There's nature and nurture but there is also psychological conditioning/predatory grooming.
I am fairly certain if anyone had their sibling bribe them to kiss them, sleep next to them, masturbate next to them and had them refer to them as "less of a person, more of an extension of myself" they'd end up with some sexual issues in later life. It sounds like Lena is an abusive, controlling dom who used her sister as a prop to explore her own sexuality with, from exploring her genitalia to bribing her to kiss her to acting as a body pillow who had to listen and lie next to her sister while she played with herself. Perhaps what she actually needed was strong guidance and someone to stand up to her when she acted out like this, rather than buying her therapy sessions so she could write off her wrong actions with some cod psychology about insecurity and developing sibling relationships. She seems to have lived the live of Reilly while wanting to be Little Orphan Annie, lost in the world her parents can afford for her.
To be fair considering her parents art work it is not surprising she was sexually curious from an early age if they had works in progress or displays of their art around the house. However the idea of any sixteen year old girl lying next to their 10 year old sister while doing that... it's frankly just not right.
Agreed, good post
But her mother had loads of nude photographs of herself , "legs spread defiantly" all over the family home. They weren't works in progress... and what to make of Lena stroking her mother's vagina? The whole family is weird.
I have no idea who this woman is but she sounds like an extremely unsavoury character. I don't think her being 7 at the time is justification at all. I would have found it very disturbing if one of my children behaved like that to their siblings. Did she really think readers of this would chortle at what she must see as childish frivolity?
I'm surprised how anyone can brush off the disturbing pebbles story as children being curious. I would consider it normal for teenage friends to have a look at each other but not a child prying open a babies vagina what the hell. And then emotionally blackmailing her, masturbating next to her etc. My older sister certainly never did any weird stuff like that to me. Thank god.
As for the hairless cat thing that sounds just as grim but I can't find the passage. Ugh, horrible. What was she expecting the response to be?? Does she actually think that is normal behaviour It's all very bizarre.
I've been thinking that whatever happened it's not really Lena's fault. I blame bad parenting.
1) Having vaginas - including her mother's - plastered all over the home must have blurred the boundaries of what is normal and what isn't, and aroused her curiosity of things she might not have been interested yet.
2) The parents are those ultra-libtard types who live in a world where up is down, black is white, and crappy images of vaginas can make you a multi-millionaire and get you praised like you're the second coming of Da Vinci. To them, anything goes, and there is nothing wrong with their lifestyle. Can you imagine if a normal family of young children, without the status of being labelled as "artists", had images of vaginas all over their home?
3) If Lena did stroke her mother's vagina, that shows further eroding of normal boundaries, and her parents not correcting her or showing her that there is anything wrong with this. Plus what was the mother's bits doing out in the first place? ETA: Lena did stroke her mother's vagina, mistaking it for her hairless cat.
4) The mother didn't even question Lena when the one year old Grace had supposedly put pebbles into her own vagina. I agree with the above poster who said that Lena may have remembered this story wrong... inadvertently or otherwise.
5) The rest of the book shows Lena to have had an extremely privileged upbringing, and to this day she remains narcissistic and lacks self-awareness of how unusual her super-rich, super-liberal upbringing was.
6) Being an only child for nearly 6 years then having a baby sister come along must have been a shock for a spoiled only child. That's probably why she felt the need to have baby Grace's attention focused on herself, and craved to feel needed by her to the point of manipulating her emotionally and physically.
7) Grace essentially blaming people's reactions on prudery and narrowmindedness shows that she still thinks there's nothing wrong with her family, society is the problem. Everyone else is incorrect, not them. And she thinks that anything goes sexually, as long as no one is overtly harmed.
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I wonder if the mother corroborates the story?
I do think it's strange that a grown woman would believe a one year old did that. Wouldn't she understand that a child that young wouldn't have the awareness to 'pull a prank'?
I mean, I can understand, say, if pebbles got into the baby's nappy and she remembered it wrong. But to still believe the baby pulled a prank, anticipating that her sister would check her vagina? That's totally weird.
Also, if the story is true, then wouldn't the mother wonder how the pebbles got up there? Wouldn't she have taken the baby to the doctor to get checked out?
Also, like you say, if photos and paintings of vaginas were all over the house, this would have warped her idea of what was normal.
