by Lena Dunham
WEDNESDAY AUGUST 25TH, 2010
Breakfast: 11am
2 sips ginger ale (10 calories?)
2 cups green tea
1 bite soy green tea pudding (20 calories?)
Crispy brown rice cereal (100 calories?)
¾ cup of Rice Dream (90 calories)
Lunch: 2pm
3 sips ginger ale (20 calories?)
¾ cup brown rice with hijiki, white beans, and greens (300 calories?)
creamy tahini dressing (80 calories?)
¼ piece kabocha squash (15 calories?)
Snack: 6pm
¼ peach (30 calories?)
1 cup Soy Delicious chocolate ice cream (250 calories)
Dinner: 10pm
Chicken soup with rice noodles (400 calories?)
¼ cup cottage cheese w/ pineapple (120 calories)
3 raspberries (4 calories)
cranwater (20 calories?)
total caloric intake: approx 1,459 calories
Notes: I FEEL LIKE TOTAL SHIT. A stomach thing and general fluishness. No appetite. But I am still doing great with my food attitude! Should have had more veggies and less sugar/carbs.
THURSDAY AUGUST 26, 2010
Late night snack: 4am
¾ container of Fage 2% Greek Yogurt (110 calories)
raspberries (20 calories)
Breakfast: 6:30am
Gluten free honey oat toast (120 calories)
w/ almond butter (100 calories)
9:30 am
30 raspberries (35 calories?)
1:45 pm
weird orange juice/tracking liquid for cat scan (100 calories?)
3 pm
5 Raisinets (38 calories)
5:30 pm
¼ turkey on rye bread w/ lettuce and mustard (300 calories?)
2 bottles Teas green tea
9 pm
¼ small container saag paneer and white rice (380 calories?)
½ container chocolate soy delicious ice cream (230 calories)
green tea
seltzer
Total caloric intake: approx 1,433
Notes: Spent day in ER. Diagnosed with acute colitis. (Not the chronic kind! Maybe from the laxative tea?) Lots to say about that and I’ll type it when not on jury duty. By which I mean Percocet. I meant Percocet and typed “jury duty.” I think I overestimate my calories sometimes.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 27, 2010
Breakfast: 10:30 am
2 bites Indian Ras Malai (100 calories?)
¾ gluten-free BBQ chicken pizza w/ added arugula (320 calories)
4 pm
rest of Indian Ras Malai (300 calories?)
8 pm
½ unripe peach (30 calories?)
1 piece gluten free honey oat toast (120 calories)
¼ bowl rice in soup w/ mushroom and umeboshi (250 calories?)
12:30am
¼ vegan chocolate chip cookie (65 calories)
2 scoops vegan cookie dough (280 calories)
¼ cup rice dream (60 calories)
gluten free cheerios (70 calories)
total caloric intake: approx 1,595
Notes: I am on antibiotics, no booze till I finish on Friday, September 10. Ran into Elaine and she noticed I’d lost weight. She thought it was illness but I know the truth of the matter. This feels like the healthiest and most sustainable eating pattern I’ve ever been in!
SATURDAY, AUGUST 28, 2010
11 am
2 ¼ rolls of yuba skin (150 calories?)
¼ cup gluten free cereal (70 calories)
¼ cup rice dream (60 calories)
12:30 pm
¼ Granny Smith apple (40 calories)
1 pm
¼ roast turkey on rye w/lettuce and mustard (250 calories?)
4:30 pm
large almond butter, rice milk, fig smoothie (500 calories?)
9:30 pm
watercress salad w/crispy soy beans (60 calories?)
cabbage salad (20 calories?)
broccoli (40 calories?)
steamed greens (20 calories?)
creamy tahini dressing (90 calories?)
sesame dressing (40 calories?)
