Lena Dunham, the actress who made herself infamous by comparing voting for Barack Obama to losing one's virginity, has come out with another brilliant statement: People who aren't really interested in seeing her naked need to seek help from a psychiatrist.
Replying to a television critic who asked her at a press conference why her character in the HBO series Girls frequently appears naked for no apparent reason, Dunham said that she was going for "realistic expression." She expanded her remarks further by saying that "If you’re not into me, that’s your problem and you’re going to have to work that out with professionals."
As Tim Graham noted earlier today in passing, the question appeared to rile other show staffers one of whom said it sent her into a "rage spiral" just thinking about it:
If you ask exec producer Judd Apatow, who addressed the incident after the panel, the wording of the reporter’s question itself, directed to creator and star Lena Dunham, was not only “offensive” but “sexist” and “misogynistic.” [...]
And later, fellow EP Jenni Konner interrupted her response to another question to add, “I literally was spacing out because I’m in such a rage spiral about that guy,” she said pointing to the question-asker. “I was just looking at him looking at him and going into this rage [over] this idea that you would talk to a woman like that and accuse a woman of showing her body too much. The idea it just makes me sort of sick.”
Apatow later implied that he felt there was a double standard against less-than-attractive women who wish to be nude onscreen, saying that people never questioned why actor Seth Rogan appeared fully naked in Knocked Up, a 2007 film Apatow directed.
For his part, Tim Molloy, the critic who asked the question responded to the pushback he received from the Girls star and producers saying that he wasn't against nudity in general, just that he was trying to figure out why Dunham appeared naked so frequently on-air compared to her cast members:
"'Girls' has more nudity by its lead character than any show, well, ever. But my girlfriend and I don’t understand the reason for it. We’re cool with nudity, and if Dunham wants to be naked, great. I’m not offended by it. I don’t like it or not like it. I just don’t get the artistic reason for it, and want to understand it, because I’m a TV critic."
Duham also attracted attention last year for comparing dating a Republican to dating a Nazi.
