, wouldn’t you try to avoid it?

I feel a bit bewildered here… I mean, if being “famous” puts you in peril, if it affects your existence to the point of having a deteriorating effect on your physical wellbeing—what the hell are you doing prancing in front of paparazzis in 5-inch heels? At the event that bills itself as “the world’s most prestigious and glamorous”, where “FAME, wealth, power, social influence” come together.

Of course, Ms. Dunham has been discussing, essaying, and scripting her mental problems since her college-years YouTube videos. And surely the bravery of exposing yourself to the world takes its toll… But was it really such a big deal for your immediate artistic circle of friends and family to accept your creative choices? I mean, nudity—both physical and emotional—has been a habitual subject of Art since the ancient times.

On the other hand—after the euphoria of the entertainment industry’s attention ebbed—Lena could’ve naturally fallen into a down cycle. Maybe she was actually missing the “fame”.

But damning fame is so much more compelling, isn’t it? Appeals to everyone. To celebrities—always struggling with various insecurities and such. As well as to the general public that welcomes anything proving to them they dodged the fame bullet… So ripe for pitching and marketing!

And are you all better now after channeling all that pain through your book? Is that what readers are going to find at the end? The hopeful start of the new chapter of your life? Really? Good for you!

But it begs the most important question now… And believe you me, I’m asking it with all the compassion of a person who can relate to many a mental problem. Especially those of the body dysmorphia, OCD, and self-harm kind (I called that Chapter of I Built This Prison—Buckets of Tears and Blood)…

Girl, what could you possibly know about real pain?

You rode into “fame” you blame for your ills on the coattails of your famous-artist mother and her network of such friends as Meryl Streep. And didn’t she finance your breakout Tiny Furniture? And also played herself in it? You gave her the second billing!

Very good mother by my standards. Two personal thumbs up from me. I mean it. In spite of my utter distaste for nepotism. (I’m torn like that: maybe she genuinely believed in her daughter’s merits, not just layering the yellow bricks for her spawn…)

Now, try to imagine starting off and striving on without that bulldozing PR machine you were born into behind you. Like many thousands of aspiring writers, filmmakers, and artists.

Contemplate opening your heart and pouring your troubled soul out onto the pages of your memoir, then go through the struggles of self-publishing, and end up living with one review. How would you feel then?

Yet, objectivity is my highest priority.

I honestly believe that Ms. Dunham is actually controlled by an unparalleled driving force within her. I think Miriam Cohen is right: Lena IS The Girl Who Perseveres. She will never give up. Pains of fame be damned!

And my initial hunch was correct, by the way: it’s not just the memoir. There are plenty of other new endeavors too. In on-screen entertainment alone, Lena Dunham currently has four upcoming projects. A movie genred as “steamy romance”, which she wrote and directed, is in post-production. It stars Natalie Portman, Mark Ruffalo, and Meg Ryan. Two TV series. Plus, another movie she will executively produced.

Two of these projects have the word “sex” in their titles. And one is still untitled. So, who knows… It’s all about the shock of Lena’s fantasies, isn’t it?

I probably will not live to see Ms. Dunham achieving actual artistic merit deserving the attention she gets. But I must say: that Valentino gown—just breathtaking… And so appropriately Lena! This is exactly what I imagine she can do: just wrap a giant boa around her naked body. Fabulous!

  1. In a typical outcome for practically all of Lena Dunham’s projects, the show garnered unduly kind critical reviews in such prominent US outlets as The New Yorker and Los Angeles Times. Yet, it had very moderate viewership and a mediocre 6.2 IMDb rating. A British reviewer writing for The Guardian was blunt: This pile of clichés, she said, amounted to “way, way too little”. Four months into airing, Netflix announced the show will not be renewed for the second season. ↩︎
  2. In hopes of success, without pre-existing deal with an advance. ↩︎

Gender Equality: Taylor Swift and the Pussy-Cats


Yes, I watched the video and I laughed at the glorious Internet headlines.  Well, what can I say?

To me, the really sad thing about the delirious puppets featured in the Bad Blood video is their conviction that they are real.  Even sadder: because they generate 8-figure annual earnings, have some pull in their closed-off entertainment realms, and are constantly followed by TMZ – they think that they are badass, that they represent the ultimate “Girl Power.”  

