Harassing Lena Dunham Is Not Okay

“Girls” creator Lena Dunham isn’t new to media criticism or treatment, and more often than not, she’s able to tune out the noise, but the 26-year-old New Yorker appears to be at her wits end with Gawker for publishing her $3.7 million book proposal, and I don’t blame her. Though the publication took down the actress’s proposal at the request of her lawyer, Gawker writer John Cook left a dozen lines from the document in the story and mocked each one.

As noted by FishbowlNY, each book proposal line is followed by Cook’s commentary and comments about Dunham’s legal demands:

A line from Dunham’s proposal: Every ice pop I ate, every movie I watched, every poem I wrote was tinged with a fearful loss.

Gawker update: Lena Dunham’s personal litigation counsel Charles Harder has contacted Gawker to relay a demand from his client, Lena Dunham, that we remove the above quote from our web site. In order to clarify our intent in quoting the above matter from Dunham’s proposal, we have decided to append the following commentary: The quoted sentence is preposterously hackneyed and demonstrates an “I workshopped it at Oberlin” level of quality that permeates the proposal.

Anyone familiar with the media reception of “Girls” is aware that Cook has been trashing the show and its cast members all year, and while some of his reviews of the program are funny and accurate (i.e., “‘Girls’ is a television program about the children of wealthy famous people and shitty music and Facebook and how hard it is to know who you are and Thought Catalog“), the personal vendetta against her is petty and beginning to come across as harassment. He’s not just laughing at “Girls” anymore, but trampling on her latest project and taking a swipe at the dynamic she has with mother Laurie Simmons, “The quoted sentence…also demonstrates her obsessive and boundaryless relationship with her mother, who is friends with Meryl Streep.” Because being close with one’s mom is just the worst thing in the world. Also, what does Meryl Streep have to do with any of this? Are we still on that whole nepotism thing? Because it’s getting old, even to me.

Many people would understand why Dunham wanted her proposal removed from the Internet, and picking apart her sentences is just mean. Here’s my Christmas wish for the media: can we leave Lena Dunham alone for just five minutes?

TAGS: girls HBO | hbo girls | lena dunham | lena dunham book deal

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