Emily (84:26)
You too. All right, we'll be back with more in just one moment. But first, over the years, I have been clear about this. I'm not just pro birth, I'm pro life. And being pro life means staying standing with mothers not only before their baby is born, but long after. And that is exactly why I partner and partner very proudly with preborn. Preborn doesn't just save babies. They make motherhood abundantly possible. They provide free ultrasounds and share the truth of the gospel with women in crisis. And then they stay with real practical help not and this includes financial support for up to two years. Two years after the baby is born. This is what true Christ centered compassion looks like. Not just for the baby, but for the mother too. And here's where you can make a difference. Just 28 provides a free life saving ultrasound. One chance for a mother to see her baby. And when she does, she's twice as likely to choose life. That is a real number. Preborn is trying to save 70,000 babies this year. You can be a part of that. So don't just say your pro life, live it. Help save babies and support mothers today. Go to preborn.com emily or call 855-601-2229. That's preborn.com emily. All right, everyone. Rounding out the show with Lena Dunham's media tour. She was on the View earlier today. She's out with a new book that really apparently I haven't read the book yet, but it apparently is a very raw revisiting of the girl's years and her entire journey through the public or journey in the public eye. It's called Fame Sick, which she explains is a little bit of how the fame made her sick and what it was like being sick with the fame. It's actually if you even take the sort of political layer of Lena Dunham off of it, I think probably a worthwhile pursuit right now from somebody who's, who's lived in the public eye in the 2010s and now beyond into the 2020s millennial social media generation. This has transformed not just our daily lives, but also the way that we look outward into the world, the way that we look at celebrities, the way that celebrities look at everyone else. Politicians as well, since they're basically the same as celebrities now. That's TMZ's intention in covering DC. They just got Lindsey Graham. So but really, I mean that this is all connected because celebrities and politicians now have a new experience relating to people. We were told it would be a great democratization. We can communicate all in a kind of from the same flat level. And that's obviously not how it's turned out. But Lena Dunham's grappling with A lot of what that meant for her. I think Girls premiered in 2012, if I'm correct on that. It went from like 2012 to 2017, but around that time period. And so here's Lena Dunham talking about the particular, the particular experience of her own fame during that time period in a new long interview with the New York Times. I've annoyed people since I was so small. Like I was an annoying kid. I was a try hard, I was loud. I didn't always know how to like move through space with other kids in a way that wasn't a little bit off or disruptive. That's coupled with there was like the intense rage about the female sexuality on the show. There was the intense rage about my body, which is so crazy to look back on now. Cause I was this like little slip of a 26 year old. And had I known my own powers, I would have behaved very differently. And then like I would be lying if I didn't say that my own way of moving, whether it was through media or how I myself online or even in my writing didn't. Didn't quell it. The way that I was spoken about. I mean, that's what so many women's bodies look like. That's not what my body looks like anymore. But it was, I was like full of light. And it's interesting, as I looked at the photos over the course of the show, I could see it's such a cliche, but it was like the lights just went out. So I'm going to spoil Girls. Actually, I usually try not to spoil it, but for the purposes of this discussion, if you haven't seen Girls and you don't want it to be spoiled, I highly recommend everybody watches Girls all the way through finish the last season. But it does end with Lena Dunham's character, Hannah Horvath, having a baby and finding joy in motherhood. And it wasn't intended to be a rebuke of radical feminism, the type of radical feminism that Hannah Horvath, the character espoused and promoted throughout her young career and her young life. But it actually really did function as one. And this is what I think is so interesting about Lena Dunham's art. And she came of. Of age really at a time professionally when the culture because of social media was, was losing tolerance for artists because artists were using social media and their own platforms in ways that were more and more. What's the right word for this? Kind of cynical, but at the same time more ephemeral. Right. So we had to See Lena Dunham's awful 2012 Obama ad, like, comparing voting for the first time to losing your virginity. I mean, it was really, like, disgusting. Some of our. Some of it is, yes, it completely makes sense for an artist to behave that way. If you're. If you're a good artist, you're probably eccentric and you're probably wacky. And if you have so much contact with normal human beings through social media and interviews and Twitter posts and paparazzi figures, that weirdness is going to be projected and other people are going to react in a way where it's like, that's weird, that's bad. Your Brooklyn values are out of step with the values of this Iowa Obama voter. What do you think you're doing? But that's part