‘Not That Kind Of Girl’ by Lena Dunham

My life has been a bit all over the place of late. Several chats with friends over coffee/ mulled wine/ Moroccan food have confirmed what I have been feeling for an age: I am essentially having a mid twenties crisis. How terribly melodramatic I hear you cry. Well, evidently it is this feeling of deep dissatisfaction with life and an almost overwhelming desire to either a) hide under a blanket for eternity or b) quit everything and start over that me, and several of my friends, are unable to shake. We grew up being promised the world and have worked damn hard to achieve it, and we are either beginning to realise that these things (a satisfying job, a property of your own, enough financial freedom to actually be a person) are exceptionally elusive. Or, in my case specifically, that the career I have been working towards for years (through a degree, a post grad and a further training year) is not all it’s cracked up to be.

Poor little me. How tragic. Those of another generation often bemoan that we need to just deal with it. Learn to live with this feeling of dissatisfaction and disillusionment. That we are better off than thousands of others and that we should be damn grateful for what we do have. Well, yes that’s all very well and good. But there are always going to people worse off than you. And that doesn’t make my situation any less valid to me. Waking up every day with a deep pitted dread at having to go through it all again and knowing that, unless you change something, you will be in the same place 5, 10, 15 years from now does not make feel full of vitality and zest for life. And I think it was this feeling that I can’t shake that drew me to ‘Not That Kind Of Girl’ by Lena Dunham.

I loved Girls when it first appeared- partly because I viewed it as a cross between Friends and Sex and The City. I found Girls cringe worthy, bewildering and, at times, reassuring- a light relief from life. It was like the main character, Hannah, had reached out of the TV, patted me on the shoulder and said, “Yes. I’m anxious and my life is a bit crap too. I don’t know what I’m doing either”.

Since my first encounter with the series, Lena Dunham has popped up all over the place. Whether it be for her ‘audacity’ at showing her naked self to millions in unflattering sexual encounters; her dress sense  or her views on feminism. I had heard that, like her character Hannah, Lena Dunham’s voice was ‘the voice of a generation’. In short, I had high hopes for her collection of personal essays ; ‘a young women tells you what she’s learned’.

I enjoyed the book. I really did. It was sort of like reading someone’s carefully crafted diary or blog post. Split into different sections (Love & Sex, Body, Friendship, Work, and Big Picture) Lena’s words essentially had the same effect on me as Girls- I laughed, I felt reassured (I revelled in finding out her fears, issues and anxieties were very similar to my own) and I was bemused. But, truthfully, that was about it. There seemed to be a distinct ‘voice of a generation’ aspect that was missing. It seemed juvenile at times; just a collection of comments about boys and being a teenager, littered with anecdotes about sexual discovery that were probably meant to seem 'shocking'. Overall, it didn’t provide me with the epiphany on life that I was hoping for. I guess my hopes were too high and the book had been built up too much- like a New Year’s Eve that ends in exactly the same pit of loose sequins and stained red wine mouth. It had so much promise.

Saying that, I did enjoy reading it. And I was a bit distraught when it was over (I get that with a lot of books- I think it’s the whole running away from life thing). I would recommend it. And I still love Lena Dunham. But I think you will need to keep searching for that reassurance that your own life isn’t a complete disaster elsewhere.

Ironically, what will stay with me is one of the quotes Lena Dunham chose to preface her book. A quote from a novel that I will have to revisit:

“Deep in her soul, however, she was waiting for something to happen. Like a sailor in distress, she would gaze out over the solitude of her life with desperate eyes, seeking some white sail in the mists of the far-off horizon. She did not know what this chance event would be, what wind would drive it to her, what shore it would carry her to, whether it was a longboat or a three-decked vessel, loaded with anguish or filled with happiness up to the portholes. But each morning, when she awoke, she hoped it would arrive that day...”
- GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, Madame Bovary

 
Page 99 Snapshot:

“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 the 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.”