Ever Wonder What Would Happen if a Conservative Interviewed Lena Dunham? Try Misogyny.
The Media Research Center’s Dan Joseph “goes where no conservative man has ever gone before,” (in the words of Chicks On The Right), in this fake interview, and what follows should not surprise any sane person at all.
Joseph: I’m actually surprised you agreed to this interview Ms. Dunham considering how much you despise -
Dunham: American Republicans?
Joseph: Exactly, but you agreed to it anyway. Why would you do that?
Dunham: Because I have…uh…problems.
Joseph: Clearly. So as a thirty something straight male, I’ve never seen the show Girls. What is it about?
Dunham: My nakedness.
Joseph: I think everyone remembers the first time they saw you with no clothes on.
Dunham: It was a painful public event.
Joseph: Interestingly, the psychiatry industry has boomed since that happened.
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Joseph: Why would you want to be associated with a show that’s so god awful?
Dunham: I love the snacks.
Joseph: They have snacks on the set?
Dunham: Uh…french fries. I eat french fries for breakfast, at two in the afternoon yesterday …
Joseph: Mmmmm….
Dunham: I really love to eat tacos, and…the list goes on and on.
Joseph: Have you ever eaten a vegetable?
Dunham: I have never had that.
Joseph: Just like the junk food, huh…
Dunham: This roll of fat on my stomach is evidence.
Now here is what Dunham was really talking about when she said “this roll of fat on my stomach is evidence,” in full context. Keep in mind that it was Andrew Breitbart, of all people, who once said “context is everything”:
Jian Ghomeshi: There’s a lot of revelations here. I mean there’s a lot of open, candid stuff here. You just said a moment ago - the lists of food were the most embarrassing?
Dunham: I think there’s something so intimate about listing what you ate and revealing the pathology around food, and also so much of my public image has been about a woman who doesn’t care what people think about my body, and so to admit in the pages of the book that I went through a phase where every almond that I put in my mouth was recorded felt like an inconsistency in my personal politics, and that was stressful.
Ghomeshi: So you fear being seen as a hypocrite?
Dunham: When I was writing that, I was like, “I am a hypocrite,” because I’m the one who’s going around saying, “you don’t need to be on a diet, you can wear the body that you have proudly,” and here I spent nine months drinking Ex-Lax tea and eating quarter portions of macrobiotic food, and then shaming myself and - but the thing that’s comforting is how many other women have gone, “that is my experience with food,” or have gone, “that is my experience with sex,” and it makes the world feel smaller. In some way, this is all a selfish exercise to make me feel less alone (laughs).
Ghomeshi: I mean it feels less like hypocrisy when you’re being so open about something that’s difficult, right?
Dunham: Well that’s great to hear. I mean that was the most private document that exists in my computer. I did not write that list of food - consumed food items - for a reader, I wrote it for myself in a supercharged period in my life. It was like, my movie had just come out, I was starting a pilot, and I was like, “Am I supposed to undergo this massive change?” I never imagined that I would have any kind of life in “Hollywood,” and then I wondered, “Am I supposed to undergo some massive shift and become the most beautified version of myself?” Because I think the best way I can explain it is that we have such a focus as a culture on will power and being, you know, the slimmest, most toned, most self actualized, the most Zen, and when you don’t have a body that fits the norm, you feel like your failings as a person are being presented outwardly. I was like, this roll of fat on my stomach is evidence that “I’m never going to be serious enough, I’m never going to have enough will power, I’m never going to be strong enough, I’m too lazy,” and letting go of that was really big for me.