I do think it's strange that a grown woman would believe a one year old did that. Wouldn't she understand that a child that young wouldn't have the awareness to 'pull a prank'?
I mean, I can understand, say, if pebbles got into the baby's nappy and she remembered it wrong. But to still believe the baby pulled a prank, anticipating that her sister would check her vagina? That's totally weird.
Also, if the story is true, then wouldn't the mother wonder how the pebbles got up there? Wouldn't she have taken the baby to the doctor to get checked out?
Also, like you say, if photos and paintings of vaginas were all over the house, this would have warped her idea of what was normal.
I agree. The whole pebble thing is very strange. What 1 year old would play a prank firstly, and secondly to play a prank means it must have occurred before to know that her sister was going to go snooping in her private area. This story is bizarre. Children are not that involved in how their vagina's work or open up. Most have no idea of it's anatomy until puberty. And honestly it makes me feel sick to type '1 year old' in this circumstance.
Lena, like you said as an adult should know these things weren't right. To not look back on things like this with regret or uncertainty is weird, as a child ok... you can say, yes children are curious, children touch each other, play mums and dads, whatever else. But she was considerably older than her sister, hit puberty years earlier than her sister... it's just all very shady.
In her book Not That Kind Of Girl, Lena talks of her relationship with her little sister Grace, who is 5-6 years younger than her.
She says that she took "perverse pleasure" in telling Grace bad news, because Lena wanted to feel needed by her and would comfort her afterwards. She would bribe her little sister for her affection, including giving her sweets in return for long kisses, and would do "anything a sexual predator might do to woo a small suburban girl" to get affection.
They shared a bed until Lena was 17, and Grace would beg every night to sleep together, Lena would make a big deal out of saying no, then relent. This is psychologically similar to crushing her with bad news then comforting her. Lena would masturbate next to her little sister, which is the most disturbing thing because it's actually criminal.
The excerpt that has got the most attention is the part where she recounts prying open her one year old sister's vagina as a seven year old, and finding that the baby has supposedly put small pebbles in there as a "prank".
I personally think that the above incident in isolation isn't that bad but combined with her emotional manipulation of her little sister, masturbating next to her and pathologically craving her affection it seems like Lena was a very abnormal girl. If she was a man I bet she would have developed into a criminal. Lena thinking that a one year old is capable of pulling a prank like stuffing pebbles into her vagina to shock people in anticipation of someone looking is odd. One year olds don't have the dexterity, motivation or intelligence to do something like that. It is abnormal to imagine that babies and children have adult-like motivations rather than being innocent.
Some other people have said that she wrote about stroking her mother's vagina like a cat, but I haven't read the book and can no longer find the article saying it. I think her "people" are panicking and have ordered Google to change the search results and start burying stuff.
Also, her parents are some of those crappy, extremely overpaid "artists" - her dad paints crap pornography of vaginas, and her photographer mother filled the family home with nude pictures of herself with her legs open. Sounds like a very vaginary household. If they were normal people rather than super-rich "artists" social services would not have been impressed.
Lena is trying to portray this as right-wingers maliciously twisting her words, but it isn't only right wingers, and they simply quoted what she had wrote herself in her book.
Some people have said she's brave for writing about it, but she doesn't seem aware that it's extremely weird and is now panicking and cancelling dates on her book tour and going on twitter rants. I personally think it shows that she's still abnormal if she doesn't have the self-awareness to see that her behaviour as a child and teenager was disturbing. If she wanted to write about it, it should have been done more tactfully and acknowledge how it might have affected her sister.
Sick,twisted and depraved scumbag, she needs her head examined.>:(
It it was a high profile male actor we would be baying for blood so why should she get a pass because she is female, sexual abuse apparently is trivial according to this durham creature,is there a statute of limitation for reporting abuse against minors be it sexual or physical in the states?
The pebbles story is frankly sick. At 17 she was still abusing her sister so she was well aware her actions were wrong.
Her complete disregard for her sister's feelings has me raising an eyebrow.
What I think will come of this is a woman who actually perhaps really thought all of this was OK and is only now finding out it's not and this may raise some huge questions about her own upbringing and the level of abuse (if any) she too may have experienced.
An unaware abuser, if you will.
I wonder if this collective horror at the things she did will maybe make her wonder where her behaviour came from? Or look at how her parents raised her?
