Red Scare - Podsick

Episode Date: April 24, 2026

The ladies review Lena Dunham's new memoir Famesick.

Okay. Hello. Hello. Oh, shit. We're recording. Yeah. That was fast. I mean. Let's get the show on the road. Yeah. Um, oh, God. Well, see you and hell. Don't look so down, babe. No, I'm in good spirits. This is the episode everyone's been dreaming of. I'm like, okay. I, I, I'm just exhausted and addled. Per usual. I'm arrested. Damn, good for you. And having breakthroughs left and right and psycho now.

I know. I know. Very impressive. Already. Off to the races. Amazing. Best patient award. Uh-huh.

We're going to talk about the new Lena Dunham memoir. fam sick which she's done it again she's a genius yep incredible I just finished it

I was crying I cried too it's harrowing I guess uplifting is it though would you call it uplifting it's moving

it's touching and she is a survivor of her own making. I mean, no, not, I mean, you know, in the way that we all are. Yes. I feel like collective, the collective we kind of harmed her. Not me and you, but. Well, we kind of did.

We actually kind of did. You know, I mean, whatever. We were part of that commentariat of haters. were we that had her coming back for more that she had like a dysfunctional codependent relationship with I mean we weren't even as so bad no I don't think so and it's not even you know though yeah she I'm I find the um the comeback to be uplifting because she did really was she was so like inordinately and uniquely hated and really and victimize.

Well, yeah, the, the two broads who were inordinately hated and victimized were Lena and Lana. Mm-hmm. And they, I guess, both came out on top in a way, weathered the storm. And we're, I think, really, the two voices of our generation. Truly. People are always asking, like, well, did this? the zoomers have anyone comparable and I just think it's too soon to tell because like their

history hasn't been written yet but no they don't and it's just another it was really another era a more innocent time yeah like the the first portion of the book where she her rise yeah feels very um impossible kind of now yeah it does and I was I was I saw somebody on Twitter being like, well, Ivy Wolk is the Zoomer, Lena Dunham. Like she is to Zoomer is what Lena Dunham is to millennials. And, you know, that remains to be seen just because she hasn't really had her big break or like hit the mainstream or anything like that yet. But they do like share certain qualities, like the kind of letting it all. all hang out, sensibility and like body horror aesthetic and that sort of thing.

I mean, Lena really, yeah. But she, but already she's somebody like that is coming up through like a totally different mechanism in a totally different culture and climate. And already like youngest person to ever be canceled, Ivy Wove. Yeah. And Lena was never, though I guess, yeah, there's so much I like, for God. about. Yeah, yeah. And then like, here, like, Lenny letter. Yes, I forgot about that. Completely forgot about Lenny letter. And, yeah, her first collection of essays. Did you ever read that one?

Um, yeah. Okay. I've never read it. I don't remember it that well. And it was, yeah, it was ill-timed, though obviously it did very well. Um, but the way she described. like the way that attention like begets attention and um she just was getting so much backlash kind of left and right no matter what she really did yeah and even before I guess we have like the clarity of hindsight I she always felt sort of like a cautionary tale to me of like industry cannibalism and like burnout and how she really was just like they took everything from her they bled her dry yeah but it's also she was such a promising talent and yeah it was very lucky to have the opportunity she did which she discusses in the book but really it was like there's no

there's no way a person could have like withstood the amount of pressure that she was under at such a young age. Yeah, but also not just lucky because she was, as it turns out, in spite of her biggest predestations, like a very talented and hardworking person who really only knew how to work at the expense of everything else. And, you know, crucially she did, and I don't think she would even deny this, bring a lot of it on herself, invite it, like let the vampires in, which is like a unique facet of millennial stardom in particular. I mean, I think it's dogged all celebrities

throughout time. Yeah. But she also, like, came of age and became famous as guinea pig or test tube baby of the online age. She was very... Like, Zoomers now were born into this life.

Yeah. She wasn't really. And she was engaged with it in a way that she didn't necessarily have to maybe. Yeah. But she was reading the comments. Due to the idiosyncrasies of her responding to them.

Personality, like really had no choice. Yeah. And so like this book. It couldn't have gone any other way. Yes. But it is a tragic tale. Yeah. Tragic but also self-fulfilling and prophetic.

The book chronicles her quote journey from this like random unknown downtown minor nepo baby to. The voice of a generation tracks her indie origins, her mainstream fame, her present day, post girls era. And the title I thought was really good.

I bet she came up with it herself. She spent the last decade of her life famous and sick and pining for fame, but also sick of being famous and famous for being sick. Famously sick. Yeah. I mean, it's a great,

I love the cover. Yeah. I love this like Lolita-esque kind of person. It's very Lana, actually, the kind of like lazy selfie. And yeah, it was clearly just a person so like driven to express herself. Yeah. And so it's, what's really cool is that what began is this like ironic and iconic line delivered by Hannah Horvath in the pilot episode of Girls. ended up becoming true for Lena Dunham herself.

She did become not a voice of the generation, but the voice of the generation. And she really was like a blueprint, like when I was starting out in Hollywood. And taking general meetings and like, you know, trying to forge a career. It really, I feel like I had. so many meetings with industry people where they were like we really want like they want they wanted

so badly to replicate the success of girls but with like an intersectional uh-huh like everyone wanted like girls but Hispanic girls but sex workers girls but girls but you know they wanted like girls X like something else yeah to capture like the lightning in the bottle and I was with yeah no real successes really like trying to pitch people and kind of something I could do that would be girls ask but just don't have

that dog in me well it's funny because I had forgotten this in this book jogged my memory that like one of the big criticism she received out the gate was that girls wasn't diverse enough I remember that it's kind of like the criticism that Wellbeck gets a lot

that his um character especially the female ones are too flat. And that's kind of like part and parcel of their art. Like it has to be that way. Otherwise there's no creative product. It doesn't hit.

Well, had it been more diversified, she would have gotten blowback for, you know, not being disposed to tell the stories of marginalized people. Yeah, yeah. And she like describes how she sort of stumbled into television because what she really wanted to do was make indie movies. and she figured it it would be like a good placeholder

and jumping off point and of course her modest and humble desire to be like a mumble core auteur a la like Noah Baum back and Greta Gerwig

like she very quickly exceeded transcended that at her own expense and I was thinking about relatable honestly The reason that she's the voice of a generation is that she embodies what like friend of the pod, Yerk said on Twitter a while back that she embodies this like defining ethos or ideology of the millennials, which is passivity.

It's this like overwhelming need to be seen as a good person and an overriding guilt at like making decisions or taking action or at least being seen as a person who does those things. because that involves trade-offs, which may reveal that you're a bad person. Right. And, like, you know, it may reveal that, like, you've gotten ahead in questionable ways, that you did people dirty, that you, like, didn't live up to certain expectations, that you failed to consider the voices of the, unheard or marginalized groups. It's too much.

Yeah. Honestly. I was talking about it with Eli and he asked me like, well, how is it? How's the book? What do you think of it? And I said like, you know, it starts off strong and then it kind of spirals out of control and becomes like sluggish and unfocused and kind of a slog at times. And he was like so like her career.

Ah. Which is true. And like by the end of it, I have to say. But no one could sustain like. Yeah. And she's back and better than ever. But like, you know, by the end of it, I was like tapped out from reading about her body horror health woes and much like her loved ones wanted to like take a step back and move on with my life. I found that to be the most compelling part of the book. I mean, yeah, like you said, it was like moving and compelling.

but it really like takes the wind out of you. I mean, it was frightening. Yeah. Two things stuck out at me about this book initially that I liked, which is like her initial prose stylings and her portrayal of youth. Like I'm very glad that people are talking about what a good actress, Lena Dunham is, in addition to being a good writer and director. And she had to learn that shit, you know, on the spot while,

debilitatingly addicted to clonopin. Yeah, and having like debilitating chronic pain or whatever. And she's not an actress. She's not a trained professional of the acting vocation. She kind of fell into that thanks to like, you know, her mentors, Jenny Connor and Judd Apatow and the various like exacts at HBO. Yeah, well, she claims out of necessity. I mean, I think again, because of her overall attitude of pestle,

passivity. She kind of downplays the amount of agency she had in her own life and choices. And that's the frustrating and charming aspect of Lena Dunham. But people also forget how much of a good pro stylist she has when she wants to be. She's an incredible writer. She's a great writer. Her style is like clean and cool and funny. It's Jewish but also American. And it's also very feminine. But in a more kind of mature, brassy old school style. like a Joan Didion or a Nora Ephron, not like sub-stacked feminist confessional. Well, she's, yeah, she's clearly very prolific.

Yeah. And I think has honed her craft. Yeah. It's, yeah, her style is very like, breathy, but it's not breathless. Mm-hmm. It's out of breath. But yeah, it's like, yeah, no, it's very honest.

And very like, yeah, self-reflective, like. Yeah. But I guess that goes out saying because she's a memoirist. And it's very, it's very warm. It is, yeah. Which is nice. Cozy. Or that she, she's cozy max.

But like, of course she's like extremely capable at writing about herself, which is her main subject. But I think like if you put her up to writing about virtually anything, she would do a good job of it. That's what I would like to see. really. That's an idea for Lena Denham. I would like to see like a book or a collection of essays about something other than herself. A novel. Yeah. Like fiction, nonfiction, whatever, you name it. Well, it would probably be auto fictional. But that's also why she's such a good artist for

our era. Yeah. Is because that is like the main mode. Right. Of human experience in contemporary life. Yes. Yeah. But she sort of transcends, exceeds the genre. She's like the exception that proves the role because generally I'm not really a fan of the genre. Of the memoir. Or like, yeah, anything that's like confessional or autophictional, I know those are two different things, but anything that involves like the me. And to give an example, this is how she describes her state of mind in the lead up to writing tiny furniture, which, you know, becomes her first break that leads to the big break of girls. I had been in a period of conflict with my mother that felt to me like a biblical battle between good and evil,

but was really just about the fact that I never, ever cleaned up after myself. I was like a bit worried going into this book that it might devolve into pure self-indulgence, but I do appreciate that she really goes through the process of how the sausage was made in like those first one or two chapters. Like, you know, for people like me who are her age and who followed her career, it's very nostalgic and comforting to read her memories to have her back in the discourse and then I would assume that for people who are younger and are trying to follow in her footsteps it's inspiring even though it's so scary and harrowing well I yeah I mean I found it so relatable Yeah.

