I'm going to go out on a limb here and admit that I like Lena Dunham. It may not be the popular opinion in the media, but someone out there must love her or else there wouldn't be such a mad sell-out circus surrounding her current book tour. Yet even I'm questioning whether Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She’s Learned will actually tell me anything I don't already know about life or, indeed, about Lena Dunham, who's made a name for herself by oversharing.
Can the book live up to the immense hype that led to an unprecedented deal for someone so young? I hope so. But I feel like no matter what she writes, Dunham will be damned. The New York Times' pet and HBO's golden girl, Dunham had all this and a hit show under her belt before age 29. There are bound to be lots of haters resenting everything she's achieved. (Not to mention that she netted a cool $6mill in the space of a single year, and is expected to rake in around $300,000 from the book tour alone.)
I like Dunham's work. She's funny and candid and self-deprecating, yet I wonder whether all that naval-gazing would start to feel relentless in book format and whether someone under 30 is qualified to be giving 'life lessons.' While those vignettes about HPV and bad college sex make for great TV, can they really be passed off as feminist wisdom?
Dunham has guts and talent by the bushel. Not That Kind of Girl may turn out to be a cracking read, but should it position itself as anything more than the usual Hannah shtick?
You tell me: Are you a fan of Dunham's work? Will you be buying Not That Kind of Girl?
Will you be pre-ordering this book—the sequel to the hysterical kids' book, Go The F**k To Sleep?
Wait, what? Isn't there a good reason that you don't fool around with your kin? Though incest remains socially taboo, the majority of the German Ethics Council wants to see a ban on inbreeding lifted, at least where adult siblings are concerned.
Obviously, relations between parents and their children will remain a criminal act; however, most of the 26-member panel—made up of scientists, doctors, and lawyers—found no real benefit to punishing non-parental relations by law.
It's worth noting that the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, wasn't in favour of lifting the country's incest law, and that between two to four percent of Germans claim they've had "incestuous experiences" in the past. Eek.
"Eliminating the threat of punishment against incestuous acts within families would run counter to the protection of undisturbed development for children," said Elisabeth Winkelmeier-Becker in the Telegraph.
And hello, what about the genetic effects of inbreeding, like congenital birth defects and infant mortality to name but a few? The closer the ties, the greater the risk of complications.
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