Years ago there was a show about Ulrika Johnson and she was talking about how her father left porn magazines around the place, in full view, when she was younger. The therapist said this was sexual abuse because it was exposing a child to images that she was too young to understand.
So, given that Lena Dunham's parents had photos/ art of vaginas/ naked women around the place, would this also be classed as sexual abuse?
This ugly, depraved moron is now threatening to sue people for quoting her sexual assault on her little sister!!! She's now playing the victim-card but she WROTE the words.What did she think people would say??
What a repulsive human being.
Yep. She's basically getting angry over people repeating what they've read in her book. What the hell does she expect? She wrote it, people read it and are now talking about it. That's usually the way it works when some people read the biography/life story of celebrities. If she does try and sue, what possible good reason could she give? It was her that released a book that told of her behaving sexually towards her young sister.
It was her that released a book that told of her behaving sexually towards her young sister.
Dunham was raised in a family that didn't seem to respect traditional
boundaries, and before writting the book she was famous, wealthy and lionized
by much of the media.* It would seem that she's surrounded by yes-men and
yes-woman, who didn't tell her that putting such material in her
book would be problematic.
* Although she would have had some strong detractors too.
This brings up mixed feelings for me due to my own memories from childhood with my own sister, and in the end it comes down to Lena having very poor boundaries set for her that led to her being they way she is, not that that excludes any responsibility - she's had plenty of time, both growing up and once she was away from the bubble of her family, to develop an understanding of what normal is.
In brief, the experiences I remember are:
My sister (2 years older than me), being slightly emotionally manipulative - I wasn't as keen on hugging her as she wanted, so she threatened to run away if I didn't hug her. I don't think this had a big impact on me in the grand scheme of things, as it died out by the time I was 7.
When I was in infants school, an older girl (by 2-3 years again) acted in a sexually manipulative way towards me, and a boy was involved - he later turned out to be gay, incidentally. It was very limited (no penetration or them touching me or anything), and if it weren't for the fact that they were manipulating me etc then it wouldn't have felt sinister. As it was, I told my parents, who had me checked out for signs of further abuse and also had the school deal deal with the issue.
Another time, me and a girl (maybe age 8) were quite innocently and mutally exploring our bodies, again without any penetration etc. It had no sinister feeling compared to the first event.
The big difference is that even age maybe 5-7ish for the first incident is that I understood it was wrong, even with my early age. Lena has clearly missed that from a young age and hasn't even understood that at a later age.
As for Girls, I fully admit that I haven't seen it so can't legitimately comment on its content, but I think it's significant that the only one of my friends who loves it is self-centred, melodramatic and narcissitic.
Dunham was raised in a family that didn't seem to respect traditional
boundaries, and before writting the book she was famous, wealthy and lionized
by much of the media.
Indeed. Jenni Murray from Radio 4's Woman's Hour fawned over her in a particularly revolting way.
I hope that no one from Woman's Hour had read the book as otherwise it suggests that (yet again) child abuse does not raise alarm bells at the BBC, or, that it is OK so long as it is a female perpetrator.
Such a fuss over nothing. A rich, privileged, indulged, spoilt, self-involved, self-reverential, petulant woman who stepped into easy fame, believes her 'edgy voice of feminism' hype, and thinks she'll continue to be indulged, missteps with an overshare, revealing herself to be the rich, privileged, indulged, spoilt, self-involved, self-reverential, petulant woman she is.
She is not important or significant on any level and the sooner the media stops with the OMG (both negative and positive) indulging, the sooner her brand of (dear God) 'feminism' will die a welcome death and she'll be forced to find - if she's actually capable of it, and if she actually has any real talent - a more authentic and sustainable way of earning a living.
Just putting to one side the actual events written about in the book for a moment - what on earth made her think it was a good idea to write about these in her book and how the hell did this get past her 'people' and end up getting published?! Sack the PR team.
Just putting to one side the actual events written about in the book for a moment - what on earth made her think it was a good idea to write about these in her book and how the hell did this get past her 'people' and end up getting published?! Sack the PR team.
Her stock in trade is selling herself as this overwhelmed, emotionally confused, naked and akward young woman trying to find her way in the world like some real life version of Ally McBeal. However she's just another person benefitting from spin doctors and nepotism to get a reputation out that endears her to the general public.
Lily Allen? Wee lil cockernee sparrow until her parents/step dad's reputation got out, then she's all overwhelmed with fame and money even though she's always been around it.
