Lena Dunham Addresses the ‘Insane’ Obsession Over the ‘Shape’ of Her Body: ‘I Can’t Say I Was… ‘
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Lena Dunham has been pretty vocal about her weight ever since she entered the spotlight. The Girls creator got candid again about her body and the negative reactions she received when she was on the show.
Girls aired on HBO from 2012 to 2017, and she starred as the 20-something year old Hannah Horvath living in New York. Dunham expressed how it was difficult to see the comments about her weight and body. “I expected that people would have a response to the kind of sex the show was depicting or the level of nudity, but the idea that my body, the shape of my body, would become such a hotbed for discussion? It was insane,” she recalled to The Times.
“I can’t say I was never rocked, but I’m lucky enough that my thing has never been looking at a picture of myself and picking myself apart or feeling tortured about how I looked—it’s just not my area,” Dunham continued.
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Last year, she also told The New Yorker that the backlash she received on Girls had caused her to make the decision to not be the star of her new project Too Much. “Physically, I was just not up for having my body dissected again,” she told the magazine. “I have been in Hollywood at every size. I have been a sample size, I have had my body change because of life, illness, aging, menopause. And it is merciless wherever you are.”
Dunham also revealed that she doesn’t believe that body positivity hasn’t gotten better since Girls ended. “I wish I could say yes, but I really don’t,” she told Variety. “I think we had this moment: Body positivity was here, and then it was gone. I obviously am not critical of anybody’s choice, whether it’s to use Ozempic — people should be allowed to have whatever body they feel comfortable in. But we cannot pretend that the bodies people want aren’t influenced, and we can’t claim it’s always for health reasons and not for aesthetic reasons.”
Dunham addressed her weight gain and the mean comments she received shortly after her wedding to Luis Felber in 2021. “Of course weight loss can be the result of positive change in habits, but guess what? So can weight gain,” she wrote in an Instagram post. “The pics I’m being compared to are from when I was in active addiction with undiagnosed illness. In the four years since I’ve gotten sober and begun my life as someone who aspires toward health and not just achievement.”
Dunham became sober in 2018 after she previously discussed her struggles with substance abuse. She’s also had a fierce battle with several diagnoses such as endometriosis, fibromyalgia, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, and a hysterectomy that left her in “the greatest pain” she’d ever experienced.
Her own experiences have also made her protective of her Too Much cast, which includes Megan Statler, Emily Sharpe, and Emily Ratajowski. “If anybody has anything to say about any of my actors— I keep my mouth shut on most things these days but try a b—-. I’m not playing around here,” she told the outlet. “It’s the only time that I’m going to be taking my hoops out, ready to fight.”
