Lena Dunham Dares Ya

How dare Lena Dunham appear so often in the nude. How dare she be Vogue’s February cover girl. How dare she, such an average looking young woman, with a pear shape and thighs that touch, indulge in a weekend of hot fictional sex with a man as close to the platonic ideal as one Patrick Wilson. 

Monday mornings, as I read through the endless commentary surrounding the previous night’s Girls episode, I’m saddened by all the naked vitriol I find leveled at someone I find to be a talented, honest, and very funny young woman. In this Internet-run culture we live in everyone who has ever had an opinion now has a platform on which to share it. We have an abundance of free speech, and that’s great. It’s unfortunate, though, that such speech is so often laced with mindless judgement and flat out contempt. 

I can think of no other explanation than the fact that Ms. Dunham is young, a woman, and not an acceptable size 2 woman at that. Would Girls be on the receiving end of so much hate had Lena Dunham not cast herself a the main character, but rather had the actress Alison Williams - tall and athletic, model-thin with long shiny hair and big blue eyes - be the axis around which the three other girls turned? Is Dunham’s greatest overstep the fact not that she not only writes, produces, and directs, her own television show, but that she stars in it too and gets naked frequently, her love handles and fleshy, tattoo-covered back on full display? These are all questions I don’t necessarily have answers to, but ones I think, as a culture, we should be thinking about. Not why Lena Dunham thinks she has the right to such displays, but why they bother us so deeply. 

Such debate reminds me of those studies which detail how the more power women obtain in our culture the more weight they lose - their bodies literally shrinking to make the growth of their newfound power more palatable. And then there's Lena Dunham.  She has great creative power while looking completely normal, like one of us.  And unlike so many stars of the big and small screen, once she entered the public lexicon she did not start losing weight, did not conform to the ideal. There weren't suddenly tabloid photos of her going to the gym and drinking kale smoothies, photos intimating that she is better than you. Instead she chopped off her hair, wore a canary yellow dress to an awards show that most young starlets wouldn't be caught dead in, and sat naked on a toilet for an opening sketch on the Emmys telecast. Being funny, as well as very much herself, has remained her top priority. One might even call this her very own personalized brand. But as branding goes it is surely a much healthier example for young women to follow than that of so many others out there.

While she and current It actress, Jennifer Lawrence, occupy opposite spectrums of such debate - Ms. Lawrence being witty and outspoken, but still more traditionally pretty and glamorous, leading lady ready - it is interesting how there has been a recent backlash to Ms. Lawrence as well. Articles proclaiming we are being punk'd, that Ms. Lawrence's honesty and "realness," those very things we applauded one year before, are actually part of her act. That she has overtaken the mantle from last year's most hated actress, Anne Hathaway, in her too carefully orchestrated awards acceptance speeches and red carpet appearances. Really, all these three entertainers have in common is that they are females in the spotlight. Meanwhile, Justin Bieber can drink and drive, take police on a wild car chase, but hey it's all good - boys will be boys, right? But please Lena, Jennifer, stop being so real. It's making us uneasy. And really, how dare you. 

God(dess) is a DJ

I was reading an article this morning about the dearth of women in the world of professional DJing (see below) and what struck me was how tired I am of seeing such statistics. It feels as though a good more than half of the pieces I read focusing on women tend to, in some way, be about the way women are either failing to catch up to men or are making strides, however incremental. How certain industries are notoriously sexist….ahem, tech. How some tech guy thought it was a good idea to throw a Halloween party called "Hookers and Hackers." Take a moment, let that one wash over you. Yeah, I know.

Every human being on this planet was grown inside a woman. Most of them were then pushed through a vagina - not the most pleasant experience. After that many were fed by milk produced in their mother's body, delivered through the mighty delivery system of the nipple. How then to make sense of the notion that we are the weaker sex. The sex always playing catch up, being dominated, making less money, muttering the word 'sorry' far more than ever warranted (something I am annoyingly guilt of), timidly raising a hand in class when we know full well the answer. How does this happen? It's insidious really. I was raised to always speak my mind, to believe I could do or be anything, same as my brothers. And yet…just the other night my parents were over for dinner and I asked my mother for a recipe, mentioning to her that I had recently started cooking more. Growing up, my mother could most often be found in the kitchen, food always being something she both delighted in and somewhat defined herself by (and there was never any question in my house about whose domain was whose). At about ten my brother started taking an interest in cooking too and would join my mother among the pots and pans. I never did. I found it boring and would much rather be reading. These days, it just so happens it is a skill I both want to improve upon and am finding a growing satisfaction in.

Now my father's response to my query to my mother went something like this: "You know where the kitchen is?" I let it pass, knowing he meant it as a joke. But of course, as in most jokes, there is an underlying truth being voiced. I recognized the judgement, the sense that my earlier disinterest in cooking was viewed as a lack, a form of laziness, not very female-like. So I suppose that's how it starts, with an inherent belief about how girls should be;  cooks who take care, the feeding of others a prime motivation to them. He had no problem with my brother wanting to cook, which is a step. My not wanting to? A wee bit trickier. Of course, don't even get me started on the fact that most world famous chefs are male.

And as for women DJ's, all I can say is I'm personally buoyed by how many brilliant DJ's orbit my world, some of these DJ's happen to be XX, some XY. These women bring it just as hard and make you feel it just as much, as their male counterparts. They radiate such a powerful beauty behind those decks not because they are showing a lot of skin or sporting the perfect pout, but because they are so fully inhabiting themselves and living their passion.

Oh, and that Hookers and Hackers party? No one showed up. Progress? Incremental.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/arts/music/women-edging-their-way-into-the-dj-booth.html?ref=music&_r=0