Because though my success is fractional, it was like, you know, I really wanted to be like a indie mumble court. Starlin. You know, I met Lena when I first moved to New York. Yeah. and it was interesting to read later in the book because as you recall when I broke up with Adam Friedland she let me stay in her house I thought of you when I read that passage about her letting people stay in her apartment well yeah and then I realized like oh wow that's something she was doing because she felt guilty but she had no reason to feel guilty

towards me. No, no, but she talks about this like in the book which I want to get to that she felt guilty when she couldn't meet all the favors and requests the random strangers and I mean I didn't ask to say in my house obviously I would

never but it was it really like helped saved my life because I was like basically I was like low key homeless and she was newly sober or recently sober so I thought she was like kind of on like an AA sort of, you know, tip, kind of paying it forward style. She wasn't there. That's when she was

doing industry. And she just let me live there for two because it was one of the nicest things I don't ever done for me. How did that come about? She just like offered it. I was, we were texting and I told her that I was going through a breakup and I was like, you know, crying on the train and I didn't know, you know. And she, yeah, she just said, like, she had, like, some, a refuge to offer me. And out of, like, she does, she is of extremely, like, generous person, even if it comes from maybe, like, a pathological, people-pleasing kind of. Yeah.

It also made me, I, like, was looking back on our, you know, our text, which, like, don't go quite that far back. Mm-hmm. But, yeah, it made me kind of cringe to, like, the, be like sending her links to my movie and stuff and I was like oh like you just don't realize like how um because I just do like I'm such a bitch I like ignore people and don't I don't feel as like beholden right I'm like a people displeaser I'm like the opposite um and it's not like that is just kind of what you do when you make something you try to like you know

you have to put yourself out there and like send it to people yeah and also i think on the flip side once you've done that and other people start hitting you up you have to know when to withdraw and enforce boundaries which a lot of people who are like in entertainment media don't know how to do yeah i never i never struggled in that That's good for you. It's something I struggle with all the time because I feel like completely like, I found that relatable. I feel completely like behold and obligated to respond to everyone at all times. There's certain people who have a weird, randomly will kind of lock in to me.

Yeah. And I will weirdly. Yasha Levin's wife. Uh-huh. Yeah. She was someone who like, yeah, when she would text me, I would. get full, I would be full of dread and like feel like I owed her something for some reason. But that's rare.

That's like, take something. There's like some kind of like maybe because she's Russian, might as me my mother, something, something. You know, like there's. But most people I'm kind of fine just blowing off. Yeah. I mean, it's a skill that you have to hone. Or in your case, probably not, but like in general. I mean, it could have saved her a lot of grief.

yeah but she but that that's like her um it's her personality construct and yeah it's like her genius and her tragic flaw is like the unboundariedness the generousness the generosity with which she like makes her art and like interfaces with the people in her life is also what like destabilizes her crazy and intensifies her illnesses and but also

also like in spite of this being like primarily a memoir about her struggles with fame, I thought her depiction of youth was very universal and generous and and forgiving of like the hapless horny retards that we all were at some point. There's this youthful desire that we all have as like creative misanthropes to, I guess, be someone and be part of something. and it's unclear what the something is, which is essentially her pitch for girls. At the time, she says it seemed like

she was always wondering about what someone thought of her and trying to understand the position she occupied in their life and making decisions based on her abstract findings. When she gets paired with her Hollywood mentor and eventual best friend, Jenny Connor, who's the person that the HBO execs kind of nominate as her supervisor, she has this impression that they'd been separated

for a lifetime and share commonalities that can't be explained, which I suppose is like a kind of short hand for the familiarity that sustains a lot of productive working relationships. But it just, it's also something that like young people always feel

about other people that they meet when they've been, yeah, when they've been like, lonely and misunderstood. And I mean, when you are like up in showbiz, it does feel like the sun is like shining on you. Yeah. And like even though you might intellectually know that like these people don't have your

best interests at heart, there is something that like does make you want to please them because you don't want this like feeling of good fortune to go away. Yeah, she like actually gets into that at some point. I'm going to try to pull up that passage. And yeah, the sad thing is like during this period she's very like sloppy and unself possessed and she like, you know, surmises that her failures with men have to do with the fact that she's too chubby and not pretty enough. And they're all busy fucking like hot, petite brunettes and American apparel leggings. but she it doesn't occur to her that maybe just like her personality is like a voracious and consuming and demanding and but you know she has this self-awareness in hindsight of how like innocent and charming and cute she must have been she was really cute if you look at like old photos of her when she's like doe-eyed and knock-kneed and she knew I mean obviously there was like it was like dual, you know, there was a shadow there, but she knew that she was cute and had enough,

like, confidence in herself to do the things that she even did, even if they were, like, driven by a sense of, like, inadequacy deep down. Yeah. I found a lot of the, like, uh, sartorial details. And, like, there's two points where she mentions her, like, urban outfiters, Comforter and her urban out It's so True Yeah And when she starts dating

Jack Antenoff like the stuff that they're wearing And like the way that they're like Exhibiting themselves Gouchos and Yeah is so like Vivid and precise Yeah It's like her

2009, 2010 She Yeah she Yeah she talks about her Her name becomes a metaphor for her experience of fame because her mother gave her deliberately like old Hollywood sounding name. And she then goes on to use a series of aliases, though she says it wasn't like the threat of stalking and harassment, though she did have her run-ins that made her do that.

It was simply that she preferred to not be herself. It was only when my name entered the spin cycle of mass media surprising early classmates, my family, but no one. and more than myself, that it started to feel alien like a character in a film I didn't write. It became a mark of excellence and a signifier of a certain kind of millennial absurdity and finally a punchline that felt more like a slur. This really mirrored the evolution of the term girl boss for me. There's like a direct parallel. And then she offers up this like very true and painful explanation of like the main theme of the book and of her life.

it offered freedom in a life that seemed to anyone looking in from the outside to be lousy with it already. It was only me who had forgotten that I had the gift of choices. Maybe I was dead set on eliminating them. It seems like, yeah, her life was at that point, it became like a series of trying to identify what was ailing her, eliminate her options, develop some kind of, of fixed identity. And then in typical fashion, she like pulls back and off the skates.

She claims she didn't set out to be famous. And instead, I'm here because of an almost unrelenting drive towards self-expression, which manifests as workaholism and single-minded obsession that actually runs countered to a skilled manipulation of fame. I think here she makes the mistake of assuming that a skilled manipulation of fame has to be something conscious when it can be something totally subconscious. I don't think her manipulation of fame was entirely unskilled, though, of course, it was painful and costly for her.

Well, I think she was nice. She just was so young. And when you get an opportunity like that, like the HBO series. Yeah. Like it is like crazy to go from South by Southwest. Yeah. To immediately. Indie movie premiere to like six.

I mean, it shouldn't, it wasn't six. it wasn't six seasons out the gate, but like it was so charmed and also like haunted. But like the way the door is kind of like opened for her. Yeah, the kind of instantaneous cascade, which happens for like nobody. Yeah, it's like it's most people like, you know, spend decades like building a career to be like a showrunner. And she was, I'm not going to say handed it because she did work. hard, but it was like, you know, she was exceptionally, and I don't even want to say lucky because I don't think it's that simple. Yeah, lucky and prepared, but it happened practically overnight.

She says to this day, I still get a pang every time I watch a documentary about an artist, and they talk about this very moment when they first became part of a creative community, but nobody was doing it for the cash yet. When nobody had betrayed a trusted collaborator or called someone else to sell out and all lasted only a year or so but it felt much longer or maybe wider because it was when I really fell in love with movies and it was also the first time I felt like someone worth knowing the most fulfilling part for me was like her talking about her early experiences of going to Oberlin and hanging out with Audrey Galman and Sarah Rossin meeting Josh and Benny Safdi sharing an office in Tribeca with Greta Gerwig who was already famous to her because she was a mumble

course starlet that's actually how to I felt about Lena Dunham, because again, we are about the same age and I followed her career from the moment, even before she became a household name, because she and Sarah started work on this web series called Delusional Downtown Divas, which is how I first caught wind of her like 15 years ago, and it stars her and her childhood friends, Audrey, Isabel Haley, and Joanna Villas is like these clueless, like, clueless, desperate, social climbing, wannabe galerinas who were trying to break into the art world by like hanging out at openings and parties. And it was really the most hilarious thing I'd seen.

And I remember being jealous of them because not because they were successful, but because they were like my age and they were cool downtown New York girls and they had a close-knit group of childhood friends while I was like this broke, uncool, maladjusted loser who had just moved to the city from New Jersey and had no friends. I mean, it's unviewable. And, you know, it's funny because, like, later I basically came to meet and befriend all of these people in the orbit just from hanging around long enough. And they, they proved to be, like, totally nice and kind and not intimidating, like, good people. Yeah.

Even though we, like, trash them a bunch on the show originally. I mean, yeah, New York is ultimately pretty provincial. she was a townie. Yeah. And now we're townies. Now we're townies. And that's just like kind of how it goes. Wade has a cameo.

It's really cute and amazing. It's like Lena and Audrey. I watched it but it wasn't. I wasn't in New York. So it wasn't. Yeah. So it didn't like me. I sort of knew Lena, I guess, from.

Yeah, like indie circles. But not like quite like she wasn't. Yeah. I was obsessed with her because she was. like weird and quirky and like introspective and bookish. And it's one thing being that in downtown New York, but it's another thing being that in suburban New Jersey. Sure.

Where everyone's kind of a chud or Indian. And so you feel like totally alienated and you just wear like, yeah, like striped stockings and drive your car at night listening to Morrissey. Was, were you in your lausanne? Anna phase then? No, it was really skinny. When was lasagna? That was like after I moved to New York.

No, I was like at that point I must have been like, I know, it was before I moved for grad school. So I was like pretty skinny and like hot and like a goth girl way. And I felt like I was like too good for provincial New Jersey and needed to move to the big city. so I could be friends with gay guys and have casual sex with hot guys. It's interesting how much she describes her, even later in the book, her like sexual encounters are so charged. Yeah. And she's so good at describing kind of like the intrigue of each one.