2 pieces prosciutto (70 calories)
total caloric intake: approx 1,410
Notes: I did some cocaine this evening! Joaquin showed up at the bar and I said I couldn’t drink so he was like “do this cocaine.” Just a bump. Then we went to another bar for hamburgers and I was angry and got in a cab. But I’m still feeling good about food—not emotional—and was getting mega compliments on my look at the bar. Still coming up short in the fruits/veggies arena. Tomorrow I’ll start the day with a reasonable serving of yogurt and some dates, then have a lunch and dinner both full to bursting with veggies—that’s what this body needs.
SUNDAY, AUGUST 29, 2010
2 am
azuki bean mousse (250 calories)
12 pm
apple pie (450 calories)
bio-k (45 calories)
maple syrup (25 calories)
1:30pm
apple waldorf salad (350 calories)
¼ roast chicken breast (150 calories)
bite of cornbread (50 calories)
4 pm
small piece of milk chocolate (50 calories)
carrot/orange juice (120 calories)
5pm
small tasti d (80 calories)
large tasti d (150 calories)
6 pm
a bunch of lemon cake (300 calories)
7 pm
white wine (100 calories)
8 pm
steak, veggies (300 calories)
10 pm
more lemon cake (300 calories)
even more lemon cake (300 calories)
cereal and almond milk (250 calories)
banana (120 calories)
apple (85 calories)
¼ jar peanut butter (700 calories)
total caloric intake: 4,225 calories
Notes: I went totally nuts and ate all the things.
* * *
1 Bread tends to be vegan.
MY MOTHER INVENTED the selfie.
Sure, there were self-portraits before her, but she perfected the art of the vulnerable candid with an unclear purpose. She used a Nikon, a film camera with a timer, and she would set it up, stand against the cherry-print wallpaper in her bedroom, and pose.
It was the early seventies. She had moved to the city armed with nothing but this camera and a desire to make work. She had left her boyfriend behind, a kindly balding carpenter from Roscoe, New York, who wore a flannel nightgown and knew how to tap trees for syrup. I happen to know he’s kindly because we visited him once and sat around his table drinking lemonade, and he didn’t seem mad that she’d left him, just happy for her successes and generally pleased about my existence.
When she got to New York she moved into the loft I’d grow up in, a little too big for a single girl and a little too small for a family. She took odd jobs to pay the rent—styling food and selling billiard balls and once, just once, taking a Japanese businessman on a tour of New York City nightlife. (A unique quality of my mother’s is that when she’s uncomfortable she expresses her purest and most deeply felt rage, so I’m guessing he had a bad time.)
In the images she took of herself in the loft, she was only sometimes dressed, in a baggy sweater or belted safari shorts. But most of the time she was naked. At least partially. Jeans and no shirt, her pale shoulders hunched, her knees knocking. A round-collared blouse and thick wool socks but no pants, the shadowy place between her ass cheeks revealed when she pulled knees to chin.
Over time, her hair changed: long ironed sheets became an ill-advised perm. A bob, the ends still wet from the shower. Her armpits tended to be unshaven, a look I regret knowing that my father enjoys. Sometimes she added a potted plant to the image for texture, like a student filmmaker creating a makeshift set of Vietnam.
On occasion she turned the lens toward the mirror so her face was ob
scured by the chunky black camera body, pulling focus to her dry heart-shaped lips and rabbit teeth (the same ones I have, the same ones she has since capped). But mostly, the eye is drawn to her nakedness. Legs spread defiantly. This wasn’t officially her art, but she was committed.
The fact that she was shooting on actual film—and not an iPhone or a Polaroid bought at Urban Outfitters, à la the selfies of today—lent an appealing seriousness to her fascination with herself. Something about the intentionality of the medium. After all, she had to load the camera, print the film by hand in her darkroom, then hang the images on the line to dry. When her roommate Jimmy, a more seasoned photographer, wasn’t around to ask for help, she called the Kodak hotline, which was manned by one single put-upon gentleman (“It’s boiling hot in my darkroom and I’ve been putting ice cubes in my developer. Do you think that’s okay?”). Embarrassed by the frequency of her calls, she would affect extreme accents to mask her voice. Imagine going to all that effort, just to find out what your bush looks like when paired with lime-green rain boots and shining aviators. This wasn’t as simple as swinging your iPhone around and pushing your tits together. This took work.
