Like many viewers, when HBO’s series Girls debuted, I quickly began to treat Hannah Horvath and Lena Dunham, the actress who played her, as well as the show’s creator, as one and the same. From her tone-deaf blunders to the way she was constantly disrobing onscreen, Hannah was ignorant, narcissistic, and just plain obnoxious, and she infuriated me. I responded by trashing the show in a series of TV recaps I made for YouTube with my best friend, De’Lon. Does the world need yet another show about rich white girls in New York who don’t take the subway, live in giant apartments, and have lots of sex? The answer is no. We already had Sex and the City, which was infinitely better in terms of both writing and outfits.
Because Lena Dunham was the showrunner, creator, and star of Girls—and because she seemed unable to resist making dumb comments in interviews and all over social media—a lot of my criticism focused on her. While many people were vocally annoyed by Dunham and her work on Girls, I was really annoyed. Of course, I could have spent the time and energy I wasted hate-watching and then panning this show doing productive or valuable things, but instead I tuned in every week so that I could make myself feel better about having a less successful acting career than Lena. Some people do really in-depth, nuanced TV recaps; this was not what De’Lon and I were making. Sure, we discussed the lack of diversity on the show, and dissected Lena’s repeated missteps when it came to race beyond the series. But overall, our criticisms were snarky and mean. Although we never called Lena fat outright, we would happily skirt the line and say shaming things like, “Why can’t she keep her clothes on?” and “Girl, that dress does not fit, and you look like a mess.”
I didn’t think about it at the time, but the old maxim about how there’s no such thing as bad press really applies here: We were basically promoting the show. People would comment that they’d never heard of Girls before they saw my videos, but our reviews were so hilarious and biting that their interests were piqued. Could the show really be as bad as we claimed? We assured them it was, but my subscribers set their DVRs to find out for themselves anyway. Still, we soldiered on, as if roasting a person that everyone else was already roasting were our civic duty.
The beginning of the second season of Girls was when we really hit our stride, thanks to a little help from Lena’s terrible PR responses. After a totally white season one, Lena and her co-showrunner, Jenni Konner, had responded to extensive criticism of the show’s lack of diversity by plopping Donald Glover in as a walk-on love interest at the start of season two. Unfortunately, his character was a Republican who didn’t think Hannah’s writing was good, so she dumped him, meaning we saw him in all his shirtless handsome glory for only two measly episodes. I’ll admit, I was jealous of those sex scenes, which resulted in me taking subtle digs at Lena with comments like, “In what world would Donald Glover ever sleep with Lena Dunham?” As if he would ever slide into my DMs.
Lena’s track record on discussing race wasn’t stellar pre-Girls. She’d gotten flack for saying she had “yellowish fever,” along with making a number of infantilizing comments about Asian women, in a travel essay about Japan. She’d donned a fake burka on her Instagram and bragged about being considered “thin in Detroit.” (After we stopped doing recaps, she endured other controversies related to her book that I won’t get into.) Suffice to say she was “embattled” in the media, which I thought gave me a free pass to say whatever I wanted about her. And while I didn’t mince words, my rationale was “The truth hurts, and it’s funny as hell,” so I failed to see a problem.
Around this time, an internet friend I’d become close with told me she was coming to New York and invited me to a dinner she was having. We’d never met in person, so I excitedly agreed. There would be a group of people at the dinner, which meant it would probably be one of those ambiguous work/friends things where you get to network without feeling (too) sleazy.
Until the day approached, I didn’t think too much about it. But then, a few hours before we were supposed to meet, I got a text from my friend explaining that the restaurant was cash only—and she added that it was “Lena’s favorite place.” Her comment was so casual that I didn’t want to out myself as clueless by asking, “Lena who?” Instead, I did some internet sleuthing (combing through Twitter mentions and tagged Instagram photos) and deduced she must have meant Lena Dunham. Which meant that Lena Dunham would be in attendance that evening. Shit.
