One supposes it was only a matter of time before Lena Dunham came out of the woodwork to attempt toppling Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson as the blanco representatives for being “Covid Poster Children.” After all, Dunham has difficulty not making a varied array of health issues (from endometriosis to Ehlers-Danlos syndrome to garden variety depression/anxiety) about her if it means she can “help” someone else going through “the same thing.” Of course, when Dunham “suffers” a medical trauma, she has the luxury of a private doctor to come to her home, to “advise” her every step of the way–a fact she talks about freely in her “Covid story.” Which isn’t so much a story as some paragraphs written out as a series of posted photos to accompany the first one in the barrage: an image of her wearing a mask and staring vacantly, yet “pointedly” at the camera.
Dunham already loses any faith placed in her for her inherent “look at my brokenness and bow down” tendencies with the line, “In some odd sense, I feel blessed to have entered this experience as a ‘sick’ person; otherwise I don’t know how I would have tolerated crossing that threshold from well to unwell.” Yeah, “some odd sense” indeed. Dunham being blessed for already being a “sick” person (is attention whoring a disease, too?) surely stems, in her mind, as “writing inspiration” a.k.a. another source of trauma from which to draw upon for her next project, presumably a full-length memoir about COVID-19.
And what would any prose be without use of all the stock writing tools? For instance, wielding her best attempt at an “avant-garde” simile to drive home her point about being in constant and unbearable pain, Dunham adds that it “went on for 21 days, days that blended into each other like a rave gone wrong.” It feels as though she can’t decide if she’s still writing an episode of Girls or about her health’s deterioration. One supposes, either way, it all boils down to health deteriorating as a result of spending too much time in New York. Along with another primary side effect being raging narcissism. As though anyone reading this would be “touched” by Dunham’s “ordeal” as she goes on about how great it is to have a flexible job with understanding “employers” (HBO dgaf so long as she delivers them another overwrought show eventually) who can appreciate her “situation” and let her work at her own pace, if at all. Dunham also notes, “I was lucky enough [read: rich enough] to have a doctor who could offer me regular guidance on how to care for myself and I never had to be hospitalized. This kind of hands-on attention is a privilege that is far too unusual in our broken healthcare system.” She certainly has the privilege part right, though not in the way she seems to be viewing it, based on her crusading tone for securing “hands-on attention” for everyone (news flash: never gonna fuckin’ happen).
Having the gall to further slip into the role of “Covid spokesperson” (for now she’s the “voice” of not only millennials, but also “Generation Rona”), Dunham pontificates with the air of superiority of someone who has “been through it,” insisting, “When you take the appropriate measures to protect yourself and your neighbors [neighbors? Are we in fucking fourth grade playing Heads Up, 7-Up?], you save them a world of pain.” What about the world of pain we ourselves were not saved from in being subject to this rife-with-white-girl-privilege “Covid story”–soon to be expanded thanks to any remaining major publishing house being amenable to raining another book deal on her. Or worse still, a faux docuseries with each episode focused on a specific phase of her gradually escalating illness.
For once, however, Dunham isn’t “alone” in her “strife,” but merely adds to a growing list of celebrities throughout the pandemic that would have done well to simply shut the fuck up with their moral high horse riding and their “soul-searching” timbre.
