Lena Dunham is mad as hell and she’s not going to take it anymore, US Magazine. Last week’s US cover (last week, not this, the current week’s, cover) featured 20 Slimdown Diet Tips Stars are Using. As you can see, there’s a candid picture of Lena alongside Christina El Moussa and Hilary Duff in bikinis and covermodel Julianne Hough in workout gear. I’m trying really hard to find something offensive about this cover but I can’t seem to do it. I don’t care for Christina’s bikini? That’s about all the scorn I can muster. But not Lena, she came after US for this horribly offensive photo of her in a cute dress and kicky ankle socks, daring to suggest they know how she motivates herself to look after her physical well-being. Those bastards!
It’s easier to read on her IG, if the block of text above is too much. To me it’s clear she is reacting to the House of Representatives passing the AHCA last week. Her own pre-exisiting conditions landed her in the hospital directly following the MET Gala. The phone hack to which she referred happened because she supports Hilary Clinton. The violent images were photos of dead fetuses and other graphic content to punish her for being a vocal supporter of Hillary’s. That’s awful and wrong in so many ways. Truly, I don’t find fault with her rant about healthcare, her medical condition and the despicable acts committed in the name of the current administration’s supporters. I can even sign off on using the #45 Diet Tips as a clever tie-in to provide a platform for her rant. But it’s the last “tip” that gets me. She objects to being associated with this cover and article because it’s the antithesis of everything she has worked for… except that she gave a quote to US. It’s unclear if she knew it was for this article, but she did give them a quote about exercise. Tip number 15 of 20:
Discover Your Purpose: After spending years as a self-described “schizophrenic exerciser,” Lena Dunham committed to a routine to help aid her anxiety. “Exercise is one of the best things you can do,” she tells Us, adding that strength training with Tracy Anderson, yoga with Beth Cooke and regular runs “make me feel like I can exist in this world.”
[From US Weekly, print edition]
Lena is mentioned one other time in the article, in the introduction when US says, “With beach season fast approaching, Us asked Hough, Lena Dunham and the pros who train them to share their body of wisdom.” They mentioned Lena’s exercise in relation to how it helps her anxiety, they said things like “wisdom” and used her quotes – what is she so ticked off about? To her credit, yes, Lena has made a very public stand about showing her body as it is and not some retouched version of her… unless it’s, say, Vogue doing the retouching. However, she’s not featured in a bikini – retouched or otherwise. She appears on the cover in a dress and at no point does the magazine suggest that she works out for any other reason than to attend to her heath, which, once again, was in her own words. Did they not tell her what the issue was about? Did she object to the word “Diet” so close to a photo of her? I am genuinely confused because many outlets are giving her an Atta Girl for these comments, which I feel is unfair to US. Will Lena claim, like she did with El Pais, that someone else signed off on her quote without her knowing it would be included in a diet issue? Maybe they used quotes from another interview with her and she truly had no idea they would be used in this article. If that’s true, why did she wait to come after them? And if this was all an excuse to complain about healthcare, why attack US? Lena does openly promote the fact that she works out with Tracy Anderson, so what did US do wrong?
Photo credit: Getty Images and WENN Photos
Mm. I can see her point a bit? I ‘finally’ lost a lot of weight due to mental and resultant physical illness as well. Specially the anxious puking, can really relate to that.
I totally agree. Then come all the awkward weightloss compliments and, worse, “how did you do it?” questions. I tell the truth. “Oh, well, I was sick in the hospital for X days… but I don’t recommend it.”
But she’s had anxiety and all those health problems for years. What changed is that she’s started exercising. Which will cause weight loss, obviously. And now her fat activist fans are going crazy so she has to act like she doesn’t even like the fact that she’s dropped, what, 2 dress sizes? (Well part of it is for fans and part is cause she has to be PC at all times.) But this happens every time a plus size woman loses weight, she’s like “Oh, it just happened, I did nothing to lose weight, and god forbid anyone thinks I like myself more now, I loved my body when it was all flabby and doughy and I was spilling out of my jeans!”.
Same.
However, I must confess, I quite enjoy the look on people´s faces when I answer that cancer is how I lost weight / why I “look good” — because fuck those people!
Lol, i would love to see the looks
On people’s faces as you deadpan that answer. I totally get Lena’s point. Her weigh loss is mostly accidental, she’s not feeing great and proud of herself about it and not trying to give anyone tips on it and the magazine shouldn’t attribute tips to her. I like her response.
REminds me of the time I complimented a distant family member on her sweet pixie cut, and it was regrowth after chemo. Ugh. Horrible.