Mm-hmm. in this very like skillful non-nistout like it feels very real instead like you know like I feel like a lot of people they have like kind of a negative

or ambivalent experience and it kind of like colors their perceptions of what happened to them and that's why she's a good memoirist is because she's able to kind of like take you through the experiences except I mean I want to talk about Jenny. Yeah, we should. Okay, first of all, I want to call bullshit on Lena Dunham for a minute because

she has this perception of herself as like an ugly chubby girl who never really had much success with men. And that's just not true. That wasn't the impression I got. It seemed like she was having a lot of kind of degrading sex. Yeah. And okay, she was maybe bad at keeping a man, though she kept one, one pretty good one. Who? Jack Antonoff, though he doesn't like us. But she had a issue. He should be in. jail, dude. Well, I have a lot of takes on Jack Antonoff, but she had, she had like a good guy boyfriend for a long time. But she, okay, she maybe didn't, couldn't keep a man, but she could get him pretty easily. She had no problem doing that. And I think she's such an overthinker and ruminator. She like attributes good for us, bad for her. She attributes like excessive meaning and significance to her problems with men, which are mostly, if not fake, then totally typical. Yeah.

I mean, it's funny that she has, yeah, the self-awareness with which she describes how, like, repellent these men are to other people. Like the guy with the cleft. Yeah, but she was like dignitized. Yeah. Yeah. And then she brings him to the premiere and kind of like gains this outside perspective that he ain't the one. Yeah, because he's like in a corner making out with some. hot skinny girl with underboob.

Yeah. As it turns out, even like conventionally hot girls who are just like bipping, bobbing about in the big city have very comparable experiences where they're used and mistreated by men. Yeah, it's like self-respect kind of thing. Yeah. It's not. Yeah. Her descriptions of like men and sex are a lot more magnanimous and neutral and not

accusatory, like compare this to something like my body by Emily Radichkowski, which is much more acrimonious and hostile in its treatment of men to the point that it feels kind of unfair. And it's interesting that, yeah, she's describes other people kind of

characterizing her and having this idea of her which I think is true as like a man, not true that she is, but like that people think this about her, that she's like a man hater. Well, probably because she's a feminist. But of the girl boss era. So it kind of comes with the territory.

To me. And she's pro-abortion. Well, what gets the most, like, her relationship with Jenny is really the one that is like the most ink is spilled over. The most tea. And the one that she like clearly like affects her the most. Yeah. Well, it do be like that. Oh, but before we get into Jenny,

I just do, I do want to say that delusional downtown divas provided, like the blueprint, the formula for girls. Everyone should watch it. It's like on Vimeo. It's like proto-girls. Yeah,

because it's like a for some of delusional and annoying chicks, like stumbling through life, trying to become famous. And she basically like took that format and broadened it from like the insular and narrow domain of the art world by like, fleshing out the characters into these relatable millennial archetypes versus pretentious, like urbanite caricatures.

Mm-hmm. And she makes the storylines obviously more complex and drawn out. And one crucial element that she decided on with her mentors, Jenny, Connor and Judd Apatot, was that the girl shouldn't be from New York. Well, Hannah specifically. Yeah. Because that would dead in the conflict, but I think also make it way less accessible. So they made her from the Midwest. Would she, there is in her personality, like, though she has these kind of, like,

classically Jewish qualities, like, being successful in the entertainment industry and, like, you know, highly verbal and neurologic, yeah. You know, she mentions when she started dating Jack, he likened her to, like, a Woody Allen. There's interesting, yeah, like, moments where she mentions Woody Allen in this, like, nostalgic way. But there is also something like very waspy. Yeah, because her dad's a wasp. Her dad's a wasp. And her, the, her like, not, it's not, it's not politeness exactly,

but like the people pleasing, the like, hospitality, the accommodation of others is very, Hannah Horvath, Midwestern, but like it, you know, it makes sense. It makes a lot of sense. Yeah, but as you say that, it also dawns on me that, you know, the rules don't apply to Jews. Now, you know, there's like a common threat in the discourse that, you know, they're hypocrites and double dealers who insist on being seen as the chosen ones. while also uniquely victimized. Yeah, they cry out as they strike you or whatever.

But the rules also just technically like functionally don't apply because among the Jews, like the rules that apply to like feminism and confessionalism among Jews don't necessarily commute to the rest of the public, which is why they historically like do make like better memoirists and they have a more equitable breakdown of like male versus female memoir writers. I mean, Woody Allen, Larry David, like these guys are basically of a similar ilk where they're talking about themselves and their experiences.

Yeah. You can say like maybe in a more like detached and masculine way, but not even. No. Not even, barely. Larry David, definitely not. Yeah. And Woody's like also workaholic, you know,

movie a year famously. So he like just and maybe by virtue of being a man like addresses like a wider, you know, he has like a more, he casts like a wider net. But his best movies are his like auto fictional ones. Yeah. And like another person who made his career on the bit that he's uniquely unsuccessful with women while being pretty prodigiously successful with them. I mean so true.

And because she's a Mishlin. she is going to be eternally in conflict with herself. She's got hybrid vigor. Yeah. And she's not, like, I don't think of her as Jewish. I don't either. She doesn't, she's not yet. She's not very, like, Jewish coded actually.

Yeah, weirdly. Yeah. Even though she is in these, in these significant ways, she's not, like, I don't really think of her actually as. Me neither. Like, Audrey Gelman and Jack Antonoff are way more Jewish to me. Well, they're full. They're full on.

Yeah. but some yeah like the genetic expression in her really is like mixed and special yeah and I guess as you were saying so that despite all of her supposed problems with men the two big major conflicts she has in her life with other people that seem to leave a real like dent whatever mark on her character are with her mother Lori Simmons and her friend Jenny Connor well her mother Of course. Yeah. Well, not necessarily because, you know, she could have had daddy issues, but she has mommy issues. She's very much like a daddy's girl. She seems just coddled by her parents in general, but her mom appears as a somewhat cold and selfish figure who really knows what to do and does what's required of her and really sees. her daughter in moments of crisis.

Very my mom coded. Relatable. I think, yeah, there she's, she, of course, like anyone will have like blind spots, but basically writes about her mom, I think,

pretty compassionately. And yeah, and tiny furniture came out of, not exactly, but the, she finds her mom's old diaries. Mm-hmm. and spends like a summer reading them.

Uh-huh. And then her mom ends up really helping her get tiny furniture made. Yeah. And really like goes out on a limb for her. Yeah. Like in defiance of what she would expect from her mom. She discovers that this, um, this woman who can't register an emotion beyond hostile bemusement was actually not so

dissimilar from her. This was after all the woman who told me to not hold her hand on the way to fifth grade because it would only increase my social isolation. Here she was. She talks how she was like lonely, weight-obsessed, angry, violated, and discreet, horny over hundreds of pages of these journals. Her parents are like both portrayed as these hard-scrabble downtown art loft bohemians who know like art critics and queer theorists and cool gallerists but don't actually know anyone

in Hollywood. But except the one guy that her mom does know. There's a couple moments where her mom like calls in. calls in favors. Yeah, she calls in a favor to the founder of UTA when it comes time to get her an agent. But she's very bruised by the Nepo baby stuff. And as are her parents kind of because they're like, we're hand to mouth. We, you know, we were bohemians just because we live in New York doesn't mean that we like,

we're really like handed anything or handed you anything. Well, yeah, I believe her. I believe her Her parents But it does It does just It's you can't deny The like growing up in New York

Well it's an advantage Yeah Yeah But plenty of people like squander that advantage Of course Of course I'm not That's not to diminish Yeah

And her accomplishments Her talents One of the most Like I guess Painful And difficult parts of the book Is when she talks

about her relationship with her parents and how it evolved over the course of her fame and struggles. She says that her successful artist parents became known as Lena Dunham's parents which stopped being cute and charming when her father's work started getting highlighted in articles as clear evidence

of the kind of left-wing perverts who produce a sex-obsessed narcissist and her mother stormed out of an endometriosis gallop because her work and identity were now coming in second, which Lena finds absurd given like the comical nature of the event itself. She talks about how her fame began to impact not only her parents' lives directly, but their identity as artists in indirect ways. It became clear to me quickly that you couldn't ask your parents how your fame made them feel not directly.

It involved too much shame because it forced him, her dad, to admit how much of their own self-indexam. Image road on their own highly specific public identities, niche as they were. To admit that my success disarm them was to admit the most vulgar and wanting parts of themselves. It's hard to express the mixture of pride and loss that comes along with having a child become famous, especially in a household where their careers were the driving force of our lives, where we traveled, who we socialized with, what we valued, what we disdained. One of the things we disdained, though we never really said it out loud, was the commonness

of wanting to be seen. We could speak abstractly about wanting the work to be seen but the work there are wasn't them. And then yeah, because her work is so closely linked to herself as like the vessel through which it manifests in the world

it reverberates through her life and it's like yeah, the part where she's not talking to her mother after the endometriosis gala was really like heartbreaking. But it would come to that, yeah. Because she's clearly so close with her parents continued to kind of live with them longer than she needed to.

And like, yeah, maintain definitely with her dad. But and I think her mommy issues are part of the reason why she had this toxic relationship with Jenny, who was kind of like a surrogate mother for her when she like went to Los Angeles. and yeah who was assigned to be like her mentor but obviously would psychologically occupy like a maternal role in her life yeah and it was like the mother she earned not the one that she was born with yeah which made it much more significant and she discusses yeah and like the fracturing of her identity and relationships as she becomes more famous um this delusional feeling that you could like escape where you're from and like choose a new family that you could like

succeed your way into that you could replace your family with this new family do you think her sister trund out is a reaction to her fame no it is weird how both of these people's daughters ended up removing their female sex organs like lina removes her uterus and then her ovaries and Cyrus removes her breasts or his breasts, sorry. Yeah, and it's interesting, we should talk about Jenny that like in her characteristic self-effacing way, Lena has a very hard time attributing like ambivalent or negative intentions to those closest to her, like not her mother, but like to Cyrus, to Jack, to Jenny. she she says it's not just that Cyrus felt intruded upon by her fame or the gelatinous way in which she took up space.