Well, the truth is they represent nothing but silliness, artifice, and utter emptiness.  What are these little Girls are made of?  Digitally enhanced voices, and unmemorable music with the life expectancy of butterflies, and silly meaningless lyrics, and even sillier antics, and fake emotions, and amateur face-making, and PR-boosted media frenzy, and airbrushed images, and a whole bunch of CGI.  That what these little Girls are made of – not a single fresh thought, not a single lasting idea.  I mean, they hit such level of dilettante mediocrity in that video, it’s hard to soldier through it.

Even worse, they don’t realize that they are objects AND instruments of manipulations by the men with real power. 

You see, it serves the men’s ambitions quite well for this type of Girls to be celebrated.  The dominant gender wants their pedestrian, shallow, benign values to be imprinted onto general public.  These girlish marionettes are very important -their individual contributions into the dumbing of the masses is incredible!  But this video opus is something special!  It amplifies the Girls’ damaging effect: together they stay united – not as powerful human entities they think they are, but as a bunch of well-compensated Barbie Dolls on display.  Of course, all girls want to be just like them!  It’s the Toys”R”Us effect!    

And for the hetero-male audience?  It’s the same ages-old flesh peddling: hooker looks, non-existent clothing or skintight latex, seven-inch heels, and, as a bonus, the all-time favorite subject matter – the catfight.

The bitching kittens are not a threat to the gender disbalance at all.  On the contrary, with every step they make and every sound they utter, they throw away everything women were able to gain so far in the hard-fought struggle for equality, for the right to be treated like humans rather than members of a particular gender.

That’s why the male record executives and agents who HANDLE these Girls keep pushing their sissy, non-threatening projects so hard – the more of it is out there polluting every visible and audible media, the less there is room for something real and stirring!       

If these girly bitches really cared about Female Power, they would go and hide their painted faces under their huge pillows in their oversized doll houses.  Their withdrawal from the toolbox of mass manipulations would really benefit the women’s fight for equality. 

And you, Joseph Kahn, The Bride is coming for you.  Now, that she is done with Bill, she can find time to teach you a lesson or two.  Because, there is homage and there is cheap, uninspiring imitation.  And you wouldn’t know the difference even if it ruptured you with a katana.       

Amendment to My Post on Vogue Covers, etc.


Girls-season-3_-episode-7-preview-hbo-300x168Those who have read it may remember that I specifically noted in that post that the possibility of diminishing number of the Confused Liberal Hipsters who misguidedly uphold Lena Dunham in high esteem as their feminist hero can be just my wishful thinking.  Still, I feel obligated to tell my readers that yes, indeed, it was nothing more than a momentary slip into an illusion that people may be getting a little bit less stupid.

I cited New York Magazine's long-time silence about Girls and its creator as a hopeful sign.  Well, I spoke too soon:  In the current issue The Approval Matrix placed that (I mean the image in the picture) on the Brilliant side.  

Then again, they might've been sarcastic…   Like in, "brilliantly exploitive and shockingly repetitive," or something?  You never know nowadays – hipsters don't possess genuine humor.  Thanks, Tina Fey!  And guess what?  See the article below.       

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Lena Dunham Hosting SNL on March 8!

Vogue Covers, Anna Wintour’s Executive Decisions, Lena Dunham, Confused Hipsters, and All That Jazz


Goddammit! 

In all honesty, I thought I was done with Ms. Lena Dunham.  I said everything I wanted to say about “her Movie,” and “her Show,” and her “success”; I analyzed the background, motivations, and the role of the hipster media; I expressed my opinions – negative and otherwise (HBO’s Girls Still Play with “Tiny Furniture”, 2013 Golden Globe Awards, and the breakthrough 8th episode of season 2).  The topic was important to me as yet another evidence of social and intellectual degradation of the so-called “cultured” bi-coastal populace. But as far as I was concerned, I exhausted the subject –  I threw it into my waste basket, all used-up and crumpled.  I had no future expectations (I still don’t) and I simply stopped paying attention.

