A review by whimsydances
Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "learned" by Lena Dunham

2.0

I was really looking forward to reading this book. I addictively enjoyed the first couple of seasons of Girls, before I got behind in watching, and I also really enjoyed her promotional videos for the book. As someone who promotes the deconstruction of rape culture, I had heard about her description, and her own confusion and ambiguity surrounding her described rape. That was probably one of the only poignant moments in the book. It is surrounded by disjointed, repetitive (copy and pasted, even), and lackluster vingettes by a self-centered individual who is just dysfunctional enough to not have her shit together, and not dysfunctional enough to have her life fall apart. So instead, she drags her entire family out into the limelight, brags about everything she's afraid of, or messed up about, or has screwed up in her life, and tries to pretend that she has grown past all of it and learned so much. She really lost me when she decided to write letters to the people who had wronged her, and I had to struggle to make myself finish the book after that. She was right, we have all wanted to write those letters, and some of us actually have. But what sets us apart from her is that most of us, when we do, actually never send them, or if we do, they are written for closure. Her letters betray just how little personal growth or wisdom she possesses, amounting to name calling and angst. I lost a lot of respect for her maturity at that point, particularly when she wrote a letter to a person who said they forgave her for her movie, apparently because her movie had said something offensive about LGBT people. She said she forgave her friend for saying that, but then said she couldn't forgive her for her outfit... Really? Just how petty and childish can you possibly get? Grow up, Lena. When you do, maybe I'll consider reading another one of your books.