But obviously there must have been some jealousy and rivalry. I think they, I don't know, I really believe her in the way she describes just like the constitutional differences. Like I don't think Cyrus wanted fame in the way that Lena did. So it wasn't like jealousy per se. It was like just a difference. I mean, I don't have a sibling, but just like a difference in temperament. And when one person's personality and preferences seem to take precedence and then just have such a influence on people's lives, you know.

inevitably it's going to cause discord. Yeah, I don't even mean jealous that she became famous, but jealous that in her own family and social circles, she was the one who took up all the space. She always got what she wanted. I guess resentment, maybe more than jealousy. But that seems natural also to like,

especially because Lena does work in this super confessional mode obviously the essay she wrote that ends up getting spinning out into this sort of

like crisis about how she quote molested her sister and Lena didn't have the foresight to like anticipate that and it's just like she just seems yeah like a real genius who like expresses herself at the expense of all you know other people and they're kind of just collateral yeah i think sylvia plath's mother said this about sylvia plath which is like you know well you know she really like fuxed over and betrayed a bunch of people in the course of her like

consuming all-encompassing need to express herself at all costs People never talk about the collateral damage that the friends and family incurred. Real quickly, this is my favorite part, honestly, the whole book. My favorite anecdote. And it's when she's doing the girls' press tour, I think, after the first season, she says, I knew girls was going to be misunderstood from the time we stepped out onto stage as a foursome. It was on the view where Barbara Walters presided in a series of suits so well cut they could have maimed us. There's a lot to talk about on the show, she said backstage. I mean,

anal sex in the first episode. Do you mean sex from behind? I asked. Yes, she said nodding, anal sex. I still think about this all the time. Who told Barbara Walters that the only kind of sex you could have from behind was anal. What had her 20s look like as her soul? That was crazy. And hilarious, yeah. That was such a good detail. And you really like,

Lena's voice really is so strong. You like can really, and because she's such a good writer, but you really like, you can really like picture that. Uh-huh. In her action. Uh-huh. and like hear and even like in her voice yeah i can't do a good impression

anal sex what do you mean anal sex what do you mean um so okay jenny so to preface this also um another it's like minor but critical issue i have with um I guess Lena Dunham's mode is that you notice in all of her descriptions of people and then like the gratitude page that comes at the end of the book is how like glowing and complimentary she is of everyone in a very the lady doth protest too much way but that's what you do in a gratitude page now yeah but even before that like in the book itself like she has like um

positive praiseworthy descriptions of these various people that come in and out of her life, mostly women, that because of how like, or gay guys, or gay guys, because of how, yeah, like glowing and praiseworthy they are.

They almost feel like she's compensating for a certain repressed emotions that she can only get at passive aggressively. And it's very clear that, like, um, Jenny Connor is like a very formidable and problematic force in her own right

because she obviously also you know clearly resents Lena because she needs her financially and reputationally like when Lena muses for the millionth time that she needs a break from work and Jenny sarcastically quips or you can take the rest of the year off I guess my kids can just pay for their own college

education Well, that's towards the, that's like towards the end of their working relationship. But the first sort of, though she, well, okay, it's very, very interesting with Jenny because reading it, like, kind of taking it at face value, you know, sort of like immersing yourself in the memoir as like a record of experience, you are, like, Jenny seems like a monster. Yeah. She seems like selfish and greedy and kind of, yeah, punishing, but then like adulating when it suits her, manipulative. Not in the way that Lena is manipulative because she's a people pleaser who wants to be liked and who wants to be in people's good graces.

But because she's like a ruthless operator and pragmatist who wants. who wants to ring what she wants and needs from this new innocent talent. I know, but and I was really like, so finally the last interaction they have is in they, when Lena gets sober and gets, you know, it's like getting a hold of herself.

She tells Jenny that she, she's not a healthy person for her to be around because of all the things that transire between them and the first in the you know the rest of the book and that she only wants to talk to her in a therapeutic setting and then they have this like kind of like final mediated reckoning with the therapist where Lena's hoping that obviously their professional relationship has become very toxic for Lena but she's hoping that they can like work through it to come out the other side of the friendship and that's like clearly not to mend their personal relationships yeah um because she's at capacity

jenny is like a walking talking at capacity meme i it's very telling to me the way that Lena is able to detail with so much precision. She has this like, it's almost as if she has this like running ledger. Yes. Of every time that Jenny, and if you really, thinking back on it upon finishing the book, so much of what Lena feels wounded by, is a little narcissistically, like Jenny failing to mirror her.

Yes. That she like wants something from Jenny. She wants personal validation. That Jenny gives her some time. Yeah. And Jenny gives her personal validation strictly in the context of a personal relationship, though she leads her to believe and possibly believes herself that they have a long-term. Well, yeah, there's a very damning story where, I guess maybe after the third season of girls,

Lena gets a very generous offer from HBO as the, you know, principal talent. And Jenny kind of manipulates her into disclosing what the offer is and tells Lena not to take it unless they match. Jenny's salary to her in the contract. So they're basically negotiating a joint contract that's somewhat opaque because yeah, Lena brings the name recognition. I mean, and- She's the celebrity.

And as such, as a brand. But she also bears more. She has more like what's clear in the book. Is, you know, Jenny doesn't have to bear like the purpose. personal cost that Lena does.

Right. Yeah, but Jenny, I'm not even sure how much manipulating Jenny had to do because it's conceivable that Lena saw it coming and wanted to cater to Jenny's demands by disclosing her portion of the contract. And basically she ends up walking away from the contract because the execs can't match Jenny's salary to hers. And then they offer like take from her bonus to compensate Jenny, something like that. like that.

But then, yeah, there's some, and it's unclear how much of this is like really Jenny's doing versus Lena's perception. Obviously, we're only getting really one side of the story. But she basically starts, goes cold. Yeah. On her and has this party where she's like icing Lena out. And then when Lena tells her that she's said no to the contract, she hugs her and says, like, you're my soul mate.

Yes, and there are plenty of incidents like that throughout, even before that, when Lena gets a book deal with a handsome advance. Yeah. During, I think, the second or third season of girls, Jenny takes it personally. I think it wasn't even in advance. I think it was after the book comes out. No, it was before she started work on the book because Jenny says, like, well, I hope this won't take you away from. your main focus and purpose, which should be the show. Though it's unclear how or whether that would even be a problem because it seems that

Lena can adequately multitask. Yeah. And then there's the first conflict where Lena basically catches wind of the fact that Jenny may not merely be a friend, but could possibly be an adverse. which is during like the early days of filming girls when Jenny like takes her aside and corners her and says like hey you know you're too pretty and too skinny and you need to eat something and this is coming up from a woman who's obviously as it turns out who she describes herself as like a swarthy Jewish with like heavy eyebrows but is obviously has her own struggles with weight. is very clearly a person with a lot of vanity likes dressing. She loves throwing parties. She's much more social.

Lena sort of like charts her like standing in Jenny's eyes with whether or not she's invited to the parties. I mean, fair. Yeah. You know. Because all these, you know, they'll be at lunch somewhere and some sort of. Starlet will come over and be like, see you on Saturday at the party. I mean, it's painful.

It's awful. And I'm not like a Jenny defender. I don't, you know. I'm not either. I mean, you can see it from her perspective. Like, she's a divorced mother of two. She's like a self-made and self-centered, self-seeking girl boss who has like a string of boyfriends.

She's trying to make ends meet, put her kids through private school. Yeah, she has like a vested interest in Lena that's not it's not it's never like an even sided relationship.

Yeah. So and finally yeah, they have this like blowout that comes to, you know, ahead at the therapist's office. But even before that, there was this very telling episode. Hold on. I'm going to pull it up.

Well, she's very, yeah, put upon by Lena's, like, sickness. Yeah. Which she, like, in turns, is, like, supportive about, but then resists. her four and is like not she doesn't and this goes back to like the mommy issues that the recurring problem with Jenny is not only that she like fails to mirror Lena and her attachments that she doesn't love her unconditionally yeah that she's not her her mother um and she's not all you know obligated to love her unconditionally. She clearly has fondness for her, but it's very, very,

very, very conditional. Yeah, well, yeah, of course. And this, like, comes down, I think, to, like, Lena's central conflict, which, again, like her account of herself is very passive and lacking in accountability in spite of her considerable self-awareness. You know, throughout the book, she just lets things, like, happen to her, like, Adam Driver, like, herlling a chair at the wall when she forgets her lines, or buying her Brooklyn Heights apartment that Jack Antonoff now lives in with Margaret Qualley, like sight on scene. She buys a lot of apartments,

sight on scene, developing a connoop in addiction, like casually dropping that she was raped. But you don't really like randomly have like Judd Apatow and Nora Ephron cold emailing you being like, hey, I want to be your friend and mentor. But like I said, yeah, she's obviously like bright and savvy enough to know what she's.

wants and to operate in the world, but for some reason she feels this like tremendous sense of guilt over it. It's not that she's passive. It's that she has a problem being seen as active. Because again, this would maybe imply that she's not entirely a good person or possibly a bad person. You know, we mentioned her she. She expresses this anxiety several times in the book and attributes it even to like how long her and Jack maintain a clear. failing relationship is that neither of them want to be seen as bad people that he wants so much to be like a good guy that he can't leave her in the throes of her like sickness yeah and then she in turn feels so validated by being chosen by a quote good guy uh-huh that she also can't

really like cut the cord yeah um and then it's clear that like in moments where like even you know psychopaths who she owes nothing to like might perceive her as being ungenerous or unkind uh-huh like motivates her to portray herself basically yeah her her relationship with jack antonoff is funny because he you know he seems like a manipulative of non-threatening, like, over-socialized type who flatters women and tells them what they want to hear. His whole thing is she describes as being like available and conscientious in his personal life and, you know, kind of twee, adorable and safe in his personal aesthetic. Yeah. When, but when she suggests having a baby as their relationship is falling apart, he lists off a myriad of things that would have to change before he would even consider having a child with me.

that's evil and manipulative because you either want to have a baby with somebody or you don't, in which case you shouldn't drag it out in the first place, which is to say nothing of getting into it, of course, but he needs jail time. Yeah, eventually he decides he's allergic to something unidentified in her parents' home to avoid going there. She likes him because he's at least kind of superficially unlike your typical indie slees bad boy. She says, looking back, it's hard to understand way two people will. seemingly endless options, financial freedom, and almost nothing that they still enjoyed doing together besides talking shit about the occasional third party would simply not break up.

But one of the last things we still shared was the sense that our ability to keep the relationship going was directly proportionate to our inherent goodness. Jack had always placed a heavy premium on the idea of being a good guy. So wanting to be seen as a good person is a, you know, common and unremarkable trait in women, but it's a total red flag in a man. Jail time. Jail time. Yeah, and as you said, she had gotten it in her head

that retaining the love of this so-called good guy was the ultimate sign that she was not the detestable toxic monster that, like, the internet said she was. And yeah, and then there's clearly this attachment to their, like, salad days. Yeah. where they had almost like a CBK, JFK Jr. kind of, you know, they were like, they were both like, their stock was up. Yeah.