Lana Del Rey? Teenage alcoholic from the wrong side of the tracks until it comes out she's a trust fund baby with a private school education.
Lady Gaga? Dingy New York disco diva selling the Scissor Sisters story as her own until someone points her out on a MTV reality prank show as an extra and her own privileged upbringing comes out.
Sandi Thom? She's the world's most in demand new pop singer, performing live from her bedroom to millions... except she wasn't, her mother was a a director at the indie record company she wanted to get going, she failed at first and then with the aid of a marketing/web streaming team was able to get about 70k once watching on Myspace once.
All these idols are hollow facades. Look at Gaga now she has got rid of her old PR mob. Without them, most of these young women wouldn't have careers, they just let them off the leash at times and then are reminded why they needed handlers, managers and PR staff to begin with.
All these idols are hollow facades. Look at Gaga now she has got rid of her old PR mob. Without them, most of these young women wouldn't have careers, they just let them off the leash at times and then are reminded why they needed handlers, managers and PR staff to begin with.
Getting caught doing drugs on a night out is 'letting them off the leash', posting something on twitter that could be seen as offensive by some politically correct group is 'letting them off the leash' - allowing a book to go through all the quality control it must go through before it gets published and still allowing it to get released when it potentially makes your client out to be a pervert is not really the same thing.
@Residents Fan thanks for linking that article - some interesting comments on there. Despite the stupid article, the vast majority of the comments show that leftists are just as outraged as right-wingers - contrary to Lena trying to spin this as right-wing witch hunting.
Completely agree, I'm a card carrying liberal and I find this whole thing disturbing! I also agree with others that if a male celebrity had written a book like this, he wouldn't even get half the supporters that Lena Dunham has!
This is not a Left-Wing VS Right-Wing issue and it's really annoying me how's being spinned like one!
If what she is currently saying is true and she made the whole thing up, that still says a lot about her to be honest.
Getting caught doing drugs on a night out is 'letting them off the leash', posting something on twitter that could be seen as offensive by some politically correct group is 'letting them off the leash' - allowing a book to go through all the quality control it must go through before it gets published and still allowing it to get released when it potentially makes your client out to be a pervert is not really the same thing.
Girls is basically her writing about her life, her sister and their friends but presenting it as a drama/comedy, they likely thought if people are fine with her serialising reality for entertainment and profit on screen, they'd be fine with hearing the further exploits of her real life.
The problem is Girls is presented as wholly fictional with any similarities purely coincidental/based on but not absolutely factual while this is making no bones about being the truth as she wants to present it. So while people were fine with her writing about an awkward pap smear in a sitcom/drama, pretty much everyone whose not a liberal apologist to the degree they'll try excuse child abuse and sexual molestation as mere youthful indiscretions of a little girl sees this as just another case of a silver spoon kid finally realising the other half really don't live like them, even though we're their market.
You show me any person aged 15 sleeping in the same bed as their 8 year old sibling, masturbating, and I'll show you a family that needs to get their house in order and their kids taken away for a while ASAP.
This isn't a liberal/conservative issue, it's not a patriarchy vs feminism issue, this isn't about clumsy sexual awakenings or a poor family forced into difficult conditions... this is about two artists who had kids but were lax parents who allowed their eldest daughter to sexually abuse their youngest daughter for a decade and then rather than take action under their own roof, bought them therapy sessions to discuss the problems at home without sorting them out.
The only issue here is a simple one: nobody should abuse children, through negligence, ignorance, not providing what they really need and not setting boundaries. To excuse a child abusing another child, whether it is their sibling or a schoolmate, is nonsense. Kids don't know better unless they are taught and if at the age of 7 nobody had told her "those are private parts, you can't look at other peoples private parts" then perhaps her parents should have spent less time painting genitalia and more time teaching their kids to respect personality boundaries.
You show me any person aged 15 sleeping in the same bed as their 8 year old sibling, masturbating, and I'll show you a family that needs to get their house in order and their kids taken away for a while ASAP.
Most 15 year olds don't even want to share a same room with their younger siblings never mind a frigging bed!
Agree also that her parents has a lot to answer for.
I have no idea why you have quoted me twice me to be honest. Neither of your replies seem to be related to the content of my posts.