My mother is slim. A long torso, loose arms, and a collarbone sheer as a rock face. But the camera clung to her imperfections—the ripple of fat below her butt, the sharp knob of her knee, the massive birthmark on her forearm that she had removed as a fortieth-birthday present to herself. I think of her developing these images, sloshing them around in the photo solution with a pair of salad tongs. Waiting, as they blushed gray, then appeared in full contrast, to see what she really looked like.
She convinced her little sister to pose, too. Her little sister: a blond med student with the kind of body designed to sprawl in wet sand. This feather-haired, horseback-riding beauty queen was suddenly sullen when her shirt was off. Shy. The camera, that great equalizer.
My mother understood, implicitly, the power of it. See these hips, these teeth, these eyebrows, these stockings that bunch and sag at the ankles? They’re worth capturing, holding on to forever. I’ll never be this young again. Or this lonely. Or this hairy. Come one, come all, to my private show.
When my father appeared on the scene there would be pictures of him, too, sitting in the bathtub, holding a frying pan up as a shield. As disconcerting as it is to see your father make a face that can only be described as “coquettish,” it’s the images of my mother that fascinate me. The flash of fear in her eye—or is it longing? The feverish need to reveal who she really is, as much to herself as anybody.
I get naked on TV. A lot.
It started in college. Pressed for actors who embodied the spirit of sexual despair I was looking to cultivate, I cast myself. Unaware how sex scenes were handled by the pros, I didn’t purchase nudity covers or enforce a “closed set.” I simply pulled my shirt over my head and dove in.
“Do you want me to actually suck your nipple?” Jeff, my confused scene partner, asked.
Later, looking at the footage in the Oberlin media lab, I didn’t feel shy. I didn’t love what I saw, but I didn’t hate it either. My body was simply a tool to tell the story. It was hardly me at all, but rather a granny-panty-clad prop I had judiciously employed. I didn’t look elegant, beautiful, or skilled. This was sex as I knew it.
Exhibitionism wasn’t new to me. I’d always had an interest in nudity, one I would describe as more sociological than sexual. Who got to be naked, and why? The summer between fourth and fifth grades, I remember riding bikes with my best friend Willy around the lake in Connecticut where our families congregated for the summer each year—think Dirty Dancing, but with more known pedophiles in the neighborhood—when I became keenly aware that I was wearing a shirt and he was not. That didn’t seem fair. After all, my mother had recently told me it was technically legal for women to walk through Manhattan shirtless, even if very few exercised the right. Why did Willy get to enjoy the summer breeze on his chest? What was so bad about exposing mine? I stopped, removed my t-shirt, and we pedaled on in silence.
In 2010 I got the opportunity to make a television show. The network told me they wanted to see my age group, the concerns of my friends and enemies, in graphic detail—and they didn’t seem to be bluffing. If I was going to write honestly about twenty-something life, sex was a topic I’d have to address head-on. And the sex in television and movies had always rubbed me the wrong way. Everything I saw as a child, from 90210 to The Bridges of Madison County, had led me to believe that sex was a cringey, warmly lit event where two smooth-skinned, gooey-eyed losers achieved mutual orgasm by breathing on each other’s faces. The first time I got naked with a guy, grotesque as it was, I was just so relieved he wasn’t deeply inhaling my natural scent or running his hands up my torso to the strains of Chris Isaak.
Besides being gross, these images of sex can also be destructive. Between porn and studio romantic comedies, we get the message loud and clear that we are doing it all wrong. Our bedsheets aren’t right. Our moves aren’t right. Our bodies aren’t right.
So when I was offered the chance to make the show, I did what I’d been doing for almost five years in far more “independent” productions: I stripped down and went for it.
