Lena Dunham says she’s "joyous" about weight gain
Lena Dunham has gained weight, and she's happy about it. The "Girls" creator and self-proclaimed "body positivity warrior" posted side-by-side photos of herself from a year ago, when she was thinner, and now after a weight gain.
She explained why the image of her thinner self was problematic for her. "On the left: 138 pounds, complimented all day and propositioned by men and on the cover of a tabloid about diets that work. Also, sick in the tissue and in the head and subsisting only on small amounts of sugar, tons of caffeine and a purse pharmacy."
As for the recent photo, she said, "On the right: 162 pounds, happy joyous & free, complimented only by people that matter for reasons that matter, subsisting on a steady flow of fun/healthy snacks and apps and entrees, strong from lifting dogs and spirits. Even this OG body positivity warrior sometimes looks at the left picture longingly, until I remember the impossible pain that brought me there and onto my proverbial knees. As I type I can feel my back fat rolling up under my shoulder blades. I lean in."
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Last May, Us Weekly used a photo taken on what appears to be the same day of the picture on the left boasting, "20 slimdown diet tips stars are using ... Lena: How she gets motivated."
Dunham slammed the cover and wrote, "I have no tips I give no tips I don't want to be on this cover cuz it's diametrically opposed to everything I've fought my whole career for and it's not a compliment to me because it's not an achievement thanx * Star indicates a pre-existing condition."
Last year, Dunham said she was receiving unfair criticism because of her weight loss.
"I had this experience of my body changing and suddenly I got all of these people being like, 'You're a hypocrite. I thought you were body-positive. I thought you were a person who embraces bodies of all sizes,'" she said. "I do, I just understand that bodies change, we live a long time. Things happen."
She added, "It really was evidenced that as a woman in Hollywood, you just can't win."
She also explained that she started working out because of her endometriosis, and emphasized that she did not lose weight to please other people.
"I also just never felt self-conscious about [my weight]," she said. "I was like: Anyone who was going to take the time to say something negative about my weight on the Internet wasn't someone I was particularly keen to impress anyway."