He had that song on the radio. She had the HBO show and they like, like, found each other and felt that people were, though I guess not online, but, you know, that they had, they were like, they were like bonded. Yeah. I mean, they were like trauma bonded through the experience of gaining young fame. Yeah, she talks about how she felt a tremendous sense of guilt for being famous and responded with unsustainable levels of availability and generosity that like inevitably turned to resentment at all the favors and requests that she had to field from strangers and acquaintances. The first explanation she offers, as you mentioned, is that she feels like if she didn't give away what she had been given, like all, to the poor that it would invite bad karma and be taken away from her. And the second more plausible explanation is that she didn't want to be known as a flake or a snob

or ungenerous by people talking at parties or whatnot. I could handle a lot of accusations, but the idea that I did not give wasn't one of them. She talks out how it was impossible to count all the people hitting her up, either for requests for unrealistic favors or meltdowns over perceived slights. Yeah, there's some relative by marriage who like now divorced, she says, who like made some indie movie that he like wanted her to go to. And when she wasn't like enthusiastic, like berated her and made her say sorry and like show up. I'm sure most of this is not even in the book, obviously.

it can't be, but there's probably like hundreds if not thousands of these incidents. And she says that she had made the mistake of assuming that these people were otherwise sane until they prove that they obviously weren't. She, and she observes that if you respond with like contrition to ignore

or missed asks, like if you say, I've been busy, please forgive the delay. They will always take you back. Except there's always strings attached because the minute that you're back in their good grace says you owe them something again. She talks about how she understands that other people may have a more well-adjusted relationship to fame, but she's not one of them. In another classic moment of self-awareness, she says, I wanted to have my cake and eat it to, to have this big impossible life and to be loved by everyone I met in the process.

It reminds me of this really good tweet that I saw that said, well, you know, Lena Dunham's problem is that she's a prophet who wants to be loved as an icon. And icons are loved in their time, but eventually discarded, whereas prophets are hated. in their time but eventually vindicated and you can't have it both ways. I mean she sort of is ostensibly now. She did manage to manifest it Jewishly.

But millennials in general have have this problem of wanting to be liked and caring about what others think. They want like total control with no responsibility. There's this really cute line where she... Also feministically, yeah.

I'll say, you know, men are not as afflicted. Yeah. They have more license to be like, like, um, difficult or callous or impossible. Yeah, people expect that because they're disagreeable, which is why, um, yeah, Jack Antonoff is like, I don't think anyone's, like, creepy and bad. Like, I don't think anyone's hitting like Larry David up.

I mean, obviously people hit him up for favors, but they're definitely not as like slighted. Yeah, they're like, hey, can you come to my son's bris? Like, he just has more leeway to be disagreeable. Well, because he built his reputation on it, probably in a self-protective way, partially. Yeah, there's this line where she even says, I was never even like a habitual drug user. As, you know, drugs were mainly taken to impress others. Even when you view her like chronic illness in this light, which she's actually very honest and aware about,

you realize it was like a part, partly a means for her to finally like detach and disconnect. from all of the responsibilities she had while getting the attention and sympathy that she desperately needed in a way that she felt other people couldn't call her on or guilt her for because she was sick. Which they still do. She says, I could sense that Jack felt sure that my illness was as much a matter of refusing to try as anything else. And perhaps he thought I'd found a loophole for doing exactly what I wanted to anyway, hiding in bed away from the needs and thoughts and requirements of the outside world.

And then later she acknowledges, I'd sniff this weakness in women and hated what I smelled, a pathetic choice, a desperate bid for attention and empathy while not doing anything to deserve it. There's a moment where Jenny, like, frustrated and exasperated calls Lori and says, I think this illness is in her head and Lori shuts her down, not because she disagrees necessarily,

but because she's the final boss of criticizing her own daughter, which is fair. And she resents the imposition of this other woman trying to like level or reason with her. Well, the thing about psychosomatic illness is that the body and the mind are connected. Keeps score.

The body literally keeps the score. Of course, yeah. And symptoms do manifest. that are real, even if they have psychological origins. And I'm obviously, I mean, another huge takeaway, the most horrifying part of the book is when she is taken to that doctor who fingers her and ruptures her cyst. And that's not even like her doctor, a doctor,

she chose that's a doctor she's going with with a producer from HBO for like insurance purposes because they want a second opinion because they don't trust her doctor no no because it's some like that's like a bureaucratic thing and they didn't have like an ultrasound that day and so he had to like manually feel around her cervix and like I mean that was horrible yeah yeah um but the takeaway overall is like the failure of like doctors over and over and over and the insidious is like medical intervention. Well she especially as it pertains to like women's health. Of course and she as a feminist pays a lot of lip service to that line of argument.

but it is in part something that she brings on herself, though, of course, it must be pointed out that while her illness might be partly in her head or exacerbated by like stress and inflammation, like cortisol spiking that she exposes herself to like habitually over and over again, it's no less real. Like her symptoms are real. Her suffering is real. That's the big issue with treating patients of psychosomatic disorders as a friend of mine who shall remain anonymous has pointed out. Oh.

Yeah. So it's not like a cruel moralistic judgment to point out that your psychology is obviously linked to your physiology. Sure. and that you are partly responsible for managing certain symptoms and episodes, which she's like historically bad at.

I don't think you're necessarily responsible the same way you're not like responsible for like a mental illness. And though she does eventually she kind of connects the dots with the what's it called? Eller's Stanlow syndrome.

That was a remarkable interesting foot know because I think it was a doctor friend or maybe just a educated civilian who was a woman that Jenny's ex-husband Ben had met on Hinge and had gone on a few dates with. Right, right, right. So also Jenny is like so formidable and monstrous because she's keeping, she has the succession of boyfriends, but is keeping her ex-husband on deck as like her business partner. Her ex-husband was the CEO of Lenny Letter. So it's like super incestrous. But this woman writes her and she's she sort of like dreads

it, groans. She's like, oh, like another random, um, friend of a friend. Yeah, she's like, wants something. She wants to stay in my apartment. Yeah. She wants to pitch a script for a reality show, some bullshit. And this woman is like, hey, like, she sends her like, the nicest email you'll ever get because it's simple and neutral and it wants nothing. It's just informing her. Hey, I've heard you talk about your symptoms and I've read a lot about this and maybe you have this congenital collagen disorder that makes you prone to chronic pelvic pain. Hives inflammation. Hyves inflammation.

High anxiety mimicking symptoms. And she mentions how she had done this video of her vogue where she was like bending her fingers back which I guess is also like yeah you're like hyper flexible in these ways and have like very elastic skin which is why she looks so good now. It's kept her skin. You know sometimes as Jewish congenital disorders

do you end up benefiting you in weird and perceptible ways even as they cut you down. Well it's like having act. makes you look more youthful because your skin so oily. You know, you suffer. But then there's a little bit of a payoff. But that seems real. Like that sounds like she has that.

It seems realistic. Yeah. It's a syndrome, right? Not a disease. So it's a constellation of symptoms. Right. Of unclear origins. And she has, yeah, there's that part where she gets,

she meets this like Turkish doctor at the, the endometriosis gala who's very he says that when they remove when they do the endometriosis surgery they

I forget exactly the details but it's like he's like they're just creating more scar tissue which sounds very real you know I've an illich mode yeah it's like he's like but I can perform this surgery on you know, way that will actually like alleviate your symptoms instead of like causing all these horrible new ones. Yeah, but he says, but generally like the, the Western medical establishment

will do perform all these interventions to temporarily alleviate your pain, but create more pain down the line, which is typical. That was my favorite part of the book because this guy takes a hard line against giving her a hysterectomy and says in this woo-woo new age eastern medicine way. The soul of the woman is in her uterus and everybody's going to think I'm crazy. But that's so true. It's it feels true because I don't know if any other ladies relate to this. I don't know if you relate to this, but whenever I've felt.

felt true fear or pain in my life, I feel it in the womb. I mean, like, acute stuff. Like, if I'm about to be grazed by a vehicle or somebody is like pursuing me down a dark street, that's where I feel it. It's crazy. Interesting. Yeah. I don't know why.

And it's like this kind of nagging, needling ice cream scoop feeling. well don't you think the amount of like fear and stress that lina was exposed to yeah would make sense that she would want that organ yeah ate away at her soul which is housed in the uterus yeah so true it makes sense that you'd want you'd want that thing out um um but as she details she continues obviously to have ailments even after the hysterectomy she goes on to get one and then the other

both ovaries removed as well which I yeah I'm my she continues to ovulate and then she even begins to lactate which is crazy well it was also crazy to me that she post hysterectomy having all the problems that

she does then tries to freeze her eggs and have a baby, which not the having a baby part, but the like, I mean, after all the things that happened to you, that you would trust some like fertility doctor who clearly, you know, you're going to,

they're trying to make money. Of course they're going to tell you to like freeze your eggs. But she's addicted. to the process because she wants it on her terms. In the last pages of the book, she talks about feeling. But like you couldn't, I would never like, I mean for, you know, religious reasons as well, but just like having the limited experiences that I've had even with like hormonal birth control. Yeah.

To like inject yourself with, she needs repeat. I know. To shoot yourself up with hormones. I mean, really. After all. all of us and I know she was desperate and I know that I understand psychologically. Yeah. But like that's medical malpractice.

She needs to build muscle. She does. I'm sorry. That's the number one thing. Well, what's done is done. Yeah. She means she still,

it would still benefit her. In the last page of the book, she talks about feeling jealous and derailed when confronted with reminders of motherhood. You know, her friends having babies are an article about celebrity moms, which is something that, You know, she'll never get to experience.

Yeah, she talks about ovulating and then lactating. And I was like, when is this woman like not excreting buckets of pus or vile? She even gets a tattoo that says sick. And like crucially, though, like in line with her and with millennials in general, she doesn't really care about having a child, even though she claims this is her lifelong childhood dream. And she doesn't even understand what that means. she like covets the abstraction of being a mother and dreads the hypothetical that her ex and his new partner might become parents.

And she admits all of this openly, by the way, I'm not inferring it or attributing any undue meaning to it. And it's incredibly frustrating for anyone from the outside looking in because, you know, we can see. which she can't, which is like, you know, she could have just had a baby with her first love Jack Antonoff, right? Instead of devising this like elaborate Roob Goldberg machine of misery and trauma. But that's her magic. That's the magic of Blenadonam. That's why he needs the jail time.