So somebody doesn’t know you had cancer, they compliment you, and you enjoy the resulting look on their face when you tell them you had cancer?
Like, what if they were just trying to pay you a compliment? No subtext, no inneuendo, just a compliment?
But if that’s what caused it, why did it just now kick in? She’s talked about anxiety for years. What caused it is committing to exercise not for weight loss but for mental health. That’s a good thing! That’s positive! Only Lena Dunham could take a positive quote about the mental health benefits of exercise and turn it around into a ‘poor me’ rant.
I think her entire argument is that they’re spinning that quote into some tip on how to get a great beach body.
It’s also not possible to “control” endometriosis with diet. I wish she’d just say that yeah, she’s keen to keep working in an incredibly shallow and sexist industry and to do so she needs to be a certain size but she doesn’t think it’s something that should be praised over and above her other qualities or achievements. She didn’t hire Tracey Anderson because she was anxious. She did it to lose weight and get roles in things she didn’t write. There’s nothing wrong with that but the nonsense she blurts out on this just adds another strike in the god she’s annoying column.
Plenty of people control endometriosis with a plant based diet. To say that what you eat has no impact on your health is insane.
The only time I “get thin” is when I’m under extreme duress. In this culture it’s the “looks good feels bad” tip #46. I am not always a fan of Lena D, but SOMEONE has to speak up about the stress diet.
The most shocking part of this story is how nice she can look when she tries! Not that it should matter, I’ve just never really seen photos of her legitimately cleaned up and “trying” – silver dress pic is lovely.
The weight loss looks really good on her, and I’m sure she feels better.
She looks SO much better with longer hair IMO and I do think she looks best at this weight. It seems like it’s a good middle-of-the-road weight between her thinnest (which her body didn’t seem to adjust to well) and her heaviest.
She’s annoying AF but she does look good.
She looks like a different person in each pic. That woman in the silver dress that i like? I’m not convinced that’s Lena Dunham.
‘m not a fan, but can’t say I blame her for disliking her quote being framed as “DIET TIPS.”
She’s right about anxiety keeping the weight off. Heh.
Also, loved her Met gala dress.
Man, I have the weirdest, most innappropriate envy of people thin out from anxiety.
When I have a panic attack, the second I calm down I will mindlessly, almost violently down a bag of chips.
Whenever life gets hard, I get chubby.
@laulau I am right there with you. When I get anxious or depressed I binge eat sweets. Then I make myself feel worse because I feel guilty for doing it (since I’m trying to lose weight). It’s a crappy cycle and I constantly find myself wishing I had the willpower to starve myself. Not a healthy outlook, but I can’t help it. I’m trying to get better about it, but I have my days.
Yeah, my weight gain is due to anxiety so who the hell knows.
Me too. I’ve always turned to carbs and sweets as a coping mechanism to help calm my anxiety. Now I keep no-sugar added and sugar-free sweets in the house because I can indulge without the intense cravings for more later on. It’s helped me immensely!
Same!
Don’t be. At a deeply stressful time in my life I got down below 40kg, that’s for an average height/build person. I was sick all the time and looked like shit which just fuels the stress and around and around it goes. It did not help at all to hear other women tell me they were jealous of my self hatred and malnutrition.
That was many years ago and now I could stand to lose a few kilos but I’m reluctant because I consider that padding an emergency reserve in case life turns to crap again.
Yeah, I can see her point. Weight loss and weight gain and changes in your body aren’t something you can normally obtain with diet tips or whatever. It’s a fact. Magazines and other media like these all put one specific body type on the cover and tell everyone that they have tips on how to look like that. That’s not true. You CAN’T look like that. And even if your body is capable of looking that, changing your body takes time and effort and many factors like illnesses and preexisting conditions get in the way. Lots of factors come into play. The point is that articles such as these are disingenuous and don’t tell the whole truth. Lena is right.
She just like Shumer is living off the drama they created in their heads of being outsiders and true feminists because they were born with larger frames. Seriously sometimes I feel like they define themselves by public perception of how women should look like. Once there will be no requirements for actresses to look a certain way, they will loose their identity and their cause. That is the highest level of hipocracy- they depend on the supermoder image and they do not want that perception of women to dissapear
ITA
Yeah ITS GREAT AND EMPOWERING TO BE PLUS SIZED BUT DONT CALL ME PLUS SIZED THO
Haha this!!
I’m a size four, dammit!!! (A.S.)