Unfortunately, one cannot prevent other people from sharing their reactions – if not to her work, then to her public presence.  And you can swat away incidental remarks, but this Vogue-cover affair created a splash of diverse opinions, which were shoved into my face by my personal and public social networks.  

The funny thing is that if it wasn’t for the chatter around it, I wouldn’t even know that the cover happened in the first place:  I never bought a single copy of Vogue in my life.  Moreover, I never even notice it on the newsstands.  It’s not a conscious effort, but, come to think of it, my mind must be blocking it out – after all, this magazine and it’s kin are responsible for image crises of millions of women around the world. 

But again, this “controversy” of Ms. Dunham’s image gracing the cover of Vogue was brought to my attention.  And, as a life-long student of human psychology, I found the spectrum of reactions to this occurrence in itself to be quite a curious matter, which I’m itching to analyze.  So, fuck it, here is my assessment of various opinion-expressing groups.

1. Lena Dunham’s acquaintances from her pre-celebrity life. 

It just so happens that I am separated by a mere one degree from Lena Dunham’s former Oberlin College classmates (one of my client’s nieces), and I hear that these young women are absolutely scandalized by her success in general and the Vogue cover in particular.  Apparently, Ms. Dunham was an undistinguished student.  Moreover, she was “practically unnoticeable” (mind you, not unconventional, rabble-rousing, or irksome as a lot of real artists are perceived in schools, but simply unnoticeable)  in the classes of her chosen major, Creative Writing. Outraged exclamations such as “She was Nothing, just unremarkable Nothing!” have been quoted to me. 

Well, let me tell you: unremarkable she could’ve been, but she was never a Nothing.  Obviously these socially popular and academically overachieving children of wealthy businessmen (now, by the way, all in post-graduate programs trying hard to better their job-market chances) didn’t bother to learn anything about their awkward-looking classmate.  Lena Dunham has been born and will always remain a person with deep roots and vast connections in the artistic community.  Do I really have to explain that in this world it counts for more than any kind of personal and/or creative substance?

You see that picture at the top of this post? That’s Aura Rosenberg’s 1997 portrait of Lena, age 11, as her mother’s, Laurie Simmons, artistic object – a dummy.  How telling! Ms. Dunahm has been manipulated into the life she has right now since childhood.  She always knew that her creative efforts, such as they are, will get at least some attention from her parents’ close-knitted network of artists, gallery owners, museum curators, screenwriters, actors, and, of course, PR professionals. 

So, while the members of this opinion group were chasing top grades, prestigious internships, and references from esteemed literature professors, Lena Dunham didn’t need any of that – she was already writing her awful sketches for the “arty” web series, which eventually made her a MOMA (!) darling, as well as scripts for her self-directed and self-starred unwatchable shorts, which, despite their quality, were accepted for showing at indie festivals.               

2. Inexplicably blind fans, who naively think that Lena Dunham is one of them – a college grad struggling through her life in a big city full of dull jobs, bizarro living arrangements, hopeless relationships, and fake friendships.  Not too pretty or interesting, not too hard-working, intelligent just enough by the currently very low standards, and without any relevant life skills, yet feeling entitled to success and happiness.  These pitiful creatures loooooove Tiny Furniture and Girls, they devour Lena’s tweets and voyeuristically follow her Instagram.  And they went and shelled out $10 for the damn Vogue, because they mindlessly welcome every instance of public recognition of the person they mistakenly perceive as an “unlikely star.”  Her very success provides them with a false sense of hope for their own future.  

They are so self-absorbed and clueless, they didn’t even notice the familial loft (presently on sale by Lena’s parents for $6.25 million).  They are not sophisticated enough to grasp the priciness of the clothes Ms. Dunham was wearing in the photos taken before she made a single penny.  They already forgot about one of the first-season episodes, in which Hannah Horvath “worries” about her high school classmate who is going to Hollywood without having any connections.  In their blindness these people are not much different from the first group – they have no clue just how privileged Lena Dunham is.  