Because he wasted her damn time. And it was too weak to like be decisive. and proactive enough to knock her up. Yeah. Which would have alleviated her endometriosis symptoms, so they say. Uh-huh. Even if they didn't stay together. Yeah.

All good. He could have given her peace. Mm-hmm. And he made a choice to betray her with Lord. Yes. And I understand it goes both ways, you know, to defend, not even to defend, but to, you know, to see things from, again, Jack and Jenny's perspective. it's very difficult dealing with, yeah, like a voracious devouring figure in your life when you have

like practical concerns and are just trying to be happy or whatever. But Lena Dunham for all of her lying in omission cannot help but tell the truth. It always comes out one way or another. Even when she's trying to paint a pretty picture, it ends up coming out. a lot of her fans especially on the right attribute this to like some kind of subconscious drive but I think it's more like a divine force I don't think it's fully subconscious she's like too smart for that reading the last quarter of the book where she's just like dreadfully ill and spiraling out of control and like pissing and shitting and

vomiting everywhere. It reminded me of Andrea Dworkin because they're very similar types. Like Dworkin is more of an intellectual and Dunham is more of an artist. One is like more polemical. The other is more introspective, etc. They're both critics of society. But they have like a similar motivating drive. Which is food. Camille Paglia had that great line. Dwarcan pretends to be a daring truth teller but never mentions her most. obvious problem, food. No, it's just like this encompassing, consuming need to, like, inflict yourself on others. Here's another great quote by Paglia.

Dwarcan, wallowing in misery is a type that I recognize after 22 years of teaching. I call her the girl with the eternal cold. This was the pudgy, clumsy, whiny child at summer camp who was always spilling her milk, dropping her lollipop in the dirt, getting a cramp on the hike, a stone in her shoe, a bee in her hair. In college, this type, pasty, bilious, and frumpy is constantly sick from fall to spring.

She coughs and sneezes on everyone, is never prepared with a tissue, and sits sniffing in class with a roll of toilet paper on her lap. She is the ultimate teacher's pest, the morose unlovable child who never got her mama's approval and therefore demands attention at any price.

That is very harsh and unflattering, but it's so, Lena. I mean, it's so me. It cuts deep, honestly. It's, I'm like, the fuck. I mean, I'm not overweight, but I have like the, I feel like I have like the thin corollary, which is like sickly of Victorian hysteric. Yeah.

Yeah, who's like, you know, who has religious fervor. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm like, can't get out of bed. And I'm like my melancholys. taken me again. But it is just like female artistic type. Lena says our whole culture values the potential of life more than the existence of it.

And women as vessels for that life more than a sentient beings. This is kind of her pro-feminist pro-abortion argument for like getting a hysterectomy. But that's not even remotely true or defensible in any way. Like our culture is obviously like asexual and antinatalist and abortive and it actually values the life of the woman far more than the life of the child because girls around the world. It's interesting actually that seemingly in the book her healthiest relationship and the one that she feels like the least ambivalence about is. the one with Jemima Kirk, who has, yeah, a baby very young when is pregnant when they are doing the first season of girls

and then it gets pregnant again. The way that she writes about Jemima is very like tender and she does seem like a very good friend to Lena, but someone who's, I mean, because she's able to be such a good friend to Lena because she is able to be like boundary with her and not exploit her and, but is also this like kind of fertile foil. Yeah, she is. Who's like self, uh, self-assured, self-empowered.

Because she doesn't overthink. she's a woman of action, not of thought. When she gets pregnant at 23, she's like, no, okay, I guess I'll keep the baby. Guess we'll do the series. We're just going to have to tape around it. Yeah. I'm a slut. But so there's something in her, I think, that does, you know, value that mode.

Yeah, I mean, but not intellectually. I think she values, she does have an actual, like in spite of herself and all of her layers. of like fake empathy. She does have real empathy, as a lot of people have pointed out. The like legendary abortion scene between Mimi Rose and Adam, where you would think that a died in the wool, like culturally conditioned liberal like Lena Dunham,

would make the man who objects to his girlfriend getting an abortion without telling him out to be the villain. but for anybody with like, you know, a normal common sense outlook on life, he's the victim. Sure. And he's basically portrayed that way it's funny the way right winger is conservatives, how that scene constantly like resurfaces to this like weird conservative like outrage. And it's so I see this happening now also with like euphoria. Uh huh. the way like conservatives watch TV and movies like they're like documentary.

Like they can't like attribute any like theory of mind or like artistic intent. They like kind of like just like the Sydney Sweeney is like a sexy baby. They're like this is disgusting. And like yeah it's like meant to be gross on the show. And like other characters on the show are grossed out by it because it's like that's because it's like a cutting commentary on the whole the current culture yeah the whole point but there's like something like broken in the conservative mind where they like see something yeah and then like just take it as like an endorsement or like yeah it's that it's like that really funny i was going to say famous but no one actually

remembers it brad tremel line um that they uh are you know watching a movie with like an 18 wheeler crashing through a barricade on screen and duck because they think it's going to pop out of the screen and hit them. They're like, what is they? They're like Michael Bay. Obviously, like, Lena Dunham wrote that scene to be deliberately ambivalent about abortion because as much as she supports abortion from a political perspective, I think she's smart enough to recognize what a gray area it is. Yeah, she's an emotional, you know, Taurus, interestingly.

Oh, yeah. Cancer Moon. Hmm. Oh, that makes sense. Damn. Taurus kind of, you know, kind of calls the whole astrology thing in the question for me, honestly. Wait, why?

She doesn't seem like a tourist. I guess she's domestic. I guess she likes the finer. She's a home body. She likes the finer. And she's overindulgent. Yeah. All tourists are like prone to gaining weight because they can't control themselves around food or sex.

But that's not. They're like hedonists. No, I guess so. But there's not, but that's not her defining characteristic. No, it's her stubbornness. Maybe. I would have pegged her as like a water sign honestly. Yeah, she does seem kind of watery.

And that's where. Yeah. And that's where I guess the cancer wound comes. Of course, there's always something in your church. art that but she doesn't seem yeah like her predominant personality is like torus like well no i think it is because her um because she likes the finer thing well her whole brand is being like in conflict with her fame is that torresian it just earth sign right like all earth signs um are yeah analytical and paranoid and uh really huge attention

horrors, but resent the attention because they think they're above it. Right. I guess, yeah. Well, you, obviously, but I was going to say I don't have a theory of mind for earth signs because I don't have any earth in my chart. But I do. I'm highly empathic. Yeah.

Your earth sign adjacent because of your relationships with earth signs. this kind of overbearing guilt that she has about everything. It affects all of her personal relationships, but also her relationship to motherhood to money. She says, I've never been comfortable talking about how much money I make. I know a few people who are and I don't like them very much. I've never even been comfortable having money. So her relationship to money is similar to her relationship to motherhood

because her discomfort having money is that she's seen as rich, which makes other people jealous of her and it makes them think she's a bad person because, you know, in liberal and leftist circles having money

is a negative quality. It's not due to any like theoretical issue with having wealth, like it being unequal or corrupting or anything like that. And this is in sharp contrast to someone like Jenny

who has no such qualms about being greedy or ruthless and she guilts her all the time for their financial relations which are obviously like split shared because they have a business partnership. Here's another good example concerning Jenny. I don't know if you clocked on, I think it was like two pages 239 to 240. She refers to like the November 7th. 17th, 2017 state.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's very, very interesting. I was wondering to what she was alluding to so pregnantly, but refused to mention or explain outright. Well, and she, you know, she describes it as this thing that happened to her. The only thing that she feels shame for.

Yeah, she says, yeah, you know, it was so definitive in making her confront her guilt and shame that she prefers to not speak on it ever. she claims this is out of respect for the people involved. But it's obviously to cover her own ass because, you know, you can Google it. It's out in the open. Well, she knows that.

Yeah, she knows that. And she's doing it on purpose. Originally. She even says the very day that it happened. Yes. On purpose. This is such classic Lena Dunham, you know, where she's like, no, I don't, I want a baby. I don't want to be famous.

But then does something that's like exactly the opposite of what we'd do. of what you would expect a person with those priorities to have. Like she literally just has a big problem taking responsibility, taking accountability because this makes her feel monstrous. She is referring to a writer on girls. Yeah. Who was, this is 2017. So like height of Me Too.

This guy catches astray, you know. In hindsight, she really didn't need to issue this statement, which she did in conjunction with Jenny. Yes. She claims, and I believe her that she was like basically like anesthetized, like wasn't. It was like right after. She attributes all this to the intoxication and dissociation post endometrial surgery. It was in the aftermath of one of her many surgeries. Sort of implies that Jenny like basically crafted the statement.

while Lena was like incapacitated. And basically they say after a right around girls who no one remembers gets me-toed by a woman who claims he had sex with her when she was too drunk when she was 19 and he was 35. Yeah, it was some random actress. I don't know if you're familiar with her. No. No one, all of this is like dustbin of it didn't really like. make a splash in the grand scheme of things. It really...

I don't remember this particular cancellation. I can think of a few. It wasn't because it wasn't made the cancellation itself was so minor, but then the blowback that they got for making the statement where they said there are necessary changes happening. Women are speaking their truths. We stand with them. However, in this case, we have insider knowledge that says this guy, we stand with him.

He didn't do nothing. he's one of the 3% of cases. And that's where they really fucked up is saying, like, this is actually one of the 3% of cases where you don't need to believe women. Well, classic, this is like the classic lib femme playbook. Like when Bill Clinton stood accused of all his sex crimes, which he's guilty of, by the way, all the top dog feminist,

including Gloria Steinem, rallied around him because he was the Democratic candidate. They closed ranks, but this wasn't even an instance where that was so necessary, but they were just caught up in the fur, like the, it was, I can understand it, but in hindsight it was too extra and not really necessary. but all but the impulse right to express solidarity with someone you know that you have a personal relationship with is healthy yeah even noble in this day and age is correct

yeah actually and so this contributed to this was basically the defining episode I think of the falling out between Lena Dunham and Jenny Connor because Jenny, as I understand it, remained loyal to the guy, whereas Lena walked back her remarks. It seems like Jenny had ambivalent feelings about it. Well, Jenny had never had that heat on her. Yeah. It was the first time Lena had been used to being dragged through the press, the Court of Public Opinion for this and that. Jenny had never really had to experience that by virtue of being more like

behind the scenes and so this was the first time that yeah like Jenny felt the inordinate amount of stress that Lena had been subjected to for years at this point and because Jenny's a monster and a bitch but but actually I really wanted to say, it like flashed in my mind. I wanted to say that I've been a Janina and I've been a Jenny. Yeah, we all have that's the thing. It's like people. But I've never really actually been Alina, I think, in that dynamic.