I don’t think she knows what she wants. If she legitimately gave a quote to the magazine then her insta post is just all for show as is many of the things she does/say…she wants to appear above it all and ‘I’m too cool for that’, but I’m not buying half of what she is selling, especially after attending this year’s Met Ball after what she said last year! She is full of $hit.
I’ m completely with Lena on this one. Going to the gym and wanting to look cute is not the same thing as putting yourself out there as the advocate of dieting and telling women what to do.
Plus she joked about the “trump diet” but it was obviously a hint about anxiety induced weight loss.
For me there isn’t any way in which she is wrong here. If we wanna talk about brands and be a bit more cynical, ending up on such a cover is obviously off-brand for her.
#sixerdiettips – spend hours digging the allotment so that you can call yourself virtuous and then lie to everyone about where the entire bag of fudge went because, in some parallel world or other, they actually thought you might share it.
Lena is annoying. Magazines shoving endless diet tips down our throats are annoying. Nice food is not annoying. Nice food wins.
Oooooh what did you put in?
I am stuck to balcony space and we had frost last night, so I’ve only got two heirloom tomatoes and some herbs started.
I cannot wait for sun warmed tomato and thick cut bacon sandwiches.
Earthing up my spuds. Supporting the broad beans. And planting out the summer veg, plus some of the autumn veg. And rewarding myself with fudge!
Bikini body diet plan magazine covers are a load of horse S**t.
I totally agree with LDs anger at them misrepresenting her on their garbage cover.
Amen.
Didn’t she lose weight with a celebrity trainer that she has been photographed with several times? If that’s the case, why is she saying that her weight loss is due to psychological issues and the election?
I totally get her being upset about the magazine running an article about her that wasn’t ran by her first but what’s with the dramatics about her weight loss? I thought it was from dieting, exercise and the celebrity trainer.
She said she’s been working out for health reasons, ie to better cope with the medical conditions you mention (plus others).
She’s been working out with Tracey Anderson for a few years now. The significant weightloss is much more recent, and given she’s been in and out of hospital a lot lately, genuinely health related.
Thanks for explaining, ladies. I didn’t know she had health problems.
The thing is, working out daily isn’t an easy way to lose weight. FAR easier to lose weight via diet, which is why I believe her. She was probably working out regularly but with no diet modifications she remained at the same weight. If she stopped eating due to stress and medical issues though then she could easily drop lbs very quickly.
For once, she does not tick me off. Her IG post actually made me laugh. As for the quotes in US, maybe she gave an interview to a stringer with no idea if might eventually end up in US magazine or a “beach body tips” type article.
If it’s any comfort, Lena is actually the best-looking and most interesting one on the cover. The others look like stiff Barbie dolls and reminded me that diet tips today are extremely dull and repetitive. I kind of cringe just hearing the word “carbs”.
Lena’s list, on the other hand, is refreshingly real. I once lost probably about 40 pounds in a few weeks during an illness. It was really easy, just upchuck everything you eat or drink and the pounds melt off. So does your hair. Once I could actually keep food down, though, I gained it all back over a few months. Hair grew back, too, about half an inch per month. I felt a curious empathy with Brittney Spears, who had cut off all her hair around that time for other reasons. Not recommending the sickness diet, though.
Typical Lena Dunham asshole behavior. Look at me. BUT don’t look at me! Notice my weight loss. But DON’T you dare notice my weight loss. She’s a narcissistic asshole who courts attention and then acts offended when she gets it. Holier than thou and irritating as hell.
Yep. And her list is the pretentious sort of bulls**t I’ve come to expect from her.
If she was truly upset by this, she could have handled it in a better way.
Yes. Everything about her always induces STFU.
Don’t understand the snark – the cover is obviously offensive imo. The whole, “YAY for serious illness because it makes you lose weight because nothing is more important for a girl than being SKINNY!!!” thing is despicable.
These fat-shaming body-policing magazines are awful anyway. So sexist. God forbid a woman not be defined by how conventionally attractive (as defined by the patriarchy) her body is.
I take serious issue with a lot of things about Lena but in this I’m behind her 100%.
Agree with this 100%.
Totally agree. I don’t get the snark. Dunham is pointing out the absurdity of “Diet Tip” articles in frivolous womens magazines that are designed to backhandedly shame women into thinking they’re not good enough.
Pretty “on brand” for her, she’s also right.
A dear friend of mine recently lost a lot of weight due to the mourning/emotional stress over the death of her father and we recently attended a wedding… insane the amount of compliments she got and phrases such as “wow you look like you’re doing well! i mean, you look great!” because “doing well” is mutually exclusive with looking societally-beautiful? Because my friend looks “slim”, she now looks “put together”, and since she looks “put together” that must mean her life is totally “perfect”! Logical.