You asked who thought it was a good idea for her to write about this matter. Well, clearly she did, as did her agent and her publisher. Why? Because writing about her life has made her successful. However that success has been on selective promotion and media manipulation, much like the other media darlings who have suffered troubles when revelations about their personal life have clashed with the perception promoted in the media. Everyone gets their 15 minutes before people want to know more and can then be potentially be put off, feeling hoodwinked.
The problem Dunham is in is that she's authored both the fanciful version of her early 20s as a TV series and now a warts and all biography, both reliant on the same material but to different markets, one as fiction based on fact and one as fact. However what makes for comedic material for an adult audience written by an adult is one thing, an autobiography where you try to "joke" about being an incestuous sexual predator... that tone is a little harder to convey and perhaps is just material too dark to even joke about, particularly in the context of an allegedly honest autobiography.
So, I hope that elucidates the relationship between your posts and mine, I have attempted to explain why this went from pen to shelf without anyone going "Hey, do we really want our client confessing to this stuff in print? You realise this is some Polanski/Michael Jackson level freaky pedo stuff, right, but it's an outright confession of abuse by the perpetrator? This is like Tito admitting to sleeping in the bunk next to Michaeln on the tour bus with a hooker, right? Are we seriously doing this? Alright, guess we don't want to make money with her anymore!"
They didn't because they thought her line in quirky, sexual confusion had no limit. It does. It stops at sexual abuse of a minor over a period of 10 years, tattoos, bingo wings and sharp scripts don't excuse that kind of depravity. However even now some people are trying to defend this because she is some representative of third wave feminism... well, Polanski makes great movies but he still slept with a minor. Dunham can write her ass off, doesn't make her any less of a child abuser either.
Most 15 year olds don't even want to share a same room with their younger siblings never mind a frigging bed!
Agree also that her parents has a lot to answer for.
Yeah, that's so weird! I couldn't wait until I got a separate bedroom from my sister. And the older I got, especially into my teens, I wanted to do my own thing and so did she.
I watched 'Tiny Furniture' on youtube, which stars Lena Dunham, her sister and mother. There are some scenes of Lena in the bath and her sister is just standing there talking to her. I thought that was weird.
There's also a scene- the bathroom has two baths, where her and her mother are both having baths at the same time. I dunno, I feel this is also weird?
And there's a scene at the end, where Lena's mother is in bed and Lena is like 'spooning' her and they sleep in the same bed.
I just feel the family have a weird idea of boundaries, but how could Lena know what they are if her parents never taught her?
I didn't ask who thought it was a good idea, I asked what made her think if was and how it got past her 'team'. Whatever she may portray herself as in a TV show or to the media - surely someone around her with some sense should have realised that writing about masturbating in a bed next to your little sister really does not come across well.
The way you quoted my post and then discussed excusing a child abusing another child made it look, to me, as though you were responding to something I may have written that had excused it - which wasn't the case and I wouldn't desire anyone else thinking that was the case either. I hope that make sense - I am not trying to be argumentative I just don't want people to misunderstand and think I am supportive or excusing these disgusting acts because of the way my post has been quoted before your detailed input.
I do think you make some very good points in what you said.
Yeah, that's so weird! I couldn't wait until I got a separate bedroom from my sister. And the older I got, especially into my teens, I wanted to do my own thing and so did she.
I watched 'Tiny Furniture' on youtube, which stars Lena Dunham, her sister and mother. There are some scenes of Lena in the bath and her sister is talking to her. I thought that was weird.
And there's a scene at the end, where Lena's mother is in bed and Lena is like 'spooning' her and they sleep in the same bed.
I just feel the family have a weird idea of boundaries, but how could Lena know what they are if her parents never taught her?
I can assure you, kids can acquire common sense through schooling and social interactions. I knew from a young age not to go into girls toilets, look up shorts or skirts and not to touch anything or anyone without permission. My parents aren't exactly going to win any awards any time soon and my brother has turned out badly, but I read books, listened to my teachers and tried to pay attention to what other people did. I have no criminal history, my brother does. Apples may not fall far from their trees but that doesn't mean they are doomed to live in their shadow. I think most kids ask to sleep with their parents if they have a nightmare or wet the bed but that stops once they started to get older... the idea of a 13 year old girl sleeping with her parents, then sleeping with her sister for years as well... it's frankly unhealthy to be going through your adolescent sexual awakening in the same bed as your parents or your siblings.