I've only really been a Jenny. In what dynamic? Like in the one that she describes in the book. Oh, right. And like the overarching dynamic. not the particular situation. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Like I, yeah, I mean, in their interpersonal relationship. Right. I feel like because though I am an empath. Uh-huh. But I came away. And though Lena says kind of like in the epilogue of the book, she kind of does this thing where she's like, um,

you know, it's not genuinely. she hurt me. It's that I like allowed myself to be hurt, which is kind of this like therapeutic like, you know, taking accountability like fake thing. Kind of, but like that's not the impression you get reading the rest of the book. It's like over and over and over how much Jenny hurts her. Well, that's the thing. It's like when she sets up these, um, uh, dynamics and passages where she's issuing, um, glowing overcompensatory praise only to passive aggressively imply that actually someone else wronged her and they were the real villain

and she was the real victim. That's the part that so, again, confounding, frustrating about Lena Dunham because she's actually very intelligent and empathetic and can understand that people contain multitudes. She clearly does. Yeah. And so, okay. So obviously like, sure, I'm sure she was like. like, pilled out of her mind and in a lot of pain and, like, totally dissociating and whatnot.

But at the time, it was a completely, like, rational and voluntary move on her part that, like, can't entirely be pawned off on those things. And she should just simply take responsibility for it. Because at the end of the day, it's like, you can see that the statement as, like, an unforced error. Or you can see it as, like, a James D'more, like, attempt to, um, seek the truth and defend somebody close to them. Well, they just, they got so much, it's, you also can't, like, they got so much

blowback for it. Yeah. Of course you can argue that, and had they not. And had they not? Hypocryry. It's funny because if I recall correctly, there was like a similar cancellation surrounding her being photographed by Terry Richardson. Lena.

Yeah, who was dating Audrey Gelman at the time. They were a downtown, um, power couple for a minute. Uh-huh. And he was under fire at the height of me too, of course, for being like a rapist and a predator, which is funny because I recently like did a stroll through his old work. And it's amazing to see how much fun people were having in those photos. I know. Nobody was getting like raped or abused. Do you have that? Do you have the part about the statement? It's pages 239 to 240. Yeah. Okay, you've got it down.

Yeah. Yeah, and I remember back then people were piling on Lena for not condemning Terry because obviously, as I remember it, maybe I'm misremembering. She was like protecting the boyfriend or ex-boyfriend of her close childhood friend. Out of respect for the people involved, some of whom I care about deeply and some of whom I cared about deeply once. I will not describe this thing except to. say that it happened on November 17, 2017, which means, and I can only figure this out based on dates in hospital records and timestamps on the internet that I had only gotten home from the hospital

that morning. Therefore, how I managed to make a public statement, much less a careless, blithe, and damaging one about a subject that should only ever have been approached with full-spirited care and precision confounds me to this day. I know that Jenny had come in from Los Angeles to see me. I know that we made the statement together in response to a request for comment, and it was decided over text message only hours after I got home. I know that my mother had tried to hold on to my phone saying there was no comment needed. This isn't you, she implored me, and I wondered who it was. Maybe I thought there had been an accident. Lena Dunham had died and someone else had been reincarnated into this failing body instead of a fresh one they were promised. At this point, Jenny and I were

barely in touch, save for the intermittent text, they tried to keep appealingly casual, yet somehow together the statement was written and published, and before I even knew it was online, I was receiving messages, so many messages asking why. During my entire career, whenever something exploded online, people I knew went quiet, were tentative danced around it. Now they wrote missives asking why. Often, when I opened them, I had no idea what they were talking about. It was like waking from a dream, back into life and for a moment, having no idea where you are or what is true. Every text I got, even the kinder ones from people who knew what was happening behind the scenes and therefore how compromised I really was. Confused me. Am I awake now? Okay, am I awake now? Okay, am I awake now?

Now. I could try, would have tried if I had written this book any earlier to explain to you all of the backstory that informed the statement I don't remember writing. The specificity of the relationships, the obligations and emotions bound up in the decision to defend someone against an accusation. I had no business attempting to debunk. No clear reason to fight. No fucking right to have an opinion on. But none of that matters. Wait.

It does not materially change. The statement I don't remember writing. I mean, I believe that she. doesn't remember writing it. If she had like, I don't know. I couldn't have made a statement when I woke up out the coma. Sure, no obligation to opine. All I could have said was what time is it and why are you lying to me?

But like, did she not maybe have some inner obligation to opine given that this was a person that she probably owed some modicum of loyalty to? I was so deep in my own distress, physical, emotional, existential that it ceased to be able to imagine or invest in anyone else's empathy, the most important. quality in a writer, a woman, a friend, all of the things I once had been and had no idea if I would ever be again had left me. In a sense, this is the narcissism of fame in its purest form. Like some abstract monster in an HP lovecraft novel, the threat that had hovered over me for the last seven years had finally descended and taken me into its guts, taken the guts out of me.

I thought of what Dr. Second said about the hysterectomies. They steal a woman's soul, and I felt the last brick being placed on my tomb. I mean, incredible. I guess. I mean, beautiful, like, very beautifully written. Sure, but it's like a beautiful meandering, like sprawling apollosia for the fact that she can't take responsibility for making a mistake that was not even such a great issue in the grand scheme of things. Wouldn't have remembered it if she hadn't have put it in the book, but I understand, you know. Sorry, and what did she call the,

narcissism of fame was being not being able to empathize with other people's experiences yeah but who's she she should be empathizing with the experience of her writer or not the stated victim I mean I mean that

the real narcissism of fame is that you start to editorialize self-censor double down on your people-pleasing ways and address all the controversy. That's the narcissism of fame. It's not the lack of empathy.

I mean, I think her mother was right to say that there was no comment needed. Sure. That maybe, yeah, Jenny felt that there was something to be gained from... I don't even think that. I think she was just probably

coming to the defense of somebody in their inner sanctum. Which, yeah, again, is the normal and healthy impulse, but no comment. But she also reading it, just reading it now, like, she kind of does say, like, you know, she's not going to get into knowing which she knows, just that she shouldn't have commented on it, which I think is basically true. Sure. There was really no need to because this wasn't something that really made a splash in the grand scheme of Me Too.

Right. But it is, once again, kind of no need for comment, honestly. There's also another part where she's in L.A. being harassed and tormented by Scott Ruden because she drops out of a film project to focus on writing season two of girls and punctures her eardrum absentmindedly cleaning her ear with like one of those long medical grade Q-tips. So she has to summon her sweet sweet, where have I heard that before, friend, to drive her to the ER. And I say this with no disrespect, but obviously she's a person who has no problem unloading and trauma dumping on others and using them in moments of convenience. There's a part

where she like immediately rebounds from her breakup with her alcoholic, sensitive wigger childhood friend who she sees once every 10 years. And then discards him five months later after they've been engaged. Wow. Because she gets out of rehab and, you know, doesn't look back. And obviously, yeah, there's an argument to me that they were both using each other because they were a drug addicts and were like caught up in a lie where, as she points out, they were, you know, both so self-involved, so self-send,

or that the other one even failed to register to them. And they didn't really care about that other person's, like, a story, making sense or timeline lining up or whatever. But that's also... Because this guy was, like, a brain damage, pathological liar, alcoholic, who was constantly having seizures because he was withdrawing from alcohol. No, it was like that he would drink. and then sees when he was like withdrawing from alcohol.

She describes how three of her pregnant friends complain that she took no interest in them or their pregnancies during her rehab stint. Which again, like, it may be true that those people are being a little bit too needy and asking too much of her. But she clearly was also like reaching out to them in her moment of need or whatever. You know what I'm saying? like she's also like guilty of being a user and an abuser in her own way, which is basically intolerable for her.

The other thing that stuck out to me is like throughout her entire like years long struggle of suffering through like crippling, chronic reproductive system pain, she never once ceases sucking and fucking. I mean, right, she starts having sex with this alcoholic earlier than it is advised for her to start having sex and that causes, yeah, like more ruptures. Yeah, I think she like busts the seizures or the sutures in her cervix, the stitches. Yeah.

But it's something that psychologically she needs to do because of her relationship. relationship with Jack. Right. But it's like, you know, if you're in horrible pelvic pain, you don't let some guy like with a dirty dick, fuck you in the ass while you're on drugs. That's, you know. Sure. But you understand.

Like I get how realistically that can and does happen. But it is inconsistent with her account. It's like also stated versus revealed preference yet again. There's the part where she admits to cheating on Jack. Well, that's with Nick, right? Yeah, yeah. But it's like also one of those classic end of the relationship moves women always pull to force the issue. Cheat to stay.

In her case, kind of to leave. Sheet to leave. Women cheat to leave, men cheat to stay. And it barely registers as like true infidelity because they already both have one foot out of the door. They're more or less separate. rated. So yeah, like, again, so what was shocking to me about the cheating incident wasn't that

she like committed adultery against her living boyfriend. It's that she got like, dick down, pounded in her ailing cervix by some random drug addict off the street. Homeless guy. Yeah. Classic Lena though. That's why we love it. Sure.

That's, you know, that's, you know, that. That's, Yeah. That's why she made the big bucks. Yeah. She says the events of the last six months were almost comical in their volume. The dive bombing of my career inadvertently or utterly with purpose depending on your perspective. I didn't yet have a perspective.

The loss of my fertility, the end of my relationship. This wasn't even to mention the events of the last six years, which I didn't have the energy to process. Poor thing. She is like a tumbleweed or, or, you know, bowling ball by her account that just kind of rolls through life. Tramps like us, baby. We were, like crazy stuff just keeps happening to me.

I guess my favorite self-revelation or self-insight that she has is that she says, I had never known whether my own propensity for tears is a weakness or a form of manipulation. Why not both? Relatable moment. But it's one of the qualities I trust least in myself. It seems especially damning that I can also vomit on command. You know, real? The Chinese finger trap of the matter is that if she exercises, if she were to exercise some like control, discipline, restraint over her personal life,

she would cease to be such a great artist and such a good professional. Sure. That's kind of like the rub, yeah. And we're indebted to her for her struggle because it is generous. And not.

