Is Elizabeth Wurtzel the Ghost of Lena Dunham Future?

Lena Dunham has a new book out. A collection of essays called Not That Kind of Girl describing her charmingly rocky road to adulthood. It’s a road we’ve been down before, via her first feature film Tiny Furniture her hit HBO show Girls and in the odd New Yorker article. As Alice Jones writes in her review of the book for The Independent: “Her life is her art. Always has been. Everything that happens to her is near instantly processed as fodder for a story.” Lots of people find themselves fascinating. The millennial generation is full of over-privileged naval-gazers with creative aspirations. Not That Kind Of Girl is surely far from the only memoir of its kind. It is, however, the only one that received a $3.7 million advance from Random House.

Part of the magic of Lena Dunham is how she refuses to spare herself. She’s been subject to some vicious critiques – entitled, narcissistic, not pretty enough - but they all fall flat because she’s already incorporated them into her act. On TV, the character she plays is a walking exploration of everything that can and has been said about the actress that plays her. She also lets herself be filmed naked on the toilet. Not even “lets” – insists. It’s her show, she’s the one making these choices. And it works. We are as transfixed by her compulsive honesty as we are by her wit.

If she were a hack, I would dismiss her as a novelty. A by-product of a generation raised on voyeurism and nurtured by (false) assurances that they are uniquely magnificent. But she’s not a hack, she’s talented. Which makes me excited to see where her career will go, and more than a little bit worried as well.

I worry because I don’t know if obsessive self-examination is enough to sustain an entire career. I do think it’s worthwhile. As they say “write what you know” and it’s arguably impossible for a writer to write well about any other subject until she truly understands herself. That said, I think that early success as a memoirist can stunt the growth of a young writer. Case in point: Elizabeth Wurtzel.

Elizabeth Wurtzel published “Prozac Nation” in 1994 when she was 26-years old. The parallels between Wurtzel and Dunham are significant: the New York upbringing, the frankness bordering on exhibitionism, the struggle with mental illness. Both women, in their time, have been crowned the “voice of a generation.” In Wurtzel’s case, it was Generation X.  Her memoir about depression and self-destructive behavior struck a chord with America’s gloomy youth when they were reeling from the suicide of their idol Kurt Cobain. Suddenly she was living every young writer’s dream. By her own account, she celebrated by getting heavily into drugs and sleeping with a different man every night. Which was her prerogative. But the trouble is, she never quite pulled off the same trick again – of cataloguing her own experiences in a way that resonated widely with her peers.

Fran Lebowitz has said that while experience is essential to being a writer, some writers can only write about being young. “Once they’re no longer young, they can’t do it anymore”. Elizabeth Wurtzel made a name for herself writing about what it was like to be “young and depressed in America.” She has stayed true to her self-as-subject ever since, with ever diminishing returns. She has described the indignities of aging, the burden of being conventionally pretty, the thrill of sleeping with married men. In January 2013, New York Magazine published her piece “Elizabeth Wurtzel Confronts her One Night Stand of a Life,” a periphrastic whine/brag about how the writer managed to reach her 40s without accumulating any of the conventional trappings of adulthood. Now, at 47, she has found love at last. The world knows this now, because of her essay in this Sunday’s New York Times entitled “Getting Married Is Easy” where she announces her engagement by describing what a disaster her dating life was for decades before meeting her now-fiance. Wurtzel is still dealing with themes that people can emotionally connect with, but it’s almost irrelevant because she has so thoroughly cordoned herself off from any audience she may still have.

Swimming against the tide of social expectation isn’t easy. It’s understandable that twenty years of it has given Wurtzel a “me against the world” mentality. But I think her writing suffers from it. When she briefly turns her focus towards the people around her, she tends to make sweeping generalizations that don’t always ring true. Observations along the lines of “everyone else is doing this” or “most people feel this way” are seldom substantiated, and it often feels like she’s only interested in the general population insofar as it proves how removed she is from it. A harsh critic of her times, she revels in her status as outcast. Because if society is so debased, then there is a kind of purity in failing to conform, right? “In a world gone wrong, a pure heart is dangerous” she writes with zero irony. The reader is then antagonized by default. You may feel like an outcast, or a failure, or a “difficult personality” but you’re not Elizabeth Wurtzel. Therefore, you can’t relate to what she’s going through. You can only stupidly think that you do.

It’s a shame really, because she’s not a hack either. She’s probably almost as smart as she thinks she is, which is impressive. But she crossed a threshold somewhere. Self-scrutiny is a window into the outside world. But taken too far it can also become a dark, locked room.  

I don’t believe that Wurtzel is the Ghost of Lena Dunham future. For some reason, I see the latter staying grounded and adaptable where her predecessor spiraled off into self-aggrandized oblivion. Why would that be?

