By ROSIE WATERLAND
Apparently Lena Dunham is fat.
Lena Dunham, the lead actress in hit US TV series Girls, seems to have become some sort of poster-girl for fatties because of her shocking decision to be on television and not look like a model at the same time.
She has a normal body (as in, one you’d see walking down the street, not down the runway), and in TV, anything less than model-thin is considered obese.
Therefore, according to many critics, fans and those who just feel the need to comment, she has become ‘a hero to fat people’.
But she’s not my hero. She’s not my poster-girl. There is no universe in which Lena Dunham should be considered a ‘hero’ for fat people. Because Lena Dunham is not fucking fat. Not even close.
She is my hero in so many other ways. She’s smart, hilarious and talented. She’s achieved the career of my dreams and at 26, she’s less than a month older than me. Girl’s got skill.
But every time I hear her referred to as some sort of ‘champion for big girls’, my heart sinks a little. Because if she’s considered fat – the absolute exception to the rule when it comes to someone being allowed on a TV show that doesn’t have obesity as the running ‘we’re acknowledging the literal elephant in the room’ gag (Mike and Molly, Drop Dead Diva, Fat Actress…) – then we have a pretty messed up perspective of what being ‘fat’ actually means.
Does she look like what 99% of other actresses in the entertainment industry look like? No. She has a healthy body that hasn’t been dieted and toned like her life depends on it. She has flesh that doesn’t display her ribs like they’re some kind of trophy. I completely appreciate how out of place that makes her on television and I think that means we need many more like her.
Top Comments
She really is fat. And not funny.
Telling people that being fat makes them worthless and that the only way to gain worth is to lose weight and then telling them exactly how to do it despite the fact that people have different body types and genetics and predispositions and etc and then having said person realize how hard it is to lose weight and maintain it (nearly impossible for large sums of weight loss) and become discouraged and have no self esteem to fall back on because that self esteem now relies upon appearance...you can't take care of yourself if you don't love yourself, and you can't love yourself if you've been socialized to place all worth on appearance and your appearance does not match what society advertises as beautiful and "healthy." I don't think most people aspire to be fat, but the reason that is even a concern is because for women in this society, somehow being a role model is all about looks (funny how the media shapes our everyday thoughts). In the future, I hope that fat women, thin women, women in between, women of color, disabled women, women of all religious backgrounds and nationalities, lesbians, trans women, queer women, short, tall, etc, ALL sorts of women can be role models, and they can all be beautiful but they do not have to be, and when that time comes I hope that finally people realize that a woman can be a role model and no one has to want to look like her to want to be like her. I hope in the future girls and women look up to an ugly fat woman because she is confident and intelligent and has a powerful career, or a disabled woman who shares how she loves her life, etc--I don't think people will ever choose to be disabled, but many people can be inspired by the lives of disabled people and truly admire them and look up to them, why can't we do that with fat people? At present, it's because fat people only amount to how they look in society right now...so admiring a fat woman somehow amounts to wanting to be fat yourself (which is not shameful anyway, people can choose to have whatever body pleases them for their own life). Get mad at the food industry for poisoning our food supply or get mad at the media for giving most people a body image complex and disordered eating. People are fat for a variety of reasons, but most people do not choose to be fat, not because it is gross or bad, but because no one would choose to be discriminated against and dehumanized. Funny enough, shaming people doesn't make them thinner, if it did, everyone would be thin; I think it tends to do the opposite. Blame the dieting industry for creating these things which ruin metabolisms and self esteems everywhere, blame magazines for only representing a certain type of woman, blame movies for showing men of all sorts of body types having romantic or sexual relations with women of just one body type. If you are very vehemently against a group of people, whether it be an ethnicity or religious group or a body type, chances are you are speaking through the medium of brainwashing via socialization and not a voice of "reason" or "intelligence" and certainly not a voice of "compassion." I challenge you all to try to be compassionate, it's not so easy, but I think it's even more worthwhile than attempting to "perfect" the body you have.