I mean, not interpersonally, but like as an artist. It's not like generous the people closest to her, but it's generous for, you know, to the audience. To the world. Well, yeah, but also not to the degree that she expects people to sit court side with her without unleashing this torrent of criticism and insults. Of course they're going to do that. You invited it. What, from the public?

Yeah. And of course, most of it is going to be based on, like, editorialized or fake bullshit that, like, the media. She really set the record straight on killing that dog. I know. Well, that's, she got a lot of flack for that. And the way she tells it, I'm like, for sure. Oh, is that Bowie? Yeah.

Remember that, though? That was like people were like, she's a narcissist. and a bitch she killed this dog and it's like look yeah I'm an animal lover but I don't really give a shit about her relationship to her pets or their welfare whatever

I mean that dog had to go that dog was sick yeah that's why she got entangled with Bowie in the first place because she saw herself in him or her I don't know the sex of the dog good girl

yeah um yeah what was it that we were saying that even if you don't you can ask for it and not deserve it? Oh yeah. One of my favorite lines. It's like, yeah, women ask for it all the time, which doesn't mean that they deserve it. Right. Yeah.

Women are always going around asking for it. And she did in a way, but she just, it was on, it's, I do, I did come away from the book, I guess. I felt, I guess I felt this way prior. Uh-huh. But she had sort of like been sacrificed on some altar. Uh-huh. She's a Gerardian scapegoat. Yeah, exactly.

Of like millennial feminism. Uh-huh. And like she ultimately paid the price. Mm-hmm. And she, you know, gained from it in some material ways. Uh-huh. but that ultimately it wasn't, I mean, remains to be seen. She's still pretty young.

Yeah, she has like a life and career ahead of her. And, you know, as Richard Kern once told me when I was doing my self-deprecating schick and being like, well, he said, well, you know, I listen to your podcast and you're always making fun of yourself for being old, which is sweet, you know, sweet because he's much older than me. So he views like 40 year old women as young. Right. Though I'm surprised by that because, you know,

because he's seen much younger. Yeah, his preferences for much younger. I should be like a clapped out old bag in his eyes. He was like 40, that's young. That's like when you start your life for the first time. That's nice. It was honestly like very sweet and inspiring. That's sweet to hear.

Yeah, yeah, sure. But like that applies to her as well. there's no reason that she can't have like a second or third or fourth act. Even something outside of like writing memoirs. Well, yeah, she's going to keep making work. Yeah, like movie shows, whatever. She has. Camping.

Yeah. Too much. Uh-huh. I watched some of that show. Mm-hmm. Sharpstick. I actually thought was amazing. I should watch that, yeah.

It's really good. And she's in it herself. is like, it really is like grappling with like infertility and it's a very, very interesting movie. But I think she's got another girls in her. Yeah. Maybe not with quite the like. Well, they should just remake girls, but like 20 years later. About 40 girls.

When they're all older women trying to have relationships with younger men making it into media trend. They're like, girls, let's assemble a round table panel for the New York Times or NPR. where we talk about this hot new trend taking America by storm. Well, that's kind of what sex in the city was. Sure. Yeah. But she could circle back.

Well, I like how she says. Girls was kind of like what if sex in the city was young. Now what if girls was old. Well, she does say, we call it hags. Yeah.

And it's about four women who are aging in New York City. And the. trials and tribulations. I'm being old as five. Yeah. They're like, no, you don't understand. All these young hot men want us because we're more desirable than ever. We're sophisticated.

We're experienced. We have our own bag. It's not because they can nut inside of us indiscriminately with a much lowered risk of pregnancy. And because they're broke. They're broke as fuck. So they need it. But I did like how she described girls as sex in the city,

but for women in a much less established. I mean, that's phase in her life. And I also, I should read her pitch for girls, which is amazing. Because sex in the city was a very formative show. for me in a way as like a teen

but they seemed like impossibly old yeah you're gonna say aspirational but they're no I was like this is about like people I can't even imagine me in this fucking old and like wow I guess Miss Havisham was only 40 I assumed she was like 70 well people love to point out how in the reboot of sex in the city and just like that they're the same age

that like the golden girls were but they're all like bogged like plastic surgeries and like stunted they're not like wholesome old ladies go habitating they're like still like doing their thing in the city

I guess and just like that is like the hags yeah so we don't need a new we need it yeah we need the way girls was to sex in the city we need a new Lena Dunham Bencher that's parallel to like and just like that. A girl's reboot.

That's like in between. We just need shows about women at every age. Yes. That's what I want. Preferably the age I am. Yeah, especially at 35 to 40. Yeah. When you're more attractive

and desirable than ever, these young girls, they have nothing on us. They got nothing, except for smooth skin. Much on her body. Less emotional baggage. Higher fertility. Here's her best for girls.

These girls are overeducated and underemployed, sure that they're too smart for their positions as assistants, nannies, and waitresses, but not necessarily motivated enough to prove it or even do their jobs well enough to advance. They have that mix of no-it-all entitlement and scathing self-deprecation that is the mark of all great Jewish comedians and many 24 year old women with liberal arts degrees. They have varying degrees of ambition but have been raised

to achieve. They know they want to be successful long before they know what they want to be successful at. So true, Queen. So true. Also reading the book the whole like Adam Driver

Spin Zone. Oh yeah. Headline kind of stuff that people are doing where she's like, she's me too. him for being abusive and it's like no she's actually doing what she's always done which is like describing a character in a nuanced way and like from her perspective but one that's capable of being like empathetic and universalist i mean it's not like obviously he's a male actor of course it's going to be kind of like unhinged and like borderline abusive or whatever like right but like but reading the book you don't come away with this impression that he was like

her tormentor her rapist yeah Jenny's the villain. Right. Yeah. Doing a side scene with my rapist. No, well, as usual, the retard right saw that headline and made it like either really thought or made it seem like Lena Dunham authored the headline, which that's also how the sausage is made.

That's like how media outlets get viral content because they write like rage bait headlines. Yeah. Yeah, like Lena Dunham says Adam Driver through a chair. Yeah, she says a lot of things. Lena Dunham said Adam Driver ruptured her sis on set. To me, HBO the real villain, Jack Antonoff, and Jenny. Jenny, and maybe Judd Apatow. Chen Abito kind of gets off unscathed.

But he didn't, you know. Sure, yeah. Whatever, he's doing his thing. No, Jenny's the real villain. In her life. Yeah. For sure. But charitably,

again, I don't know why I'm like... She really loves these J's. I don't know why I feel compelled to like defend Jenny. And not even really defend her just like... Well, yeah. Well, because she's a person or the perspective too. And yeah, and she's clearly like the monster in Lena's life. Uh-huh.

But we're all the monster in someone's life. Right. Like, Lena's the monster in Jack Antis. Offs life. He could pen a memoir, I'm sure. Well, she, Jenny and Jamima are both shadow selves of Lena. That are like,

unconstructed or unconstituted or whatever. What's the word they use? Kind of like, um, right, Jenny, she's not like the devouring mother. She's like the unavailable mother.

Uh-huh. And then Jamima's sort of her like, um, fertile muse. Uh-huh. Yeah, like fertility figure or whatever, yeah. And then check out's enough should be in jail.

But, you know, we all inflict all sorts of pain on each other. I get it. Uh-huh. That's the big takeaway. Yeah. That it's a human centipede of pain. Life is pain. Fame is pain.

Uh-huh. No one's really got it that good. Pain is a fat circle that leads to weight gain. So true. Yeah. Yeah, nobody has that good. Everybody's kind of unhappy in their own way. And constantly struggling with their weight.

She does. I looked when she was quite thin in 2017. Yeah, I know. of course, it's like you look back on photos of celebs and also yourself and you're like, wait, I was actually pretty cute and thin. There's some girl, dystopian GF had a good take on Twitter today about how, you know, there's this trend that people are finally reporting on that

younger women, Zumats are more radicalized against men than ever. They really hate men. Again, I don't know if this is like stated versus revealed preference, blah, blah, blah. But, well, it's another weird study. Yeah,

or there's like another study that like women are more patriarchal and oppressed than ever. And it's unclear if there's like a selection bar or samples like, blah, but she, she makes this point that like,

you know, big if true, but it was really feminism itself that rushed women headlong into the sexual revolution and into hookup culture, into casual sex, which is what really makes them miserable

and unhappy, because they want to lock it down. And in response to that, they've taken to blaming men who have merely adjusted and adapted to the new sexual mores through non-commitment and situationships. But the sexual revolution would have happened

if men hadn't facilitated it. Sure, but like the point that she makes is like well taken because it's like, you know, they're blaming the patriarchy, which actually protected them. for the ills of feminism, right? You know, as is often the case with, like, progressive activism of any sort.

And Lena Dunham is obviously, like, amazing because she embodies both the folly and the hypocrisy, but also the power and achievements of millennial feminism. Right. Like, she is the, she is millennial feminism incarnate. And as it turns out, it's actually much more complex and nuance than anyone in the media gives it credit for. Yeah.

Even though it seems like strident and shrill on the face of it. I mean, it's just unfair that she got so much blowback and suffered so much when she was a pioneer. and then, you know, people like Emerald Fennell. Right. Really kind of get no hate even though low-key, she's kind of fatter. Yeah. And also way less talented and totally derivative.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm telling Lena Dunham just needs to build muscle. Okay. I swear to God, just she needs to lift weights. It'll help her so much. I know she can't now. She had to take hormone blockers.

I know, I know. But it wasn't, you know, that, I don't feel like that was an option. I mean, at some point it was. And she was doing the Tracy Anderson workouts. Yeah, I guess so. She tried. But then, you know, estrogen is the stress hormone. on.

Well, she didn't try hard enough. But, you know, I mean, I think you're right. That is like, it is. It'd be nice if we could all build muscle. Sure. Yeah. It is unfair to her personally, that she was so maligned. Scapego.

But I think it's only fair in the cosmic sense. It couldn't have been any other way. Because that's where her true, like, role in purpose becomes its clearest. It's Gerardian. Christ-like. Not to be blasphemed with. But, you know, we all. We all did it, Talina.

Mm-hmm. Not individually, but collectively. Yeah. Like, she was. She was totally scapegoated. Mm-hmm. And she suffered for our sins. And, well, she was scapegoated

because she reflected. or sins back at us. So she had to go. She had to be nailed to the cross. And what a heavy cross it was. I mean, I'm happy she's, the redemption arc is

good. Mm-hmm. And it is inspiring. Mm-hmm. And I wish her well. Same. See you in hell.

See you and hell. Thank you.