People are always curious, so I’m going to tell you what it’s like to lie in bed in a room full of onlookers and simulate intercourse with someone you may or may not know. Professional actors always give canned answers like “It’s just a job, it’s so mechanical” or “He was so fun to work with, he felt like my brother,” but since no one has ever accused me of being professional, or of being an actor—I will be honest.
It’s fucking weird. Yes, it’s just a job, but most people’s jobs don’t consist of slamming your vagina against the flaccid, nylon-wrapped penis of a guy wearing massive amounts of foundation to conceal his assne. I’ve suffered humiliations such as kneeing my scene partner in the balls, realizing under the bright studio lights that there is a thick black hair growing out of my nipple, and finding a lubricated prop condom stuck between my butt cheeks seven hours after arriving home.
It’s hard to imagine that anything you do in a room full of lights, old Italian dudes, and bad tuna sandwiches is going to be seen on TV by multitudes, so I don’t really think about the audience during my sex scenes. Getting naked feels better some days than others. (Good: when you are vaguely tan. Bad: when you have diarrhea.) But I do it because my boss tells me to. And my boss is me. When you’re naked, it’s nice to be in control.
And my mother always knew that, hence her Nikon raised high and pointed right into the mirror. She sensed that by documenting her own body, she was preserving her history. Beautifully. Nakedly. Imperfectly. Her private experiment made way for my public one.
Another frequently asked question is how I am “brave” enough to reveal my body on-screen. The subtext there is definitely how am I brave enough to reveal my imperfect body, since I doubt Blake Lively would be subject to the same line of inquiry. I am forced to engage in regular conversation about my body with strangers, such as the drunken frat boy on MacDougal Street who shouted, “Your tits look like my sister’s!” My answer is: It’s not brave to do something that doesn’t scare you. I’d be brave to skydive. To visit a leper colony. To argue a case in the United States Supreme Court or to go to a CrossFit gym. Performing in sex scenes that I direct, exposing a flash of my weird puffy nipple, those things don’t fall into my zone of terror.
A few years ago, after I screened Tiny Furniture for the first time, I was standing outside the theater in Austin when a teenage boy approached me. He was tiny. Really tiny. The kind of tiny that, as a teenage boy, must be painful. He looked like a Persian cat’s toy mouse.
“Excuse me,” he said shyly. “I just wanted you to know how much it meant to me to see you show your body in that way. It made me feel so much better about myself.”
The first result of this was that I pictured him naked, which was stressful. The second was extreme gratitude: for his generosity in sharing,
for my ability to have any impact on the body image of this obviously cool and open young gentleman (after all, he was seeing a fringe women’s-interest film on a school night).
“Thank you so much.” I beamed. “You’re really hot.”
1. Luxury is nice, but creativity is nicer. Hence the game where you go into the ten-dollar store and pick out an outfit you might wear to the Oscars (or to the sixth-grade dance).
2. The sidewalk isn’t really that dirty.
3. Barbie’s disfigured. It’s fine to play with her just as long as you keep that in mind.
4. If you have a bad feeling about someone, don’t worry about offending them. Just run. Being polite is how you get your purse stolen or your “purse stolen.”
5. Related: if someone says “I’m not going to hurt you” or “I’m not a creep,” they probably are. Noncreeps don’t feel the need to say it all the time.
6. Never yell at someone else’s child. Just talk shit about them behind their back.
7. It’s okay to ignore the dress code if you’re an “artist.” People will think you’re operating on a higher plane and feel suddenly self-conscious.
8. If someone doesn’t answer your email within six hours, it means they hate you.
9. “Asshole” is not a curse word. Not even if you add “little fucking” in front of it.
10. It’s better to eat little bits of everything than large amounts of one thing. If that fails, try large amounts of everything.
11. Respect isn’t something you command through intimidation and intellectual bullying. It’s something you build through a long life of treating people how you want to be treated and focusing on your mission.
12. Keep your friends close. Buy your enemies something cool.
13. Why spend $200 once a week on therapy when you can spend $150 once a year on a psychic?