3. Starving skinny bitches, fashion zealots, and male chauvinists,who are having seizures every time someone who “doesn’t fit Vogue‘s image” is featured on the cover of the magazine: like Jennifer Hudson, or Adele, or Ms. Dunham.  What can I say to these fucking assholes?  Go and eat something – your brain screams for some sugar!  You say, these women (I don’t care much for any of them, by the way) don’t fit the “beauty” standard, but Sarah Jessica Parker does?  How about Kristen Stewart who looks in all dresses as if she is in drag?  And in whose acid-induced hallucinatory trip Lady Gaga can be considered a “dream girl?”

Vogue covers have nothing to do with beauty, or at least they shouldn’t – they are supposed to entice prospective advertisers into buying space inside the mag.  The trend-setting bullshit should be secondary to Anna Wintour – as a CEO of the business that is the periodic publication in her charge, her primary focus should be in increasing revenues.  And it appears that she has been making terrible executive decisions. 

The advertisers are interested in the number of eyes that will see their products and, like nowhere else, this book is judged by its cover: if they believe (whether right or wrong – doesn’t matter) that the celebrity featured on the cover will attract more readers, they will be fighting for the commercial space.  Thus, Lady Gaga makes sense, so does Beyonce.  Kristen Stewart while The Twilight was still a work-in-progress was an excellent business choice, now – not so much. 

So, it’s a total mystery to me as a revenue-conscious CFO, why would Anna Wintour cancel Miley Cyrus’s December cover, while apparently “chasing” Lena Dunham for the January one.  Let see: One is an international mega star who at her “mature” age of 21 is worth $150 million made primarily by her multi-platinum album sales and sold-out concerts (truth be told, I’m getting nauseous writing about it, but money talks).  And the other one?  A tiny auteur of a tiny movie with a tiny furniture that led to a tiny show. 

Oh, don’t tell me it’s because of the “wrong message!”  A fully clothed girl pretends to be sexual with a man on stage as a joke and that’s appalling?  Wait a minute!  Isn’t the other one is actually stark naked in most episodes of her show, frequently rubbing her bare vagina against her male co-star (for the sake of the show’s “emotional realism,” of course)?  Ah, but over 10 million people watched MTV VMA – Miley made a big splash!  An orthodox catholic priest Sinead O’Connor voiced her scorn all the way from her rural Ireland.  So, the editor-in-chief chickened out!  On the other hand, the last episode of Girls was seen by 830 thousand people – that’s safe.  Well, the numbers speak for themselves – bad executive decisions all around, Anna Wintour, and skinny or fat makes no difference.       

4. Cool-headed and reasonable, but unfortunately overly optimistic people. They understand very well what Lena Dunham is, how she came about, where her interests lie, and how much value her work has.  Yet, they convinced themselves that the adoring people will eventually come around to their side, shed the blinds, and realize that they’ve had a temporary brain lock, or, at the very least, will get bored of the emptiness and repetitiveness.  They believe that, just like much lauded by hipster media back in 2007 Diablo Cody (one of the 50 smartest people in Hollywood at the time, no less!), she will disappear into the mass of forgotten washouts. 

Uh-uh, my friends!  Lena is not going anywhere. 

In the nepotism ridden Tinseltown Diablo Cody’s momentary success was a rare case of an outsider’s rise.  She surprised herself with that ascent as much as she did the entertainment industry.  Standing there with the damn statue in her hand she was speechless – she knew it was all about the hype and that she didn’t really deserve the Oscar (Ratatouille, not Juno,  was supposed to win that year). 

Have you watched Lena accepting her big and small awards?  Have you seen her in interviews and in photo ops?  There is an unmistakable sense of entitlement and belonging in her every word and move.  She is gleeful.  It’s not about deserving it for her.  She knows she was born for this. 

5. Confused liberal hipsters in a tireless search for social rebels and antiheros.  They looked at Lena’s naked body and let themselves to be fooled into thinking, “That girl’s got balls; this is a feminist statement.”  They truly believe that she is the “voice of her generation;” that she influences people (at least according to 2013 Time’s list).  Moreover, they convinced themselves that Lena Dunham’s main human and artistic purpose is to fight their holy war for the right to be who they are and how they look. (Never mind that this representative sample is limited strictly to white, urban, college grads.)

