Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She’s “Learned”
Lena Dunham, acclaimed writer-director-star of HBO and Sky Atlantic’s ‘Girls’ and the award-winning movie ‘Tiny Furniture’, displays her unique powers of observation, wisdom and humour in this exceptional collection of essays.“If I could take what I’ve learned and make one menial job easier for you, or prevent you from having the kind of sex where you feel you must keep your sneakers on in case you want to run away during the act, then every misstep of mine was worthwhile. I’m already predicting my future shame at thinking I had anything to offer you, but also my future glory in having stopped you from trying an expensive juice cleanse or thinking that it was your fault when the person you are dating suddenly backs away, intimidated by the clarity of your personal mission here on earth. No, I am not a sexpert, a psychologist, or a dietician. I am not a mother of three or the owner of a successful hosiery franchise. But I am a girl with a keen interest in having it all, and what follows are hopeful dispatches from the frontlines of that struggle.”
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4th Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.4thEstate.co.uk
This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2014
Updated 2017
First published in the United States in 2014 by Random House,
an imprint and division of Random House LLC,
a Penguin Random House Company, New York.
Copyright © 2014, 2015 by Lena Dunham
Lena Dunham asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Not That Kind of Girl is a work of nonfiction. Some names and identifying details have been changed.
Illustrations by Joana Avillez
Edna St. Vincent Millay, excerpt from a letter to Edith Wynne Matthison (July 6, 1917)
from Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay, edited by Allan Ross Macdougall. Copyright 1952 by Norma Millay Ellis. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Holly Peppe, Literary Executor, The Millay Society, www.millay.org.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins
Source ISBN: 9780007515547
Ebook Edition © February 2017 ISBN: 9780007515530
Version: 2017-02-02
Deep in her soul, however, she was waiting for something to happen. Like a sailor in distress, she would gaze out over the solitude of her life with desperate eyes, seeking some white sail in the mists of the far-off horizon. She did not know what this chance event would be, what wind would drive it to her, what shore it would carry her to, whether it was a longboat or a three-decked vessel, loaded with anguish or filled with happiness up to the portholes. But each morning, when she awoke, she hoped it would arrive that day.…
—GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, Madame Bovary
How quickly you transform the energy life throws you into folded bows of art.
—MY FATHER, admonishing me
Dedication
Epigraph
Section I Love & Sex
Take My Virginity (No, Really, Take It)
Platonic Bed Sharing: A Great Idea (for People Who Hate Themselves)
18 Unlikely Things I’ve Said Flirtatiously
Igor: Or, My Internet Boyfriend Died and So Can Yours
Sharing Concerns: My Worst Email Ever, with Footnotes
Girls & Jerks
Barry
Falling in Love
Section II Body
“Diet” Is a Four-Letter Word: How to Remain 10 Lbs. Overweight Eating Only Health Food
Sex Scenes, Nude Scenes, and Publicly Sharing Your Body
15 Things I’ve Learned from My Mother
What’s in My Bag
Who Moved My Uterus?
Section III Friendship
Girl Crush: That Time I Was Almost a Lesbian, Then Vomited
The Best Part
13 Things I’ve Learned Are Not Okay to Say to Friends
Grace
10 Reasons I <3 NY
Section IV Work
This Is Supposed to Be Fun? Making the Most of Your Education
Little Leather Gloves: The Joy of Wasting Time
17 Things I Learned from My Father
Emails I Would Send If I Were One Ounce Crazier/Angrier/Braver
I Didn’t Fuck Them, but They Yelled at Me
Section V Big Picture
Therapy & Me
Is This Even Real? Thoughts on Death & Dying
My Top 10 Health Concerns
Hello Mother, Hello Father: Greetings from Fernwood Cove Camp for Girls
My Regrets
Guide to Running Away
15 Lessons You’ve Learned from Being Recognized Regularly on the Street
True Punk
I AM TWENTY years old and I hate myself. My hair, my face, the curve of my stomach. The way my voice comes out wavering and my poems come out maudlin. The way my parents talk to me in a slightly higher register than they talk to my sister, as if I’m a government worker that’s snapped and, if pushed hard enough, might blow up the hostages I’ve got tied up in my basement.
I cover up this hatred with a kind of aggressive self-acceptance. I dye my hair a fluorescent shade of yellow, cutting it into a mullet more inspired by photos of 1980s teen mothers than by any current beauty trend. I dress in neon spandex that hugs in all the wrong places. My mother and I have a massive fight when I choose to wear a banana-printed belly shirt and pink leggings to the Vatican and religious tourists gawk and turn away.
I’m living in a dormitory that was, not too long ago, an old-age home for low-income townspeople and I don’t like thinking about where they might be now. My roommate has moved to New York to explore farm-to-fork cooking and lesbianism, so I’m alone, in a ground-floor one-bedroom, a fact I relish until one night a female rugby player rips my screen door off the hinges and barges into the dorm to attack her philandering girlfriend. I’ve bought a VHS player and a pair of knitting needles and spend most nights on the sofa, making half a scarf for a boy I like who had a manic break and dropped out. I’ve made two short films, both of which my father deemed “interesting but beside the point,” and am so paralyzed as a writer that I’ve started translating poems from languages I don’t speak, some kind of Surrealist exercise meant to inspire me but also prevent me from thinking the perverse, looping thoughts that come unbidden: I am hideous. I am going to be living in a mental hospital by the time I am twenty-nine. I will never amount to anything.