I started to panic. Would my friend have told her who would be at the dinner in advance? Would Lena look me up? And if she did, was she the kind of person who would Google “Franchesca Ramsey + Lena Dunham” just to see if anything came back? I tried to tell myself that I was overstating my importance to Lena Dunham and that there was no way she would come into this dinner looking for a fight. She’s, like, an actual famous person, I reasoned. She doesn’t have time to Google random plebes she’s having dinner with. Does she???
At the restaurant, the scene was much more intimate than I expected—not a huge group dinner like your most popular friend’s birthday. We were all sitting in a booth. Naturally, because that’s how the universe works, I ended up sitting next to Lena.
I felt mortified, but she didn’t seem to notice—she didn’t know who I was. She was so nice, encouraging, and curious; nothing about her was “catty,” or disengaged, or straight-up mean. She asked me what I did, and we got to talking about the internet. I had been dealing with a lot of harassment on social media at the time, and we bonded over how awful people can be—you know, classic girl talk. She showed me her Twitter mentions, which were a whole ’nother level, like nothing I’d ever seen or experienced. A constant stream of “I wish you’d get raped” and “I wish someone would murder you”—and she hadn’t even said or done anything that day! Though there was some genuine, well-meaning critique mixed in, it was pretty much drowned out by the awful name-calling. Sometimes in the exact same tweet.
I remembered vividly how I felt after my Anderson Live appearance, when hordes of strangers descended on all my public accounts to attack me from every side. My stomach sank. If she had as good a time as I did, she would probably go home and look me up, and she would think I was a two-faced jerk. I couldn’t leave without coming clean. “Listen,” I said, “can I be totally honest with you?” I took a deep breath. “I’ve never been a fan of yours.”
This is not usually the kind of thing you hear from someone you just met—or, really, from anyone—so I imagine she was a little confused, though maybe she gets it all the time. I went on. “I mean, I’ve been pretty vocal about not liking you. But you seem cool, and I don’t feel good about some of the things I’ve said, so I feel like I need to be honest with you. If you go online and look me up, you’ll probably find me talking about how much Girls sucks.”
She was gracious—I mean, as much as you could be in that situation. She thanked me for telling her and said she understood the criticisms, that she was really trying to expand her worldview and understand her privilege. We exchanged numbers and left on a good note.
Then, later that night, she texted me something along the lines of “Wow. So… you really hate me! You hate me a lot!”
I felt so bad. I explained that I didn’t hate her, but I never thought I’d meet her, and when you don’t have to think about the real human behind the celebrity gossip, it’s easy to get caught up in the drama. Then, because I felt like I’d learned an important lesson that night, I asked Lena if she would be okay with me writing about the experience for my Tumblr, and she agreed.
Writing about it forced me to ask myself why I had such deep problems with this woman. Though some of my issues with her work were valid, I had to admit that many of my critiques were rooted in my own insecurities about my career—if I were being honest. I’d spent most of 2012 developing a pitch for HBO that was ultimately rejected as “too network.” I’d wondered if that meant “not enough boobs.” Personally, I had always been self-conscious about my body—I no doubt would’ve sobbed my way through an on-screen second base, much less the scene where Adam pees on Hannah in the shower. (Ew.) It was easier to dismiss her work—which has had positive effects, like hugely advancing the body-positivity movement and awareness of reproductive rights—than to say I was intimidated and a little jealous.
The thesis of my Tumblr post boiled down to: If you participate in the shit-slinging contest, competing to come up with the most creative insult, you end up covered in shit. I didn’t want to excuse the real problems Lena had, but I’d let bigotry get in the way of my criticisms, and it wasn’t something I felt good about. I topped off my post with a photo of me and Lena at the restaurant and waited for everyone to appreciate how wise and mature I was being. Once again, I was wrong. “This sounds like extreme white apologism and it kinda makes my stomach turn crazy,” one Tumblr user responded. “You’re in with whites and now have some social capital and you’re telling us how to approach it? I’m sorry this whole writing just made you look like a complete coward.”
“Racist white person knows you don’t like her so to seem less racist, she acts a little less pretentious because she knows you’re going to blog about her. And we’re supposed to give her and other racist celebrities the benefit of the doubt and speak nicely because??” wrote another.