She throws everything together-personal and public. Is this the new “smart”- “There are more important things than….”
I wonder how many would comment if she herself is not throwing hissy fits on every occasion.
Can you imagine this with celebrity men instead? Not one man on a mens health magazine; I mean a veritable herd to choose from and compare on US’ cover.
that’s what i want to see on all the covers, this manly herd of men you speak of. make it a list and wait for the dudes to complain about being objectified. such fun.
Lea strikes me as someone whose main issue is the fact that she hasn’t really made peace with who she is and what she looks like. While I get the fact that she didn’t want what she said to be framed in the context of ‘diet tips’ she’s just a little too upset about that. That’s what these magazines do-they say stupid shit. She’s the girl who hasn’t gotten over that fact that there’s a part of her that still wants to be conventionally ‘pretty/hot/skinny’ and is conflicted about it.
I think she looks great in that last photo but until she thinks she looks great, she’ll always be overly sensitive about it.
I think your analysis is spot-on.
Also, it’s not like the men in the comparable positions aren’t doing pretty much exactly what the women are.
She’s been very open about her endo issues and mental health issues recently. It’s gross for US to put her on a ‘celebrity diets’ cover (which are gross enough to start with) when it’s clearly weight loss due to ill health.
I’m with Lena here. The context of her own quote is health and well-being. This is applied to a weight-loss issue, in which her own weight drop is correlated to intentionally trying to lose weight. I’ve lose weight through severe anxiety, and trust me, feeling like you might just die of stress all day long is no way to live. You don’t even care about the weight loss and would trade it all to be happy again, in my experience. In spite of body-positive movements today, people still praise weight loss without knowing the cause, as if it’s always good to be a bit thinner, when it really isn’t.
What? No. I can’t believe the comments on this thread. It seems like everyone is so offended by the yearly appearance of “diet your way to your beach body in 4.5 days” articles that everyone’s forgetting who Lena associates with. Tracy f*cking Anderson. The most offensive celebrity trainer ever who makes a living telling women to diet on baby food and get their huge asses in shape because ewww. Fat!
Look, I get it. We all feel pressured or at the very least irritated when these covers come out. And if she gave that quote under the impression that the article was all about the health benefits of excercise, fine. She can say that. But she didn’t. She went on one of her over-the-top rants and conveniently left out that by associating with the likes of Tracy she helps support that woman’s career and message. And that message is awful.
So which is it? I say she dieted her way to where she is now and if she was honest about that, I would applaud her. Losing weight the healthy way is an achievement and there’s nothing wrong with it if it makes you feel good. But this is complete bs.
Look, I hate Tracey Anderson too. But Lena was very clear that she was working out with Tracey because it made her feel great and the endorphins of working out really helped her mentally. She happens to dig the faux-dancing workout that Tracey advocates. I can’t fault her for liking a particular workout.
She has never once endorsed a “thin is better, anti-fat” platform. And she was consistently overweight during the years she’s been doing TA’s workouts so she clearly wasn’t using it as a weight loss method. As others have pointed out, her weight loss has been recent and rapid and correlates to her health issues. So I see no inconsistencies whatsoever in her current post.
You assume she isn’t lying which is fine. I think she is. Because she protested a little too muchf or my taste but that’s a personal opinion.
As for Tracy Anderson … no. She is the worst. The WORST. That’s like saying working with Woody Allen is perfectly fine, what’s the problem? They simply like his movies. I’m not comparing her to Allen but the situation is the same. Working with someone when you’re famous is the same as endorsing them and their message. I don’t care whether she just likes the workouts, she has let Tracy use her name repeatedly to further Tracy’s career. ESPECIALLY so Tracy could hold her up as an example for her wide variety of clients. Look, I’m not a fat shamer! Lena hasn’t lost any weight!
But I don’t expect much more from an insecure racist feminist. I hope she does better in the future because she’s smart and we need smart women in TV. But her issues are exhausting.
She was that girl in high school wasn’t she? Feeling that she was an outsider, making comments behind the pretty girls back, throwing shade at the popular people, getting on her friends if they dare wanted to go to cliche high school party, pulling stunts during lunch thinking she is edgy but the moment the quarterback smiled her in direction she melted.
If she has to constantly tell people she is an outsider in Hollywood, doesn’t that make her an insider? Especially since she had a terrible time at last years MET Gala and yet there she was this year. Right back on that red carpet.
