Not That Kind Of Girl

     

        When I heard Lena Dunham was coming out with a book, I was so excited to read it that I bought the hardcover version. Since I am strictly a paperback girl, this gesture means a lot.
        I got my copy the day it hit the shelves of Barnes and Noble and delved right in. I was expecting a smart, clever, synopsis of life of a successful twenty-something and how she found the ambition and drive to be so successful and hopefully share her secrets with humor to a peer. What I actually read was an over-sexed, over-analyzed, mix-match of different scenarios that may or may not have actually occurred in her young life. I found it to be a confusing mess of short stories and ideas ranging from adolescence to childhood to adolescence to adulthood and back to childhood.
      There was no real time line. Everything seemed to just be jotted down in no chronological order. It was as though she had an idea or a thought or a memory and sat down and just wrote about it to death. There is not one clear thought or story that I remember and I JUST put it down. Usually when you read an autobiography, biography or even a really good non-fiction book, you put it down and pause and reflect over the life that that person has lead. You go through their highs and lows and learn life lessons which you can generally relate to at some point in your life. With Dunham's book, I learned that she liked to have sex. Meaningless, passionless, awkward, sometimes overly fantasized, sex. Congrats Lena, you and the rest of the world have had lack luster encounters in your adolescence. However did you overcome it? Tell me more about how you had such disrespect for yourself that you continued to degrade your body and heart by constantly allowing yourself to be abused by men. Tell me more how these stories relate to the bigger picture which is your life. Tell me how you learned your lesson and everything has since come full circle and you now know the real meaning of love at only 28 years old. You are unmarried, you are childless, you speak about sex like it's the only subject you are well versed enough in to talk about. You know nothing about how life is because you have only just begun to live it.
         My disappointment in how her family is depicted in this book is also a cause for concern. She seems to have a love/hate relationship with her parents and her upbringing. Years of therapy and you have not yet formed a conclusion on how your family life is somehow connected with how you view yourself and sex? Or did you just use therapy as an after school activity? Is that where all the cool kids from Williamsburg were going? Perhaps your mental "problems" were not problems at all but just the aftermath of a child who had too much sugar and couldn't concentrate enough to settle down and just be a kid. If you did learn anything, why not tell your readers what it was? Why not tell your readers how all of these little instances that you felt were SO important to print actually shaped your life and made you the successful woman you are today. Duhnam completely bypasses her success as "Girls" director and star! I was very interested to see how she became SO intelligent and creative and successful but she acts as thought it's just nothing, like it's an afterthought. I would have been much more interested and "hooked" as a reader had she have told a real, cohesive story. A beginning, a middle and an end would have been a savior for this book.
      I did however enjoy her access to a dictionary. She uses big words that hint that she is VERY intelligent but couldn't put together that she was wasting her talents, brains and emotions on these horrible sexual situations she put herself in constantly?
    I could go on and on but I have a feeling this is enough. Too bad Lena Duhnam, I was really rooting for you. Maybe next time.