She’s never been afraid to stand up for herself.
Lena Dunham recently underwent surgery for endometriosis and has spoken in the past about struggling with her health.
The actress’ illness has caused her body to change over time, but that hasn’t stopped certain media outlets from lauding her “weight loss”, with headlines like these:
‘Girls’ Star Lena Dunham’s Weight Loss: The Actress Shows off a Slimmer Figure in NYC!
Lena Dunham shows off incredible weight loss (and here’s how she did it)
Lena Dunham Shows Off Slim New Look After Losing Weight
Magazine UsWeekly printed a photo of her this week alongside a headline about ‘diet tips’, and Lena wasn’t having it.
She shared a post on Instagram with her own diet tips – some funny, some sad but all sarcastic.
Here they are in full.
“20 slimdown diet tips!
1. anxiety disorder *
2. resultant constant nausea
3. an election that reveals the true depths of American misogyny
4. constant sweaty dreams of dystopian future
5. abdominal adhesions pinning ovary below uterus *
6. baseless but still harrowing threats to physical safety online and through smail mail
7. watching institutions you love from Planned Parenthood to PBS be threatened by cartoon mustache-twirling villains
8. finally realizing superheroes aren’t real (specifically the X-Factor, really thought they’d handle this)
9. marching your ass off
10. a quiet rage that replaces need for food with need for revenge
11. sleeping 19 hours a day
12. realizing that even the liberal media wants dem clicks no matter whut
13. worrying ceaselessly about the health and safety of women you know and women you don’t
14. realizing who ya real friends are
15. having to switch from Uber to Lyft (lots of calories burned trying to understand a new app, then even more trying to understand if the conflict was resolved)
16. bladder spasms, urinary frequency and urgency *
17. having your phone number leaked and violent images texted to your phone by randos under names like [email protected]
18. keeping your back arched against the wind
19. um, who the fuck cares?
20. I have no tips I give no tips I don’t want to be on this cover cuz it’s diametrically opposed to everything I’ve fought my whole career for and it’s not a compliment to me because it’s not an achievement thanx * Star indicates a pre-existing condition”
The post, which currently has over 172,000 likes, was a veritable middle finger to the media, for which female celebrities’ bodies have long been a point of fascination.
Props to Lena – while public figures offer themselves up for a certain amount of public scrutiny, a person’s weight or health is no-one’s business but their own.