I went to the same high school as Lena. It’s an alternative arts High School in Brooklyn that doesn’t have a football team or cheerleaders or anything like that. And there’s only like 50 people per grade so there’s not too many cliques. Everybody there is artsy so that’s the normal.
she looks BOMB. f*ck what other people say, you gotta do what you gotta do to make the burden of existence bearable because life is f*cking hard.
Haha, love your attitude 🙂 It’s nice to see some positivity on here…and yes, life is hard.
I’m surprised that I kind of liked her rant. That said, I also think there’s more than a 50-50 chance that she did give them the quotes knowing their plans and then leveraged it for self-promotion (and never-ending outrage/victimhood, which is also a big part of her career).
I liked it too!
I lost 30 lbs…people always ask my “secret”…how about losing job after 16 yrs,moving to a new place, having dog get sick and put to rest, getting separated and divorced and new pain meds ALL within a year….yah stress is NOT the way to do it folks….
So sorry about your dog. ♥
(…and the other stuff, too.)
Stress my ass. This always-the-victim idiot is associated with Tracy Anderson. F#ck off you lying troll
I lost about 15 pounds a few years ago because I was severely depressed and not eating. I’m already thin so losing that amount of weight, while not noticeable on some people depending on their build, is very noticeable on me since I’m slender. It was not a good look on me, I looked so frail and I didn’t enjoy the comments of people outright asking me “What the heck happened?” I didn’t want to talk about my depression obviously! Not many people do when they are in the middle of it.
This country is so obsessed with losing weight due to the high obesity population but from things I’ve read people who lose massive amounts of weights have mixed feelings about it and can still feel insecure about how they look, even if they look great. It is such a touchy subject for a lot of people yet gossip mags use it as a way to sell. Mental health is also tied it with losing/gaining weight so I kind of get where Lena is coming from. This fixation with losing weight and shoving it in people’s faces–it is not healthy nor is it productive. I get Lena is associated with Tracy Anderson and I find her insufferable most of the time but I would be upset too if a magazine decided to use my body as an example for diet tips while I was in the middle of my depression. You have no idea what people are going through, weight loss journeys are so personal.
I agree with this comment. I am so sorry you got pestered because of your depression induced weight loss.
I also want to add I know a lot of people with anxiety, several with eating disorders and lots with swallowing disorders (volunteer work) who lost a lot of weight in a very short time span (like 25 pounds in a month) and their situation was dire. Not being able to eat is serious.
The people with swallowing disorders especially would cry at never being able to eat foods they once enjoyed. It is sad to have a meal where someone cannot eat, whether for a neurological (like anxiety or ED) or physical reason.. food has so much meaning and connection in every culture.
The people all got compliments and were dumbstruck by people’s reactions to their weight loss. One of the people I know who couldn’t swallow died. we need to toss out this message that weight loss is always good. It can be very very bad.
Ummm…this sounds to me like the new “I lost the baby weight by running around with my kids” line.
I see her point. I am high-strung and anxious, and I have a sensitive stomach. So when I’m stressed or upset, I can’t eat even though I want to. Then some idiot is like, “You’ve lost weight!” like it’s some kind of accomplishment and it’s like, “Yeah, I have. Crying and puking will do that. Yay me.” Our society in general needs to get over it’s obsession with policing female bodies.
I don’t fault her for her reaction: she clearly quoted the SELF HELPING benefits of exercise, but they used it for yet another media focus on : women, improve your externals to be acceptable. NO SHADE FOR HER REACTION!!
Oh, please, she’s completely full of it as usual. Using her weight loss to spew her political BS theories. She really needs to STFU and go away.
Diet implies lossing weight. Furthermore showing thin, six-pack donning, svelte bikini clad women is promoting one body image.
Lena spoke of exercise as to health, physical and mental.
I think celebitchy majorly miss the point.
“Burns fat”, “walks off the weight”?
How about the fact that Lena Dunham also works out with and openly endorses Tracy Anderson, a trainer who has built her entire fitness empire off of body-shaming women? Dunham is such a hypocrite it’s actually just comical at this point.
I LOVE Lena’s post. She can respond any way she wants & I think she did it in a clever, relatable way for once. Or twice.. Her character on Girls, Hannah, was annoying at times, but I still enjoyed the show.
Okay back to this. It’s muchbetter than an angry rant or angry 1-2 sentences. I got sickly thin after a major surgery, after a horrible breakup, during a crazy job occurrence..etc. “How did you lose weight?!” answer: “well, I nearly lost my mind and just starved”.
And the Election crap! I’ve been a wreck. Sadly though, I’m on the other side of the spectrum now and don’t suffer by wasting away any longer.