Not That Kind of Girl is available for purchase on Amazon, IndieBound and at Urban Outfitters.
Lena Dunham is my older cousin who’s lived and experienced and taught me how to dye my hair in the sink and told me it’s okay to wear sweatpants for a week if that’s what makes you feel better.
(Lena Dunham’s author photo)
The first time I saw the show HBO Girls, I could quite literally feel my eyes rolling so hard that I thought they might fall out of my head. I was never able to bring myself to appreciate it; I found the characters irritating and self-obsessed, even though that was relatively the purpose, and I wanted to gouge my eyes out. I continued to watch a few more episodes, with a kind of sadistic pleasure, enjoying the sound of my own voice complaining about every character and plot line. My grudge against the show deepened when a Buzzfeed quiz told me I’m most like Adam. Who would want to be Adam? Not me, that’s for sure. To me, Lena Dunham—the creator of the show, which she also directs, produces and stars in—was another exhausting millenial-type.
(Adam Driver as Adam Sackler, in Girls)
It was thus with great trepidation that I decided to read her memoir, Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She’s “Learned”. It was the cover of the book that spoke to me—the black and pink font looked reminiscent of self-help manuals from the late 80s, the kind that are tattered and dogeared and laying in the corner of your local library’s book sale. I was torn between my desire to ignore Lena Dunham and my curiosity. Curiosity ended up getting the best of me.
I finished the book in two days. It’s highlighted and underlined and marked up. I found myself nodding in agreement, and actually laughing out loud, to the point where onlookers passed by me with worried expressions.
As a 19-year-old college student, it may at times be difficult to relate to a successful, 28-year-old writer, yet I still found myself remembering back to my embarrassing middle school years (the “dark ages,” as I refer to them) as Dunham told me about hers. This is part of Dunham’s talent—she shares her own awkwardness in an effort to make you remember yours, and she does so successfully.
One part that stood out to me was in an essay about falling in and out of love: “Life is long, people change, I would never be foolish enough to think otherwise. But no matter what, nothing can ever be as it was. Everything has changed in a way that sounds trite and borderline offensive when recounted over coffee. I can never be who I was. I can simply watch her with sympathy, understanding, and some measure of awe. There she goes, backpack on, headed for the subway or the airport. She did her best with her eyeliner. She learned a new word she wants to try out on you. She is ambling along. She is looking for it.” I had to step away after I read this bit, and think. She gets it, I thought to myself.
“I am twenty years old and I hate myself.” This is the opening line of the book, and from here it becomes immediately clear that Dunham will live up to her reputation of unabashed honesty, candidness, and chronic “oversharing”. The memoir is a series of personal essays, ranging from topics like her childhood phobias and anxieties, encounters with different therapists, uncomfortable college experiences and summers at camp. Her writing style is relatable, giving you the feeling that she’s your best friend, and the two of you are in your bedroom at some ungodly hour, watching throwback *NSYNC videos and letting all your thoughts spill out—even the painfully awkward ones.
A standout line from the introduction is proof of why so many are hooked to her show, to her persona, to her openness: “There is nothing gutsier to me than a person announcing that their story is one that deserves to be told, especially if that person is a woman.” She is unfiltered in relating her tales, almost proud to share them in her refreshingly revealing voice, hoping to inspire in the way that she was inspired by voices like Nora Ephron, one of the people to whom the book is dedicated. Dunham offers her own experiences not as advice or a “how-to” guide, but more with the hope that there is someone out there who can nod along and relate, recalling their own cringeworthy memories. She talks to you not from a high horse of worldliness, but in a way that says “Hey, we’ve all been there, am I right?”
In some stories, it seemed like the young Lena Dunham was only doing things to write about them. She refers to herself as an unreliable narrator, an opinion shared by her younger sister Grace, who used to tell her that she exaggerates stories to sound more exciting to adults at parties. This is a trait that Dunham seems to have held onto in her adulthood, with a few anecdotes making her seem like a precocious, attention-seeking child, even as an 18-year-old woman. In fact, in the best essay, Dunham writes about Grace, and how she grew up to be a gifted writer: “When she writes, which isn’t often, I get insanely jealous of the way her mind works, the fact that she seems to create for her own pleasure and not to make herself known.” Dunham is clearly someone who writes and creates to make herself known, something which can be unappealing and slightly off-putting, but has lent to her success.
(Dunham as Hannah Horvath in Girls)
Despite my reservations, I felt slightly disappointed when it ended. I wanted to hear more, I wanted her to keep talking to me. Many critics have complained about her overly personal nature, but while Dunham truly does tell-all, she does so in a very structured way. She reveals what she wants to—which is still quite a bit—and narrates carefully. In one of her better essays, she talks about all the heinous men in Hollywood she’s encountered, and the things they’ve said to her or expected from her. The thing is, she doesn’t name names. “I can’t wait to be eighty,” she writes, “so I can name names. Delicious, vengeful names. And I won’t give a s**t about doing battle with someone’s estate because I’ll be eighty and, quite possibly, the owner of seventeen swans.” Dunham’s talent as a writer is that by setting you up with the expectation that she’ll reveal everything, when she doesn’t tell you the details that you’re nosily craving, you feel slightly let down and shamefully curious.
Lena Dunham is the unapologetic and successful woman that you want to be, all while telling you about the time she wrote a celibacy vow on a piece of paper and ate it. Her journey from weird, curious kid to wandering college student to having her own HBO show at age 25 is impressive. Reading along as she tells you her embarrassing moments gives her a dose of reality that convinces you she’s still the same girl who aggressively smelled her dead grandmother’s comb—just slightly more successful.
(Dunham as Hannah Horvath)
Lena Dunham is the older cousin we all need who tells you to never ever be ashamed of yourself. And to never ever apologize for who you are.