I can assure you, kids can acquire common sense through schooling and social interactions. I knew from a young age not to go into girls toilets, look up shorts or skirts and not to touch anything or anyone without permission. My parents aren't exactly going to win any awards any time soon and my brother has turned out badly, but I read books, listened to my teachers and tried to pay attention to what other people did. I have no criminal history, my brother does. Apples may not fall far from their trees but that doesn't mean they are doomed to live in their shadow. I think most kids ask to sleep with their parents if they have a nightmare or wet the bed but that stops once they started to get older... the idea of a 13 year old girl sleeping with her parents, then sleeping with her sister for years as well... it's frankly unhealthy to be going through your adolescent sexual awakening in the same bed as your parents or your siblings.
Absolutely. It's just not normal.
Maybe her parents did the same emotional manipulation on her, that she did to her sister to get her to sleep in her bed? Kids don't become that dysfunctional on their own.
I bet she really regrets oversharing all this, because all it's done is expose how totally weird her family is!
Comments
Agreed, good post
But her mother had loads of nude photographs of herself , "legs spread defiantly" all over the family home. They weren't works in progress... and what to make of Lena stroking her mother's vagina? The whole family is weird.
I'm surprised how anyone can brush off the disturbing pebbles story as children being curious. I would consider it normal for teenage friends to have a look at each other but not a child prying open a babies vagina what the hell. And then emotionally blackmailing her, masturbating next to her etc. My older sister certainly never did any weird stuff like that to me. Thank god.
As for the hairless cat thing that sounds just as grim but I can't find the passage. Ugh, horrible. What was she expecting the response to be?? Does she actually think that is normal behaviour
I wonder if the mother corroborates the story?
I do think it's strange that a grown woman would believe a one year old did that. Wouldn't she understand that a child that young wouldn't have the awareness to 'pull a prank'?
I mean, I can understand, say, if pebbles got into the baby's nappy and she remembered it wrong. But to still believe the baby pulled a prank, anticipating that her sister would check her vagina? That's totally weird.
Also, if the story is true, then wouldn't the mother wonder how the pebbles got up there? Wouldn't she have taken the baby to the doctor to get checked out?
Also, like you say, if photos and paintings of vaginas were all over the house, this would have warped her idea of what was normal.
I agree. The whole pebble thing is very strange. What 1 year old would play a prank firstly, and secondly to play a prank means it must have occurred before to know that her sister was going to go snooping in her private area. This story is bizarre. Children are not that involved in how their vagina's work or open up. Most have no idea of it's anatomy until puberty. And honestly it makes me feel sick to type '1 year old' in this circumstance.
Lena, like you said as an adult should know these things weren't right. To not look back on things like this with regret or uncertainty is weird, as a child ok... you can say, yes children are curious, children touch each other, play mums and dads, whatever else. But she was considerably older than her sister, hit puberty years earlier than her sister... it's just all very shady.
Sick,twisted and depraved scumbag, she needs her head examined.>:(
It it was a high profile male actor we would be baying for blood so why should she get a pass because she is female, sexual abuse apparently is trivial according to this durham creature,is there a statute of limitation for reporting abuse against minors be it sexual or physical in the states?
The pebbles story is frankly sick. At 17 she was still abusing her sister so she was well aware her actions were wrong.
I wonder if this collective horror at the things she did will maybe make her wonder where her behaviour came from? Or look at how her parents raised her?
Years ago there was a show about Ulrika Johnson and she was talking about how her father left porn magazines around the place, in full view, when she was younger. The therapist said this was sexual abuse because it was exposing a child to images that she was too young to understand.
So, given that Lena Dunham's parents had photos/ art of vaginas/ naked women around the place, would this also be classed as sexual abuse?
Yep. She's basically getting angry over people repeating what they've read in her book. What the hell does she expect? She wrote it, people read it and are now talking about it. That's usually the way it works when some people read the biography/life story of celebrities. If she does try and sue, what possible good reason could she give? It was her that released a book that told of her behaving sexually towards her young sister.
http://www.people.com/people/mobile/article/0,,20783306,00.html
Here you go.
Dunham was raised in a family that didn't seem to respect traditional
boundaries, and before writting the book she was famous, wealthy and lionized
by much of the media.* It would seem that she's surrounded by yes-men and
yes-woman, who didn't tell her that putting such material in her
book would be problematic.
