Famous Teleiophile: Lena Dunham & Middle School Girls Gone Wild

I wrote about Lena Dunham in The Allure of Nymphets. For example, I wrote that before Lena’s Girls premiered on HBO, among other projects, she had two movies premiere at South by Southwest. Her first full-length movie, Creative Nonfiction (2009), is about Ella (Lena Dunham) and her struggles with having a romantic relationship with her dorm-mate and her need to finish a screenplay in time to graduate. In the opening scene, Ella described the plot summary of her screenplay to her dorm-mate and love interest:

“OK, so there's this girl. She's in high school. She's taken up with her English teacher. And he loves her poetry; you know, which is how the whole thing starts. And it's like that whole kinda like, see me after class thing. And he takes her away to this cabin that he has, which is in the country [...] And he keeps her there for three years. He just kinda makes her sit there at a typewriter and write. And you'd think she'd be miserable, but instead she's sorta under this like spell of creative happiness [...] I find the theft and abuse of minors funny.” [Emphasis added]

And on the second episode of season two of Girls, which won a Golden Globe for 'Best Comedy Series', Hannah's (Lena Dunham) roommate shockingly suggested that Hannah wear an outfit that was, "[...] inspired by a girl I went to middle school with who fucked both her uncle and her step-dad." (Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner, a long-time producer and television writer, co-write that line.)

That's just a sampling of what I wrote about Dunham, but I'll be adding some notes from her memoir to the 2nd edition of The Allure of Nymphets that sheds light on Dunham's life and what influenced her to write about the hilarity of “[...] the theft and abuse of minors [...]” and a middle school girl who, “[...] fucked both her uncle and her step-dad.”

Here are some highlights from Dunham's Not That Kind of Girl:

Lena shared that she had (at least) one “sex dream” about her father (p. xiii)

Lena “[...] learned to masturbate the summer after third grade (≈ nine-years-old).” She read in a puberty book that an orgasm would feel like a “sneeze”, but she wrote that it actually felt like a “seizure”. (p. 16)

Juliana, Lena's ninth grade friend (≈ fourteen-years-old), “[...] had sex – in an alleyway, no less, with a twenty-year-old guy [...]” (p. 27)

Lena was “[...] fond of pretending a ghost was touching her nonbreasts against her will [...]” (p. 41)

When Lena was 9-years-old and out perusing a newsstand with her nanny, the man who owned the newsstand looked at her, which sent a “shiver” down Lena's spine. “I think he's trying to rape me.” Lena said to her nanny. (p. 56)

When Lena was approximately 6-years-old and Grace, her younger, was one, Lena was curious about what Grace's vagina looked like; so, Lena leaned down between Grace's legs “[...] and carefully spread open her vagina.” (p. 121) And Lena used to bribe Grace “like a sexual predator” for “affection”. For example, Lena gave her younger sister three pieces of candy to “kiss her on the lips for five seconds” and she would let Grace watch whatever she wanted on television if she would “relax” on Lena. (p. 150) [Note: Joan J. Johnson wrote in her book Teen Prostitution that, in most cases, sexually abused nymphets were victims of incest.]

When Grace was in the fifth grade, she had an online connection with Kent, an ad sales rep, before, to Grace's dismay, Lena told their mother. (p. 151)

Lena's mother suspected that Grace was “[...] having an affair with her [high school] Latin teacher.” (p. 155)

“Grace came out when she was seventeen.” (p. 153) [Note: Marth Barret related in her book Invisible Lives that Sarah Pearlman, a therapist based in Boston, said, “In clinical practice you see a higher incidence of [sexual] abuse and incest among lesbians.” Furthermore, most lesbians were victims of incestuous sexual abuse. Sexual abuse isn't the cause of lesbianism, but the fact remains that, like Grace, most lesbians were sexually abused – by a relative(s).]

On a Saint Ann's eighth grade class trip to Washington D.C., some of Lena's 14-year-old classmates “[...] decided to go totally gay. It started with some light kissing on the bed, then Jessica was topless and shaking her tits, clutching her own nipples and wagging them mercilessly in our faces.” (p. 131)

When Lena was 15, her friend Sofia taught Lena “[...] her favorite trick, one that she said drove the boys crazy,” which was “[...] just sucking on someone's earlobe.” When Sofia demonstrated on her, Lena wrote that she could “[...] feel the tips of her teeth and then my pulse in my vagina.” (p. 132)

Lena accused her fifth grade teacher of being “inappropriate”. (p. 169) But she wrote that with her seventh grade teacher: “It didn't feel inappropriate. It felt real.” (p. 170)

When Lena was a 13-year-old summer camper she “[...] couldn't stop eying everyone else, staring at their round asses as they dressed, the dusky hairs emerging from the bathing suits. “You are so bicurious!” Lena's camp counselor said after she caught Lena “[...] watching her tits swing as she changed.” And Lena “[...] lusted after a college student and flirted with her “Australian 'bunk uncle'”.

The following summer, at the age of 14, Lena found her “truest love”. “[Johnny] was blond, from South Carolina, and just shy of twenty-two.” In her bunk, Lena fantasized about discarding her “[...] clothes, approaching Johnny, and letting him put his hands all over [...]” her body. [Note: When a teen girl fantasizes about a man, it's commonly considered cute, but when a man fantasizes about a teen girl it's commonly considered not cute.]

Lena kissed “[...] three girls in college. All at once [...] We went around kissing for just long enough to get a sense of one another's mouths. They felt soft and tickly [...]” (p. 139)

Thus, it can be culled from Dunham's memoir that she dreamed about having sex with her father, she had incestuous lesbian foreplay with her younger sister, the summer before fourth grade she starting having orgasms that felt like seizures, she found pleasure in looking at the “round asses” of the other nymphets at summer camp, and when she was 15, she fantasized about undressing in front of her 21-year-old camp counselor. After learning about Dunham's upbringing, you may not be as shocked by her writings anymore.