These people are very disappointed. They feel like their idol has fallen.  In their ardent fervor of feminist puritanism, they are convinced that the right thing to do for their “spokesperson” should have been to say to the devil-woman Wintour, “Thanks, but no thanks.  You can shove your glamorous magazine and its cover up your skinny ass.”  And they write about it at length: “Why Lena Dunham Should Say No to Anna Wintour,” and stuff like that.

It may be a wishful thinking on my part, but there are some signs that the size of this group of Dunham missionaries is shrinking.  For examples, New York Magazine, the original (circa Spring 2012) herald of Lena Dunham’s coming as “the ballsiest,” the funniest, the most genuine, etc., etc., etc., has been absolutely silent for months about their former darling and her creations, making a single exception by placing an off-off-off-Broadway play that spoofs Girls via Little Women on the brilliant side of The Approval Matrix.  Maybe some previously infatuated people start sobering up and finally realize that the only group Lena Dunham represents is herself.  Who knows, of course?  There may be another cover in the works.

6. Me, not surprised whatsoever.  As Tyler Perry’s Madea said, “If someone shows you who they are, believe them.”  (Thank you, the brilliant people who introduced me to that quote).  So, when in the final scene of Tiny Furniture (Lena Dunham’s self-admitted movie about her life) she tells her real mother that she just “wants to be famous,” I heard it loud and clear.  That’s the main focus, the life’s purpose.

And for the sake of achieving it, Ms. Dunham will do whatever it takes: Parody the explicitness of the true art revolutionaries by stripping in front of the camera whether it makes sense in the storytelling context or doesn’t (it actually did once – in the shower scene of Tiny Furniture); make politically correct statements, so appealing to the liberal media; pledge unyielding admiration and love to anyone who has some sort of pull.  And yes, you only need to ask – she will pose for Vogue.

7. And then there is Kanye West… The poor man is terribly aggravated on account of his “friend” Anna Wintour selecting Lena Dunham for that cover instead of his Kim.  He says that it’s not fair; that his Kim is “just as talented as Lena Dunham” (oh, she is, Kanye, she is – just as talented and far more popular).  And by getting hysterical over this bullshit Kanye West unwittingly exposes how incredibly irrelevant the whole thing is.  That’s the consideration?  Lena Dunham or Kim Kardashian? That’s just funny.

Let’s keep it in perspective, people.  In the grand scheme of things literally only a handful of people cares.  Vogue has a circulation of 1.2 million. 1 million people follow Lena Dunham’s twitter, and apparently not all of them even watch her show (average 780,000 viewers).  And yes, some of those who are aware of Lena Dunham’s existence hold media and entertainment strings in their hands.  And maybe that’s all that Lena Dunham needs to be satisfied with herself, but intelligent people should know better: three months from now even the faithful perusers of Vogue will not remember who was on the cover of the January 2014 issue. 

To Those Who Doubt My Objectivity: HBO “Girls,” Season 2, Episode 8


Ok, I honestly thought that my post about the foreign press conspiracy was the last thing I would ever write about Lena Dunham, HBO’s Girls, the unjustified and pervasive brouhaha surrounding them, etc.  But I was never joking when I said that merit and objectivity were placed very high on my hierarchy of values.  They are so important to me that I can even look at a pool of  shit, notice a few specks of goodness there, and effortlessly say, “This is a pool of shit, but those couple of things are quite good.” 

No, I didn’t change my mind about Dunham’s creations so far, especially the ones she’s done on her own, without any help from other writing and directing talents; nor did I recant my opinion about the hipsters of media who buzz her up to the sky.  But that doesn’t prevent me from objectively acknowledging that the 8th episode of the second season, It’s Back, was a remarkable breakthrough.

For the very first time, the show elevated itself to the level of truly generational significance.  Because, if anything unites people in their 20s across geographical borders, nationalities, social origins, monetary standings, physical appearances, intellectual abilities, and creative talents, it’s the unprecedented levels of anxiety, uncertainty, disorientation, and doubt (whether deeply hidden or worn right there on their faces) we have instilled in them.