* Although she would have had some strong detractors too.
In brief, the experiences I remember are:
My sister (2 years older than me), being slightly emotionally manipulative - I wasn't as keen on hugging her as she wanted, so she threatened to run away if I didn't hug her. I don't think this had a big impact on me in the grand scheme of things, as it died out by the time I was 7.
When I was in infants school, an older girl (by 2-3 years again) acted in a sexually manipulative way towards me, and a boy was involved - he later turned out to be gay, incidentally. It was very limited (no penetration or them touching me or anything), and if it weren't for the fact that they were manipulating me etc then it wouldn't have felt sinister. As it was, I told my parents, who had me checked out for signs of further abuse and also had the school deal deal with the issue.
Another time, me and a girl (maybe age 8) were quite innocently and mutally exploring our bodies, again without any penetration etc. It had no sinister feeling compared to the first event.
The big difference is that even age maybe 5-7ish for the first incident is that I understood it was wrong, even with my early age. Lena has clearly missed that from a young age and hasn't even understood that at a later age.
As for Girls, I fully admit that I haven't seen it so can't legitimately comment on its content, but I think it's significant that the only one of my friends who loves it is self-centred, melodramatic and narcissitic.
Indeed. Jenni Murray from Radio 4's Woman's Hour fawned over her in a particularly revolting way.
I hope that no one from Woman's Hour had read the book as otherwise it suggests that (yet again) child abuse does not raise alarm bells at the BBC, or, that it is OK so long as it is a female perpetrator.
She is not important or significant on any level and the sooner the media stops with the OMG (both negative and positive) indulging, the sooner her brand of (dear God) 'feminism' will die a welcome death and she'll be forced to find - if she's actually capable of it, and if she actually has any real talent - a more authentic and sustainable way of earning a living.
Just putting to one side the actual events written about in the book for a moment - what on earth made her think it was a good idea to write about these in her book and how the hell did this get past her 'people' and end up getting published?! Sack the PR team.
Her stock in trade is selling herself as this overwhelmed, emotionally confused, naked and akward young woman trying to find her way in the world like some real life version of Ally McBeal. However she's just another person benefitting from spin doctors and nepotism to get a reputation out that endears her to the general public.
Lily Allen? Wee lil cockernee sparrow until her parents/step dad's reputation got out, then she's all overwhelmed with fame and money even though she's always been around it.
Lana Del Rey? Teenage alcoholic from the wrong side of the tracks until it comes out she's a trust fund baby with a private school education.
Lady Gaga? Dingy New York disco diva selling the Scissor Sisters story as her own until someone points her out on a MTV reality prank show as an extra and her own privileged upbringing comes out.
Sandi Thom? She's the world's most in demand new pop singer, performing live from her bedroom to millions... except she wasn't, her mother was a a director at the indie record company she wanted to get going, she failed at first and then with the aid of a marketing/web streaming team was able to get about 70k once watching on Myspace once.
All these idols are hollow facades. Look at Gaga now she has got rid of her old PR mob. Without them, most of these young women wouldn't have careers, they just let them off the leash at times and then are reminded why they needed handlers, managers and PR staff to begin with.
Getting caught doing drugs on a night out is 'letting them off the leash', posting something on twitter that could be seen as offensive by some politically correct group is 'letting them off the leash' - allowing a book to go through all the quality control it must go through before it gets published and still allowing it to get released when it potentially makes your client out to be a pervert is not really the same thing.
Completely agree, I'm a card carrying liberal and I find this whole thing disturbing! I also agree with others that if a male celebrity had written a book like this, he wouldn't even get half the supporters that Lena Dunham has!
This is not a Left-Wing VS Right-Wing issue and it's really annoying me how's being spinned like one!
If what she is currently saying is true and she made the whole thing up, that still says a lot about her to be honest.
Girls is basically her writing about her life, her sister and their friends but presenting it as a drama/comedy, they likely thought if people are fine with her serialising reality for entertainment and profit on screen, they'd be fine with hearing the further exploits of her real life.
The problem is Girls is presented as wholly fictional with any similarities purely coincidental/based on but not absolutely factual while this is making no bones about being the truth as she wants to present it. So while people were fine with her writing about an awkward pap smear in a sitcom/drama, pretty much everyone whose not a liberal apologist to the degree they'll try excuse child abuse and sexual molestation as mere youthful indiscretions of a little girl sees this as just another case of a silver spoon kid finally realising the other half really don't live like them, even though we're their market.