“Chescaleigh, girl… Like I know we all gotta play the game sometimes to get what we want but us regular Blacks don’t have time or energy to speak or play nice.”
I had told an award–winning actress, to her face, that I didn’t like her, which I’m pretty sure is the exact opposite of cowardice. Not to mention I’d ordered the most inexpensive item on the menu at dinner at a fairly fancy restaurant, which felt very “regular” to me. Whatever that meant. It’s not like I had written, “Anyone who calls out Lena Dunham for anything is a despicable human who should feel ashamed. #TeamLena!”
Yet I was accused of sucking up to her so I would get a part on Girls, while other critics went more the “Speak for yourself, I was never jealous of Lena” route. Never mind that I was speaking for myself—I thought the frequent use of the word “I” would signify that. Still others thought I had “betrayed” them—but could they really be surprised, given that I went to Catholic school, had a white husband, and screwed up my appearance on Anderson Live? I was, in their eyes, “canceled,” never to be taken seriously again.
I’ll stand by it: I don’t think I did anything wrong with my post. I absolutely think Lena—like anyone else—should continue to be called out for the ignorant things she says and does. (Remember when she put all kinds of sexist words in Odell Beckham Jr.’s mouth because he didn’t hit on her at the Met Gala? Come on!) I get why people dislike Lena Dunham; her daily mantra should be, “Did anyone ask for your opinion?” She desperately needs a private journal. I even had some anxiety about telling this story because I don’t want it to seem like I’m defending her. But her textbook white feminism doesn’t mean I should sacrifice my morals to criticize her. There’s no value in peppering critique with stigmatizing personal attacks. When you add, “P.S. You’re fat,” to a criticism about the way a person has handled—or ignored—race on her television show, for example, you negate the power of the original idea. It’s like adding vinegar to a perfectly good birthday cake. (Let’s ignore for a minute that there’s nothing wrong with being fat, because we all know the pain that postscript is meant to inflict.) The person on the receiving end will only hear the personal attack, and will probably write off the legitimate criticism as part of a cruel attempt to insult and humiliate. On top of that, anyone else in the world who may identify with the personal attack is going to feel bad.
Ultimately, this story isn’t about Lena Dunham. It’s about holding yourself to a high standard no matter how terrible the person you’re calling out may be. I’m not saying that everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt—not at all. Nor do I think callouts should revolve around the feelings of the person on the other end. But being held accountable for how your words or actions were intentionally or unintentionally oppressive is uncomfortable enough without devolving into a cheap Fashion Police aftershow. Bigotry has no place in our callouts, but we see it show up all the time. When someone makes a homophobic comment, some argue, “I’m sure he’s overcompensating because he’s gay.” When a woman has really bad politics, people will say, “She looks like a man in a skirt.” I’d rather focus my energy highlighting what someone said or what they did—remembering, all the while, that there are consequences when your criticisms of horrible actions are draped in the bigotry you’re trying to speak out against. (And I know all too well how it feels to discover an entire thread on a forum dedicated to debating whether or not you have an ass. I do squats!)
It’s really hard to take the high road when you’re calling out someone who’s truly awful. A good example of this is Donald Trump’s allegedly small penis, which many people liked to mock in the months leading up to the election, before he had the nuclear codes. Let me put it plainly: Fuck Donald Trump and his rampant racism, sexism, xenophobia, Nazi apologism, climate-change denial, and unending desire to send our country and the entire world straight to hell in a handbasket decorated with a Confederate-flag pattern. Seriously. But the possibility of him having a tiny penis has nothing to do with his bigotry. We already live in a world that constantly links penis size to wealth, success, and sexual prowess when none of those things are related.
I once read an article that made the point that when you call out a racist family member over Thanksgiving dinner, your words aren’t aimed solely at that family member. They’re aimed at everyone else at the table, who may benefit from hearing what you have to say, as well. I’d say the same goes for all of us when we call someone out online. Who’s at the table? Maybe someone who’s struggling to accept the body they were given will stumble on your insensitive joke and miss the bigger message. And you never know who might be invited to dinner next.