Yes, WE, most of all the parents, but also teachers, employers, mentors, and public figures – we fucked them young bitches up with our twisted, contradictory, egomaniacal, and unfounded “guidance!”  We tell them to pursue their dreams, yet want them to be financially self-sufficient.  We tell them that they can achieve whatever they want if they try their best, while knowing very well that no amount of hard work and talent can compete with inroads based on personal connections.  We tell them that a higher education leads to better employment, while openly complaining about our own jobs.  We convince them that they are talented, unique, smart, and beautiful, yet cannot summon enough decency to show them the respect they actually deserve.

And so, here, in episode 8, we have a gallery of ALL the lead characters presented in nearly equal measure (already an outstanding feat for “Girls”), with their various manifestations of the generational malady:

Absent is Jessa, the eternal quitter, once again wandering away in search of the false thrills of a “real life” (beautifully written out in the previous episode into her already-showing pregnancy by the Six Feet Under alumnus Bruce Eric Kaplan).

The dashing, gifted, interesting, and earnest Adam, who theoretically should not have any qualms about getting a girl, admitting to his blind date (set up by the girl’s mother),  that he is so nervous, he’s “sweating bullets.”  And we just know that he will fuck it up eventually.

The heart-broken Charlie, who drops his guitar and channels his pain into creating an iPhone app inspired by the obsessive pain inside him.  Yes, he cashes in on it and, by “society’s standards,” he seems to be on the top of the world, but his sad eyes say otherwise.  Moreover, we know all about the longevity of these startups.

The awkward Shoshanna, torn between the die-hard concept that college is supposed to be “the best time of one’s life” (never mind all those NYU suicides) and the reality that she lives with an adult man whom she actually supports; scared that, whether successful or not, she will be just as lost as her friends after graduation.

The “adult” Ray himself, a self-proclaimed “homeless loser,”  who is smart and possibly talented (in something), but is trapped in the reality that he cannot find a way into the world, in which he believes he belongs.  Yet, he still feels that he has a right to give advice to his fellow struggler “to stop being a cartographer, and start being an explorer.”

Here is Marnie, standing in front of Ray, crushed by disillusion and failing to be “the most likely to succeed.”  Pushed to the edge, she admits that all she wants to do is to sing… and turns out she has a beautiful instrument for it too.  Who could possibly know?  She was hiding it from everyone.

And there is Hannah…  This is the first show on television that unflinchingly uncovered a true portrait of OCD, without providing any comically cutesy cushions for the audience – just a straight blow to the head in all its ugliness.  This is what it’s really like – exhausting and debilitating, leaving you feeling powerless, reduced to a fucking puppet. This is also the first time someone showed with an admirable subtlety what it does to a girl when her loving father tells her: “You can’t be anorexic – I’ve seen you in a bathing suit.”

Considering the track record up to this point, it’s hard to believe that all of it was fitted into one episode.  It was written by three people – Lena Dunham herself, Steven Rubinshteyn (who served as Ms. Dunham’s assistant for the two seasons), and Deborah Schoeneman (who worked as the story editor on the show).  The rich material gave Jesse Peretz an opportunity to use his directorial skills for real. 

And they did all this without any cheap tricks: no false dramatics, no incoherent story turns, no random bare breasts and asses.  Instead, the episode was finally able to achieve a high degree of emotional nakedness.                   

Is this the beginning of a transformation?  I hope so.  Episode 9, On All Fours, (written by Dunham and Jenni Konner, directed by Dunham) is definitely an excellent follow up.  I always said, that Lena Dunham is a capable person, who will get better as she learns from other talented people.  But, on her own, she has a long way to go before she can truly live up to the hype around her.  Will she learn humility and start giving credits where they are due?  Who knows? 

Interestingly enough, as reported by The Atlantic Wire on March 7th, the co-authors of the It’s Back episode are not invited into the third season’s writers’ room.  Moreover, everyone in that room has been fired.  Only a few older pros will be allowed to share credits with Ms. Dunnam in the third season: Apatow, Konner, Kaplan, Heyward.  Maybe it will help Lena to hold on to her “so young, so brilliant” status longer?  These people will always be older than her.  You know who else is pegged to participate?  Dunham’s parents.  Reverse nepotism?  Oh, well…