You show me any person aged 15 sleeping in the same bed as their 8 year old sibling, masturbating, and I'll show you a family that needs to get their house in order and their kids taken away for a while ASAP.
This isn't a liberal/conservative issue, it's not a patriarchy vs feminism issue, this isn't about clumsy sexual awakenings or a poor family forced into difficult conditions... this is about two artists who had kids but were lax parents who allowed their eldest daughter to sexually abuse their youngest daughter for a decade and then rather than take action under their own roof, bought them therapy sessions to discuss the problems at home without sorting them out.
The only issue here is a simple one: nobody should abuse children, through negligence, ignorance, not providing what they really need and not setting boundaries. To excuse a child abusing another child, whether it is their sibling or a schoolmate, is nonsense. Kids don't know better unless they are taught and if at the age of 7 nobody had told her "those are private parts, you can't look at other peoples private parts" then perhaps her parents should have spent less time painting genitalia and more time teaching their kids to respect personality boundaries.
Most 15 year olds don't even want to share a same room with their younger siblings never mind a frigging bed!
Agree also that her parents has a lot to answer for.
You asked who thought it was a good idea for her to write about this matter. Well, clearly she did, as did her agent and her publisher. Why? Because writing about her life has made her successful. However that success has been on selective promotion and media manipulation, much like the other media darlings who have suffered troubles when revelations about their personal life have clashed with the perception promoted in the media. Everyone gets their 15 minutes before people want to know more and can then be potentially be put off, feeling hoodwinked.
The problem Dunham is in is that she's authored both the fanciful version of her early 20s as a TV series and now a warts and all biography, both reliant on the same material but to different markets, one as fiction based on fact and one as fact. However what makes for comedic material for an adult audience written by an adult is one thing, an autobiography where you try to "joke" about being an incestuous sexual predator... that tone is a little harder to convey and perhaps is just material too dark to even joke about, particularly in the context of an allegedly honest autobiography.
So, I hope that elucidates the relationship between your posts and mine, I have attempted to explain why this went from pen to shelf without anyone going "Hey, do we really want our client confessing to this stuff in print? You realise this is some Polanski/Michael Jackson level freaky pedo stuff, right, but it's an outright confession of abuse by the perpetrator? This is like Tito admitting to sleeping in the bunk next to Michaeln on the tour bus with a hooker, right? Are we seriously doing this? Alright, guess we don't want to make money with her anymore!"
They didn't because they thought her line in quirky, sexual confusion had no limit. It does. It stops at sexual abuse of a minor over a period of 10 years, tattoos, bingo wings and sharp scripts don't excuse that kind of depravity. However even now some people are trying to defend this because she is some representative of third wave feminism... well, Polanski makes great movies but he still slept with a minor. Dunham can write her ass off, doesn't make her any less of a child abuser either.
Yeah, that's so weird! I couldn't wait until I got a separate bedroom from my sister. And the older I got, especially into my teens, I wanted to do my own thing and so did she.
I watched 'Tiny Furniture' on youtube, which stars Lena Dunham, her sister and mother. There are some scenes of Lena in the bath and her sister is just standing there talking to her. I thought that was weird.
There's also a scene- the bathroom has two baths, where her and her mother are both having baths at the same time. I dunno, I feel this is also weird?
And there's a scene at the end, where Lena's mother is in bed and Lena is like 'spooning' her and they sleep in the same bed.
I just feel the family have a weird idea of boundaries, but how could Lena know what they are if her parents never taught her?
The way you quoted my post and then discussed excusing a child abusing another child made it look, to me, as though you were responding to something I may have written that had excused it - which wasn't the case and I wouldn't desire anyone else thinking that was the case either. I hope that make sense - I am not trying to be argumentative I just don't want people to misunderstand and think I am supportive or excusing these disgusting acts because of the way my post has been quoted before your detailed input.
I do think you make some very good points in what you said.
Absolutely. It's just not normal.
Maybe her parents did the same emotional manipulation on her, that she did to her sister to get her to sleep in her bed? Kids don't become that dysfunctional on their own.
I bet she really regrets oversharing all this, because all it's done is expose how totally weird her family is!