Girls, Girls, Girls

You guys, I feel that if I see another headline or photo that includes Lena Dunham, I'm going to shove a pencil into my eyeball. I'm not sure if I'm tired of the conversation that surrounds her or what I think is a whiny character on a vapid show: Girls. In my opinion, there's nothing to that show. Maybe I'm old and what twentysomethings are doing is just uninteresting at this point. Maybe they or their problems or worries just seem silly or light because as you get older, the world gets so much heavier.

I don't know.

I appreciate, at the very least, the conversation she's helped to stir about women and women's bodies and what's beautiful. I think it's essential that she's the star of a show and she's not Hollywood perfect. I think it's important that she shows her body and isn't self conscious about it. But I think when you see anyone that naked that often on TV, it just gets old. A little here and there might be more productive. I mean, that constant nakedness still feels like objectification since it's TV and we don't know her. She's just the girl who's always naked on TV. I know far less about her personality than I do about how her body looks.

I think plenty of un-Hollywood people find her attractive. I don't know that she has anything to prove, unless she's trying to compete in the fashion or media world. And maybe she is. After all, she's on the cover of Vogue. And you've heard about that, right? You've heard about how Jezebel offered $10,000 to anyone who might provide unretouched photos from her Vogue shoot?

Well, they got them. Click here to see all of the photos and the Jezebel article.

I had a male friend, who once told me that if I'm comparing myself to women I see in magazines, I'm crazy and deserve every ounce of grief that may cause me. At the time, I thought he just didn't understand because he was a guy. But now, I think he's completely right. The women in magazines or on TV and film are either retouched or have had plastic surgery or a ton of help in looking the way they do. It's not real or natural. We, as women, would be crazy to compare ourselves to such a ridiculous fantasy. I see a dramatic difference in the way women present themselves in Baltimore vs. Los Angeles. It's huge. But it took some serious growing up or maturity to be able to separate myself from women in Hollywood and magazines.

There are too many young women or girls who see that stuff--those retouched images, which are, in fact, lies, and compare themselves to something that's not real. For this reason, I think it sucks that Lena Dunham, someone who is supposed to be standing up for real women, agreed to be in Vogue a publication that would undoubtedly reduce her hips and waist, lift her bustline, lengthen her neck and narrow her jawline and shoulders.

In any case, whether she's on Vogue or Girls or whatever else, I think her message is conflicted. And I can't get away from it, even at my age. So here I am contributing my two sense to the sensationalized conversation.

What do you guys think?

via Vogue.com