I recently finished reading Lena Dunham’s new book ‘Not That Kind of Girl,’ and wow. Where do I even start?
When I first opened the book, titles like ‘Who moved my Uterus’ and ‘Girl Crush – the time I was almost a lesbian, and then vomited,’ made me laugh out loud. This was my experience of this book: a combination of morbid fascination and uncomfortable head nods. I laughed (a lot), but I also – and I don’t know why I had this reaction – often covered my mouth with my hair in horror. Holy shit. I can’t believe she did that. I can’t believe she’s sharing that. I can’t believe she thought that way.
My conclusion: Lena Dunham tells her story with a rawness that is both unapologetic and refreshingly questioning. She takes nothing for granted – nothing is ever ‘obvious.’ This is not some sort of self-help book. It’s a reflection on her life, and how she has lived it so far. She doesn’t ever suggest that she has the answer to anything, and that is precisely why I trust her.
While reading this book, I discovered that I have both a lot in common and nothing at all in common with Lena Dunham. Usually memoirs seem to be written to share the best parts of the person who is telling the story. There was never any illusion that Lena was writing this memoir so that you would like her. I got the impression that she was sharing herself and discovering herself simultaneously through writing.
Like I said… we have a lot in common. We both went to and despised summer camp (Girl Guides should have been fun, but for some reason it was the bane of my existence… I personally blame it on a mixture of insecurity and sheer laziness), we both struggled with beauty and our female anatomy (I talked about my overactive bladder for the first time in my last post), we both had a shaky relationship to our sexual selves, we both “have a keen interest in having it all,” and most significantly: we both feel drawn (for whatever reason) to tell our stories. I wonder how many women would share these same similarities?
What do we not have in common? Mainly this:
“I went through a brief phase of being a good student.” shared Lena. “Showing up early to my seminar with a mug of tea, taking cogent notes with a mechanical pencil, carrying my books close to my chest like a girl in a movie about Radcliffe. I loved doing it right – the ease of it, the tidiness of objectives, which were simply to understand and express that understanding. But inevitably it faded. A month into the semester, I would start showing up twenty minutes late to class again, with a bag of Cheez Doodles and a cup of cold grits, having left my notebook at home.” [Excerpt from ‘Not that Kind of Girl’]
For the most part, I’ve stayed in the first half of that quote. Being a bad student terrifies me. I love to please. Lena does not appear to have this weight. What moves her forward is her curiosity. There were moments, when reading this book, where I became disoriented upon realizing that she was talking about events which took place after the success of ‘Girls.’ I don’t know why it surprised me that she should still struggle with self worth after becoming ‘a success,’ but it did. Her honesty gave me a lot to think about.
I have the following quote by Sylvia Plath on my wall next to my bookshelf. I feel like it goes with this quote by Lena fairly well, so I thought I’d share it:
“Gone is the simple college cycle of winning prizes, and here is the more complex, less clear-cut arena of life, where there is no single definite aim, but a complex degree of aims, with no prizes to tell you you’ve done well. Only the sudden flashes of joy that come when you commune deeply with another person, or see a particularly golden mist at sunrise, or recognize on paper a crystal expression of a thought that you never expected to write down.”
– Sylvia Plath
The other thing we most obviously share in common is that we’re both women. Lena started her book off with the following passage. Right away she let’s you know that this isn’t going to be a story about a complacent woman. This isn’t going to be a story about a woman who successfully learned how to shut up and be quiet. This is going to be a story about an imperfect woman, who fought for what she wanted; who decided that she was worth something.
“There is nothing gutsier to me than a person announcing that their story is one that deserves to be told, especially if that person is a woman. As hard as we have worked and as far as we have come, there are still so many forces conspiring to tell women that our concerns are petty, our opinions aren’t needed, that we lack the gravitas necessary for our stories to matter. That personal writing by women is no more than an exercise in vanity and that we should appreciate this new world for women, sit down, and shut up. But I want to tell my stories and, more than that, I have to in order to stay sane. ” [Excerpt from ‘Not that Kind of Girl’]
Sex
The most shocking thing to me is the backlash that Lena received for two portions in her book. The one I want to talk about is her sexual assault. She was questioned and attacked for her version of her experience. Her story didn’t matter (and… let’s look at that above quote again). It’s disgusting. I don’t have the direct quote, but there was a moment in the book “The Age” by Nancy Lee when the main character has had sex for the first time. She feels different but not in the way that she’d hoped. There is a moment when she is sitting in the car when she looks at her mother’s boyfriend and wants to ask “does it feel the same way for men? Does it feel like something has been stolen from you. Do you also feel empty after it’s done?”
I’ve had that experience in the past. The first section in this book is all about Lena’s experiences as a sexual women. I’m most grateful for this section. I’ve never heard anyone talk so openly and honestly about sex. It made me feel less embarrassed and ashamed of my own sexual misadventures; my own curiosity; my own desires; my own mistakes; my own questions. If, by any chance, you’re reading this Lena… I just want to say Thank You!
Lena’s book is also filled with humorous lists, so as part of this review I thought I’d make a list of the:
10 things I learned from Lena Dunham
*Some of these are direct quotes from the book
- “You don’t need to be flamboyant in your life to be flamboyant in your work.” (1 of 17 things that Lena learned from her father).
- Perfection is not a prerequisite for success
- Looking back, you might find that even during the simplest most dysfunctional time in your life, you were actually quite happy. Don’t discount a single moment.
- Make your own work and don’t worry about it being exactly right. On the first short film she made with friends: “watching it now, I can also feel the giddiness, the joy of creation we were all experiencing, the catharsis of admitting to our situation. It jumps off the screen. It’s silly and obvious and high on its own supply, but it’s something. It’s a step forward.“
- Everyone is just filled with idiosyncrasies, and it’s sort of fun to figure them out and explore them in others.
- “When someone show you how little you mean to them and you keep coming back for more, before you know it you start to mean less to yourself.”
- You can grow into the person you want to be. It’s alright if you’re not there right now.
- We’re all just faking it to some extent. If you wait until you’ve got it all figured out, you’ll never get started.
- Every misstep is worthwhile, because through your missteps there is an opportunity to learn and grow. So if you avoid mistakes because you’re afraid of failure, then you’re missing a pretty important and universal part of life.
- Life is truly an adventure. How you approach this adventure, and what weighs you down, is up to you.
“And I decided then that I will never be jealous. I will never be vengeful. I won’t be threatened by old or by the new. I’ll open wide like a daisy every morning. I will make my work.”
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