There’s this fun game that people seem to enjoy playing on the internet. It’s called: ‘let’s take something completely out of context and form a hate parade on Twitter.’ And this week, the bullseye target is Lena Dunham. As we all know, all these seem to form a well-known pattern in the media cycle. One person's (in this case meteoric) success comes hand in hand with a vitriolic article catapulted out of thin air, that you can almost believe the perpetrator believes it is to restore some ill-advised state of equilibrium.
Recently, we've had Chloe Hamilton questioning how much of a role model beauty blogger Zoella really is ('she's trodden an easy-peasy path to fame and fortune'), or the Telegraph’s Radhika questioning Taylor Swift and Beyoncé as role models ('Why don’t we millennials stop festering in the same circles?') and of course Jenni Murray who tore down Lily Allen, Bryony Gordon and Caitlin Moran for being too lurid and promiscuous in the way they talk about sex ('once there were some things a woman would take with her to the grave').
READ MORE: Lena Dunham Has Released A Ton Of Brilliant Advice Videos In YouTube
Now, after a successful tour of Lena Dunham's book *Not That Kind Of Girl, *which has, by and large been a whirlwind of positivity and celebration, the tide rather dramatically turned over night – leaving Lena facing a backlash on Twitter regarding one particular chapter in her book.
‘So it's OK Lena Dunham "pried baby sisters vagina apart” and "bribed her with candy" for molestation?’ read one of the first comments to kick off an internet storm that within a matter of hours had resulted in headlines screaming 'Lena Dunham sexually abused her sister.'
It's all to do with a passage in her book where Lena discusses a memory from when she was seven and her sister Grace was one – and put some pebbles up her vagina.
READ MORE: Caitlin Moran On How To Deal With Life When You're Still Figuring It Out
*'One day, as I sat in our driveway in Long Island playing with blocks and buckets, my curiosity got the best of me. Grace was sitting up, babbling and smiling, and I leaned down between her legs and carefully spread open her vagina. She didn't resist and when I saw what was inside I shrieked. My mother didn't bother asking why I had opened Grace's vagina… It quickly became apparent that Grace had stuffed six or seven pebbles in there,' *the passage reads.
Now sure, out of context these quotes might look pretty dark. But in context – when you actually, you know, like read the book – it's clear that Lena's memoir is very much about the complications of growing up in a liberal New York environment. She's been unapologetic about the fact that this isn't supposed to reflect everyone's experience – but rather her niche upbringing. An upbringing where it was normal for her mum to take artistic nude selfies of herself, Lena to masturbate in the same room as her sister while she is asleep (interestingly Caitlin Moran also admits to have done in her memoir How To Be A Woman), and the whole family having a very open attitude to sex.
READ MORE: Six Life Lessons We Learnt From Watching Caitlin Moran Interview Lena Dunham
So no, it's not that weird that Lena looked at her sister’s vagina. What's weird is that there are people out there who are happy to make allegations of ‘sex abuse’ with little to no evidence as some messed up way of redressing the balance.
The website Truth Revoltis mainly to blame for being the catalyst for the onslaught. Taking the book's passage out of context, paraphrasing the above excerpt and forming their own sentences: “Lena Dunham experimented with her six-year younger sister’s vagina” and “using her little sister at times essentially as a sexual outlet” it completely misses the point.
The article was also recently updated to correct a ‘typo’ in which they listed Lena’s age as 17, not seven. This makes a lot of difference and no difference at the same time. Embarassingly they didn’t remove the article or apologise, nor did they realise how ridiculous the whole article was in the first place.
On reading this 'controversial' section of the book, I did not think it was a weird thing to have over-shared this episode. Lena is an over-sharer, which is part of her allure – she says all the weird stuff that no one else bothers to say. And as her tweet in response to the so-called 'backlash' reads: 'And by the way, if you were a little kid and never looked at another little kid's vagina, well, congrats to you.'
READ MORE: Caitlin Moran On How To Deal With Life When You're Still Figuring It Out
And her sister's reaction? Lena's final tweet reads 'Sometimes I get so mad I burn right up. Also I wish my sister wasn't laughing so hard.'
It appears that successful woman like Lena divide opinion in extreme ways. We have the Lena Dunham lovers, the ones who watched GIRLS, read Lena’s work and felt it gave them the confidence to change their life (one women admitted at the Southbank that Lena gave her the confidence to leave an unhappy relationship) and we have the haters, the ones who read and write articles such as 'Pathetic Priveledge' on the National Review.
You can’t hate on someone for the way they were born, that's sort of under the human rulebook of 'how to not be a terrible person'. It’s not Lena’s fault for being white, being middle class, being herself. She told a story, in her own book, about her deepest sincerest experiences. The most depressingly reality it seems, is that if a successful woman (or man) puts themselves out there, it’s like they have given the world permission to attack them. By being honest, open and brave in a 265-page book, Lena has been kind enough to give the internet trolls mountains of material to work from. It's a good job she's also the kind of person who it seems can cope with that abuse. But should she have to?
Like this? Then you might be interested in:
Picture: Getty
In Which We Talk To Lena Dunham About Anxiety, Sexual Consent And David Cameron's Feminist Fail
Five Books Every 20-Something Should Read Immediately If They Haven't Already
Follow Emma on Twitter @girllostincity
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.