An article on the blog The Pessimist called “Ugly: The Problem with Elizabeth Wurtzel” suggests that the memoirist’s career was doomed by her, well, hotness. This may be partly true, but only because she insisted on making such a big damn deal about it. It’s hard to be on board with anyone who waxes poetic about their own beauty. Conversely, Lena Dunham has probably benefitted from the accessibility of her looks. She’s extremely cute, she’s got a rock star boyfriend, and she’s been on the cover of Vogue. But in the Twilight Zone of Hollywood, she does stand out for looking a bit more like the rest of us. Her arrival on the scene was heralded as “refreshing” and “real” which helped fuel her meteoric rise. Will it help her career in the long run, in the same way that being moviestar gorgeous hurt Wurtzel? Maybe. But I think that Dunham’s salvation will be more a matter of intellect than looks.

I was introduced to Dunham (like many people) through Tiny Furniture. That movie was the story of her fictionalized self, but the other characters were fully realized as well. The same applies to her costars on Girls. I think that her talent is strongest in her dialogue, which bodes well. Because writing dialogue forces you to step out of your own perspective and inhabit someone else’s. You don’t have the option of relating to the whole world as a monolithic foe (the way Wurtzel so often does) when you’re writing a screenplay. So the fact that Dunham has such a knack for that particular art form gives me hope that her work will continue to resonate even when she and her cohort are no longer young.   

Rejected Princesses is My New Favorite Tumblr

Sorry, Kittenstache.

Former DreamWorks animator Jason Porath has a new Tumblr dedicated to some of the baddest bitches of all time. He presents the weird, wild, and often horrifying facts (taken directly from history and myth) about these women’s lives, alongside cartoon renderings of them in the familiar Disney style.

I love this idea because it draws attention to two important facts: 1) The stories that Disney tells about women are consistently disappointing, and 2) history is full of amazing stories about women that barely get told at all.

Consider the classic trifecta of Disney princesses: Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Snow White. All three are borrowed from traditional fairy tales, and afforded basically zero personality or autonomy. They’re just pretty, and in a terrible situation because some older woman is jealous of how pretty they are. They yearn to be rescued (see: Snow White’s signature ballad “Some Day My Prince Will Come”) and after some series of events totally outside of their control, their handsome saviors show up and rescue them by turning them into wives. Cringe. Yawn.

Then Disney evolved a little bit, and started giving us heroines with a little moxy: Belle was a bookworm, Ariel was adventurous, Pocahontas was strong-willed, Jasmine was disobedient. All of these women started out feeling restless, eager to discover the world outside of the confines of their sheltered lives. But every damn one of them finds her destiny in some man. Every one of them ventures just far enough to discover her soulmate and then settles back in, satisfied that her love story (and therefore her entire story) has reached its happy ending.

Which is the first reason why Porath’s Tumblr is so awesome. I can’t think of a pop culture trope I am more eager to see turned on its ear.

The second reason is that it reminds readers of some amazing people who should never have been forgotten in the first place. Some of them are admirable, some controversial, some downright sinister. But all of them are complex and powerful, and all of them serve as a reminder that the so-called “fairer sex” is a whole lot more interesting than history has given it credit for.

Reading this Tumblr, I was happy to learn a lot of new names, and to see some familiar ones that I do not see very often. Here are a few personal favorites:

Ida B. Wells: Journalist, activist, and early hero of the civil rights movement, Ida B. Wells is an all-around inspiration. She dedicated (and often risked) her life for the cause of spreading truth as an instrument of social justice. At a time when the horrific practice of lynching was common and widely misunderstood, she wrote about its brutal reality in works like her book Southern Horrors.

Pasiphae: Although she is totally fictional, I loved seeing Pasiphae on there because the story of the Minotaur is my number one favorite story of all time. I just love the characters, including the Minotaur’s mother Pasiphae, who is often omitted when people tell the tale of this famous hybrid monster.

Wu Zeitan: While studying Chinese history in college, I remember reading Wu Zeitan’s story and wondering if she was a full blown psychopath or just a product of her times. She was the only female emperor ever to rule in China. Remember that speech in Macbeth where Lady Macbeth vows that she would kill her own baby if it secured her in a position of power? Yeah, Wu Zeitan actually did that. But it begs the question of whether a woman who was anything short of a cold blooded child killer could have done what she did, given the attitude of the time.

Elisabeth Bathory: History’s most prolific serial killer. With a title as incendiary as that, you’d think she’d be more widely known. Twilight brought pop culture’s love affair with vampires to new extremes. But even that couldn’t raise this “Blood Countess” (whose story served as inspiration for the original Dracula myth) from the coffin of history.

Even though these are some of the most impactful women (and/or intriguing stories) of all time, none of them are household names. Sure, they’re documented, and some people know about them. But if you mentioned any of them at a party it would never get the same reaction as mentioning, say….Benjamin Franklin. Or Napoleon. Or Alexander the Great.

Why is that? Maybe it’s because they’re hard to like. The three dudes mentioned above were all profoundly flawed, but we would never let those flaws overshadow their historical significance. With women, if we can’t root for them every step of the way, we can’t handle them. 

A Disney princess may be sulky or stubborn or mischievous, but beyond that she’s utterly unobjectionable. Just like she always has Barbie-esque proportions to match her perfectly symmetrical face. Mulan is something of an exception to the mold outlined above. But for all her genderbending badassery, her character presents no challenge to the viewer. She is consummately virtuous. She never does anything that might complicate how we feel about her.

