Lena Dunham

Lena Dunham on Barbara Gordon's "I’m Dancing As Fast As I Can", Kittens, Using a Cane, and more.

January 3, 2023

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Lena Dunham is a writer, director, and actress living in North-West London and North-West Connecticut best known for being the creator and star of the iconic TV series Girls. In 2022 she released two new films, Catherine Called Birdy and Sharp Stick, which are both streaming now. Lena also co-hosts “The C-Word” (read Ivy Wolk’s PI rec of it) with Alissa Bennett that takes deep dives into the lives of women society has called “crazy” such as Lindsey Lohan, Winona Ryder, Marie Antoinette, and more, and they occasionally brings on guests like Mel Ottenberg and Naomi Fry. Lucky for us, Lena is here to tell us what she’s been into.

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Eileen West nightgowns

I live in these nightgowns more than I love a lot of people. I use them to write (the stiffer cotton floral variety) and to sleep (the stretchy sacks with Peter Pan collars, like putting just one decoration on a dying Christmas tree) and flirt (that’s when I bust out my knee length with the frilly straps.) The long Victorian overcoats are perfect for water coloring. They’re higher quality than their price point suggests, and it’s time we get them out of Vermont Country Store purgatory and maybe even rebrand them as a sought after Bohemian wardrobe staple. If anyone from Eileen Fisher is listening, I have a long held dream that I paint a series of patterns to adorn your bestsellers. Lena x Eileen West. It sounds niche now, but…

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Kittens

I have (and have had) many pets since I was a wee girl- newts, bunnies, terriers, gerbils, frogs, iguanas, fish, hedgehogs, and I’ve loved each of them with all I’ve got. But over the last few years, I’ve found my truest passion is raising kittens (don’t tell my dogs, who seem 100% sure the cats are just disruptive indignities I must suffer to get back to them.) Kittens are nature’s anti-depressant, the best reality show you’re not watching and a totally inspiring example of the mindfuck that is evolution. I mean, these little creeps have been designed by a Higher Power to look adorably lost, impossibly needy… and then BAM they’re opening all your doors and eating all your salad and looking down at you from the bookshelf like you’re the help in a Downton Abbey sequel. Plus, on a soppy note, a teensy rescue kitten is the example of tenacity we all need- they don’t give up as they go from fetal bird confusion to diabolical emperor. Any opportunity to foster, raise and/or unleash kittens on their next willing fin-dom arrangement is one of my higher callings. At the moment, two young ‘ens are staring at me from a cactus shaped condo in the corner of our bedroom. Another eight year old adoptee/Garfield doppelganger is on a reduced calorie diet upstairs so that he can maintain his heart health and travel in something smaller than the laundry hamper. Look at us! We’re a chic literary salon but I’m the only one who can read (I think. I have one cat who can probably read, she just does it at night when I’m not looking.)

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Puppets and Puppets

My friend Carly Mark is a genius artist, making work about the female gaze, body horror and conspicuous consumption. But now you can conspicuously consume Puppets and Puppets, the high meets low endless design experiment she’s running like it’s Gucci in the Tom Ford era only EVERYONE is invited. Gender, size- she’s blowing up all the binaries of fashion. It ain’t cheap, but the prices reflect couture level production, fascinating fabrics and playfully sinister details (a demure Mary Jane with a wooden wedge of cheese for a heel, a chic little purse with a resin black and white cookie slapped on its front in place of logo hardware.) This is high fashion for the kid who liked to layer macaroni necklaces, for the former Emily The Strange who now works in branding, for any person who wants to add “art witch” to their resume. Carly has made me a few dresses and whenever I wear them, I feel like I can change the world with the power embedded in the layered skirts. It’s also so genderfluid that my husband can (and does) steal.

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The Teddy Bear from Brideshead Revisited

Brideshead revisited was, famously, such a successful miniseries that liberal arts college students in the early eighties started dressing like the lead characters, in soft linen suits and cravats. Some even began carrying a teddy bear, the way that Lord Sebastian Flyte toted his beloved Aloysius. (If you want to know more, listen to the exceptional pod Once Upon a Time… at Bennington.) My bestie Alissa Bennett, queen of the Google deep dive, found me an exact Aloysius replica. I have enough problems without carrying a soft toy to work events, so he sits on a baby chair in my bedroom.

