What no one seems to notice about Lena Dunham

I think she is worth noticing as a terribly bad example. Remember the episode of Seinfeld where George succeeds by doing the opposite of what he normally does? Well, Lena is sort of George for everyone. You could do well in life by simply doing the opposite of what she would do.

Anyway, her latest gaffe surfaced in an interview with the equally embarrassing Amy Schumer:

I was sitting next to Odell Beckham Jr., and it was so amazing because it was like he looked at me and he determined I was not the shape of a woman by his standards. He was like, "That's a marshmallow. That's a child. That's a dog." It wasn't mean — he just seemed confused. 

The vibe was very much like, "Do I want to [have sex with] it? Is it wearing a … yep, it's wearing a tuxedo. I'm going to go back to my cell phone." It was like we were forced to be together, and he literally was scrolling Instagram rather than have to look at a woman in a bow tie. I was like, "This should be called the Metropolitan Museum of Getting Rejected by Athletes.”

All sorts of people rained abuse on Lena for this. 

The gist of the criticism was that she had presumed to read this guy's mind. That's wrong. Our minds are not closed spaces. Very often, most of the time, you can tell what people are thinking (including what they are thinking of you) by observing them. Most people don't bother developing the skill but it's easy enough. All you have to do is stop talking and pay attention to others. (Bonus point: doing this will make me a better person too.)

Let's begin by reminding ourselves that the experience she describes is a very common one. You walk into a room, a coffeshop, a bar and someone looks up, sizes you up, and returns to whatever they were previously doing having determined that you aren't worth their paying any more attention to. That has happened to you thousands of times. And you have done it to others thousands of times. It's a normal human interaction and the thoughts of the person who rejects the other in such circumstances are relatively transparent.

And feelings of shame go with this experience. It feels shameful to get summarily rejected. It can also feel shameful to do it. Sometimes. We might think we should be putting more effort into this other human being. We glance up furtively, hoping not to get caught making this summary judgment. But it keeps happening so we all keep doing it and experiencing it.

The moral lesson here is, "Get over yourself and learn to deal with it because this sort of thing is going to be unavoidable for people who live in cities."

If there is one thing we can count on from Lena though, it is that she will never get over herself. The shame she feels comes pouring out. You can see it it in the way she wallows in her rejection. "... I was not the shape of a woman by his standards. He was like, 'That's a marshmallow. That's a child. That's a dog.'" She calls herself "it". He might have thought those things but she couldn't possibly know based on her own description of his reaction. Their interaction was too short for her to have figured out that much in the (unlikely) case that it were true. He looked at her and then he turned back to Instagram.

What Lena felt in response was a narcissistic injury. It was her sheer unimportance in his eyes that she can't stand. And she'd rather imagine that he judged her negatively in degrading terms than face the fact that he barely even noticed her. He probably has never heard of Lena Dunham. That shame is too horrible to face so she substitutes another kind of shame, quite literally body-shaming herself, because it's easier to deal with that thought than with the possibility that there are people out there for whom Lena Dunham doesn't matter at all.

Behaving that way will produce a very sad life.