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Lena Dunham Launches Newsletter Amid Online Hatefest

Lena Dunham has her share of haters. After Josh Duggar became a pariah for the molestation scandal from his teens, things got political. Lena Dunham was trotted out as some sort of parallel to illustr...
Lena Dunham Launches Newsletter Amid Online Hatefest
Written by Mike Tuttle
  • Lena Dunham has her share of haters. After Josh Duggar became a pariah for the molestation scandal from his teens, things got political. Lena Dunham was trotted out as some sort of parallel to illustrate how there was a supposed double standard among liberals.

    Most of that seems to have died down now, but Lena Dunham still gets flamed online daily. So it seems odd that Dunham and her production partner and Girls showrunner Jenni Konner decide to launch a website.

    Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner are starting things a bit more direct, with an email newsletter called “Lenny.” The title is a combination of their names. The newsletter is being compared to Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop, which started out as a direct campaign and later gre into a website. That is the plan Dunham and Konner have.

    “Lenny,” said Dunham, will be for “an army of like-minded intellectually curious women and the people who love them, who want to bring change but also want to know, like, where to buy the best tube top for summer that isn’t going to cost your entire paycheck.”

    “We want people who have totally diverse interests,” Dunham said of the project’s target audience. “People who want to talk about radical politics but also want to talk about fashion and also want to talk about Rihanna, and also understand that all of those things can be happening at the same time.”

    Lena Dunham came up with the idea last year when she was doing a book tour for her memoir Not That Kind of Girl.

    “I literally heard girls being like, ‘How do you keep those pink streaks in your hair?’” Dunham explained, “but also ‘Who are you going to vote for?’”

    The newsletter will eventually have a website, but there will be no comments section. The hope is to minimize the flaming and let the women who frequent the site to enjoy it. For now, there is a Facebook page, where this welcome message is now posted:

    “Welcome to Lenny, an email newsletter that loves you for who you are. We (Lena + Jenni) want to offer you moving personal essays, engaged politics, singular style, and a proud display of shorteralls. Lenny is your friend. Join us.”

    There is also a Twitter presence.

    And you can’t be a celeb without an Instagram account.

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