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Using a Cane

Recently a woman at a party came up to me and said : “I used to follow your Instagram but I stopped when your interior problems became a bit much for me.” I guess she meant my health issues, but from now on they’re just “interior problems.” Over the years, as I’ve gotten more used to living in this body (I have endometriosis, auto-immune arthritis and Ehler-Danlos Syndrome) and have learned more about sick girl/crip culture, I’ve grown simultaneously less noisy about my own struggles (there are a lot of people out there doing it better) and more confident about asking for what I need when I need it. One subtle form of support is the cane: it both allows me to hoof around comfortably when I’m in pain and reminds people that we aren’t all walking around with ease and to handle each other with care. You’ve gotta be pretty heartless to body slam someone on a cane just to get to the simple syrup at Blue Bottle coffee, ya know? The cane has the potential, with a little *lol* legwork, be quite stylish- my most cherished is a woman’s walking stick from the early 20th century with a carved parrot’s head handle, its eyes made from gleaming amber glass- this (and many other wonderful walking stickszzzzz) can be procured at: antiquecanes.com, the kind of business that would fail anywhere else but here in London, it’s thriving. The other favorite source for canes is zitomer.com, the eternally fancy pharmacy on the Upper East Side. These are some Liza Minelli, give em the ole razzle dazzle canes. Plus, you can pick up fancy bows and nice mini hand lotions at the same time.

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Alissa Bennett

Alissa is my favorite writer. Whether it’s her cult favorite Dead is Better zines (on every bookshelf with integrity) or her seminal piece I’m a Clubber, Alissa has long been heightening the lows of pop culture history so that we don’t have to. She’s also my best friend and together we host The C Word, a podcast about women who have been called crazy for which she does a, well, crazy amount of research. It’s also crazy that I regularly get to sit in bed with my favorite writer while she does her lengthy skin care routine and we watch the best moments of Dateline and scream at the ceiling. I hope we die together in a piece of real estate worthy of us.

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I’m Dancing As Fast As I Can

This nineteen seventies memoir by Barbara Gordon recalls her addiction to Valium and subsequent break with reality in a breezy second-wave feminist tone that, while not politically correct exactly, sets the stage for the kind of female confessional culture that I slid into. It’s a sad book, a funny book, a book you may want to read if only to understand where the upwardly mobile went to lunch in New York in the late nineteen seventies.

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Woman Painters

Art is about more than identity, can allow us to transcend identity, but having been raised in the art world of the 90s, when painting was dying and women weren’t given the wall space they deserved, it’s a joy to watch femme painters rise to the top of the pile creatively and financially. I am lucky enough to cherish works by Jenna Gribbon, Jocelyn Hobbie, Kyle Staver, Ellen Birkinblit and my dear friend Issy Wood. I am currently obsessed with Larissa De Jesus Negron, Petra Cortright, Lucy Bull, Robin F. Williams, Somaya Critchlow, Gina Beavers and Cynthia Talmadge. It’s a lifetime dream to have a massive Lisa Yuskavage to wake up to (though I do have a print she gave me for my 26th birthday when I had a Soul Cycle party and everyone was mad except Lisa, who kicked all our millenial asses on the bike.)

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@pokeacupuncture

I met Russell Brown, the man behind LA acupuncture sensation Poke, at a party in WeHo in 2012. I thought we were flirting but I think he was just sizing up my myriad issues and how they could be addressed by Chinese medicine. He’s since become the kind of friend who is closer to family than actual family, the kind you can call in the night screaming “my pee doesn’t feel right.” His knowledge, calm and ability to discuss Real Housewives’ behavior using terms like Yang and Chi (while still respecting the concepts) makes him indispensable. If you can’t get to LA to see him, where he often works with clients in communities in need, then follow him on Instagram- and subscribe to his free Substack Diet Poke, where he does a great job of simplifying essential concepts in a funny, pop way that’s still totally healing. I particularly love how he grapples with the LA desire to be perfect and the ways in which certain new age goals are at odds with real healing. To put it simply, he’s my Dr. Phil and my Ma Anand Sheela all rolled into one, only queer and without delusions of grandeur. He gets my vote for most likely to change the world.

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Notes on a Scandal

This film is, to me, perfection. Lesbian adjacent stalking, huge focus on real estate and the two GOATiest GOATS- Cate B and Judi D- going head to head at the speed of hysteria. This is what I hoped I was getting when I decided to make a home in London (every part except an affair with a fifteen year old boy. Not good!) Not only do I love the aesthetic- a kind of drab cashmere cowl-neck with a hippie skirt, the sense that everyone is ten degrees too cold, tons of crown moulding- but I love any film about our obsessive cultural interest in catching mothers stepping outside of bounds, and what that punitive glee says about us. Watch for the complex social message, stay to see a young Juno Temple whimper-cry “I’M FAT AS FUCK, MUM!" (she’s most definitely not, but she plays it perfectly.)

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Lena Dunham

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