of the challenge of social media, is that it's erased borders and it's brought us all much closer together and in constant communication. And I think somebody like Lena Dunham, who's. If you knew nothing about her and you just watched Girls in a vacuum, you never heard of Lena Dunham. You never saw anything from her public profile. I think actually a lot of people would have interpreted it as a pretty honest exploration of feminism and its effect on the millennial generation. You could probably do something similar for Gen Z. It was. It clearly had one side that it thought it was promoting, but I think that's what makes it such a rich and interesting show, is that because it was honest, you even saw these challenges to its own foundation. It really was an excellent show, and not always consciously was it making those challenges to its own foundation. So Lena Dunham is constantly doing this. Every show she does, every interview she does is she's constantly doing this. And what's interesting is that when she says there was so much rage at her body and so much rage at women's sexuality being presented in. In Girls, what they're. Of course, there's always bad actors, right? There's. There's people who are actually just mean and hateful, and social media brings those people to the forefront. But in terms of, like, political, cultural rage at her body and about female sexuality, either, there was immense discomfort from the public when Lena Dunham was genuinely normalizing. She was in the process of normalizing, as she talks about in this interview, in the process of attempting to normalize the radical feminism that had previously been relegated to faculty lounges. So, of course there's going to be rage about that from people who don't want to see the normalization of faculty lounge feminism for their children, their grandchildren, and in their communities. And you can even see in Lena Dunham, who is now by her own accord, happily married, has. Has left fame, has moved to England, as far as I know, but has found in marriage what she describes as a rock, and in mono, monogamy, presumably, at least what she finds as comfort. And in this, like, quaint and quiet life, which is exactly what Hannah finds at the end of Girls. I mean, it's almost eerie how prescient the end of Girls is to looking ahead in Lena Dunham's life, where she talks constantly about wanting to just leave the public life and be in bed with books, books and movies. It's basically in Girls how she ultimately finds what we're. We're pointed at believing is peace and sort of harmony with nature. It's this very sort of naturalistic feminism. It's. It's almost a. A nod to earlier generations of feminism. Some of the shots are like that, too. They're very humanist. And you hear that every time Linda Dunham opens her mouth, which is why I think she's one of the most interesting artists of her generation. She said in the View interview she did today that the Hannah Horvath line, I think I might be the voice of my generation. Very famous from the first episode of Girls that was taken seriously by many people. She said that was always supposed to be a joke. And of course it was supposed to be a joke, but it was a joke that came true. That's what's so wild and interesting about Girls. And I think in Lena Dunham, you see somebody who is struggling enormously still to be happy. She apparently, in this book, writes about sexual trauma. She's gone through. Some of that has been public, and some of it is very ugly. But here's Lena Dunham, who was. Was by her own accord, trying to normalize this promiscuity, this comfort with faculty lounge feminism. And here she is in 2026, all these years later, embracing limits, embracing the limits of her own body, embracing the limits of life, of promiscuity. And she's found solace and monogamy and in a quiet life away from. To again, go back to the end of Girls away from New York City, very intentionally away from New York City, which is, by the way, where she grew up, if I'm remembering correctly. So really, really interesting, sad, poignant recollections here from Reflections, I should say here from Lena Dunham, who always does this. She always just sort of dances in the direction of a really and very cleverly and artfully dances in the direction of a point that's even more profound than the one she thinks she's making. And I think it's reflective of, of our generation, certainly, and, and Gen Z now flailing between trad and anti trad and trying to figure out what's actually happening. And that's summarized so neatly in the end of Girls. Like it's not quite trad in the literal political definition of right now, but it's also definitely not feminist in the literal political definition of the left right now. So I, I, if you haven't watched it, I recommend watching it. Sad. Sad, but in a way, sort of. What's the right word? It's, it's, it's always sad to hear from Lena Dunham because she seems like she'll probably always be a sad person. Also common of, of artists and people who've suffered trauma in their lives. And her parents were artists and she talks about some weird stuff she saw as a kid because of that. But man, it's, it's sad to hear her talk about this. But in a way it's also, I sense she's, she's maybe getting closer to finding some peace and serenity in this life. So that'll do it for an extra long, maybe the longest ever edition of After Party. Thank you all so much for two back here Wednesday night with another edition of the show. So stay tuned for that. Please do like comment, subscribe. 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