Not so with most of the women on Porath’s list.

We’ve all heard Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s charming adage that “well behaved women seldom make history”. This is true, but even badly behaved women struggle to make the cut. A lot of people, when confronted with a difficult woman, will awkwardly avoid her. Historically, we tend to put them off to the side where we don’t have to deal.

That’s why it’s so important to pay tribute to the outliers, who managed to write their names in ink (or blood) in a world that didn’t expect them to make an impact. And if we can do that while making fun of a cultural powerhouse that promotes antiquated gender stereotypes, so much the better! 

What can we learn from the "Fappening"?

Jennifer Lawrence is a victim. All of the women included in the recent mass celebrity nude photo leak are victims, just like someone whose house is robbed is a victim of robbery. Outside of the statements released by various PR and legal teams, that word “victim” hasn’t come up much. Partly because it is sympathetic, and a lot of people decline to sympathize with rich celebrities as a matter of principle. But also because it is exculpatory. Much of the coverage of what the internet has saucily dubbed “the Fappening” has been laced with judgment. Judgment that a bunch of public figures were foolish enough to store their naughty pics online. And more than that, judgment that they took the naughty pics in the first place.  

The iCloud leak should definitely serve as a cautionary tale, but the celebrities’ actions are far from unusual. All over the world, millions of people use the internet every single day. Many do so with a false sense of security, assuming that their passwords and “friends-only” filters are sufficiently protecting their private information from malefactors and thieves. The rest of us, to varying degrees, are gambling. We know that should some hacker somewhere decide to access say, our social security numbers, bank statements, addresses, phone numbers, and any personal photos that may be floating around, they would be able to do so quite easily. We knew the risks involved when we made that information available online. We decided it was worth it, given the remarkable convenience we enjoyed as a result. In much of America, to opt out of such risks is downright eccentric, perhaps even impossible. The moment we fill out the paperwork necessary to open a bank account, or start a new job, it will be archived in an online database and vulnerable to hacks.

This is all to say that anyone criticizing these women on the grounds of technical naivete is probably a damn hypocrite.

Some have made the argument that they should have been more careful, given their celebrity status. To that, I would like to point out how obnoxious it is when a celebrity acknowledges her fame, and how refreshing it is when she carries on as though she were an ordinary schmo. Like when an actress is photographed leaving the gym looking a sweaty mess because she can’t quite believe that a bunch of paparazzi would actually be interested in documenting her workout routine. Furthermore, many of the pictures are several years old, and pre-date big time fame.  

But this isn’t really about hating on someone for not understanding the Cloud. As Jason Segel says in “Sex Tape” (or at least in the trailer for Sex Tape, I didn’t watch that mess) “No one understands the Cloud. It’s a fucking mystery”. This is about punishing famous women for exploring their sexuality and having the gall not to share it with us.

We feel like these actresses transgressed, and as a result we are now entitled to these images whether they want us to see them or not. It’s the same principle as revenge porn. Revenge porn is a serious problem which is being addressed somewhat but not nearly as actively as it should, because of the same biases affecting the victims of the leak. We are still a long way from living in what Dan Savage would call a “sex-positive” society, and as a result, we can’t quite rally around a woman who displays her naked body in that way. We waver on the line, saying “yeah, it was shitty that her ex-boyfriend exposed her like that, but what was she doing taking those pictures in the first place?”

What she was doing was appreciating her body. She was seeing her naked self in the mirror, liking the way it looked, and capturing the moment on film.

A lot of people have taken naked selfies. A lot of people have sent those naked selfies to a significant other using a technology that would make it possible for an obsessive creep to intercept them. And I would wager that a lot of the people who so proudly haven’t might just change their tune if they woke up tomorrow morning looking like Jennifer Lawrence.

These pictures were taken privately, and saved, which means that in a lot of cases they probably had a positive association for these women. They were reminders of a moment of self-esteem, or of feeling sexy and desired by someone they liked. Like all pictures they preserved a memory, in this case a memory characterized by confidence, arousal, fun, and trust. The leak took all of that and turned it into something that they needed to be ashamed of. That’s a fucking bummer.

I think that we can all learn from this incident in the sense that we all learned from the Snowden leaks: information that is saved or shared digitally is never really secure. But there is another important lesson here, and I fear that the puritanical coverage of the event will serve only to obscure it: just because a woman is comfortable with her sexuality does not mean that her sexuality belongs to anyone who wants it. A woman’s sexuality belongs to herself, and whoever she consents to share it with. When these women took these pictures, they did not consent for them to be publicly available. The fact that they took naked pictures in the first place does not count as consent, nor does it deprive them of the right to make that choice. These are simple ideas, which we ignored the moment the pictures became available, because we are a society that still believes that a woman’s body (especially when she has the audacity to appreciate it on her own terms) belongs to us. Let’s all take a moment to reflect on how fucked up that is and try to keep it in mind the next time a bunch of private photos get hacked.