Lena Dunham is proud of her body. The Girls actress penned an empowering Instagram post thanking Glamour magazine for not Photoshopping her cellulite out of their February 2017 cover.
“Okay, here goes: throughout my teens I was told, in no uncertain terms, that I was f–king funny looking,” the actress wrote alongside an image from her shoot with her Girls costars. “Potbelly, rabbit teeth, knock knees – I could never seem to get it right and it haunted my every move. I posed as the sassy confident one, secretly horrified and hurt by careless comments and hostility.”
Dunham continued that she “didn’t hate what [she] looked like” but that she “hated the culture that was telling [her] to hate it.” The outspoken actress noted that throughout her career people have “celebrated [her] look but always through the lens of ‘isn’t she brave? Isn’t it such a bold move to show THAT body on TV?'”
The actress, who has been vocal about her imperfections in the past and frequently strips off on her HBO show, went on to thank the magazine for letting her be real.
“Today this body is on the cover of a magazine that millions of women will read, without photoshop, my thigh on full imperfect display. Whether you agree with my politics, like my show or connect to what I do, it doesn’t matter – my body isn’t fair game. No one’s is, no matter their size, color, gender identity, and there’s a place for us all in popular culture to be recognized as beautiful,” she concluded. “Haters are gonna have to get more intellectual and creative with their disses in 2017 because none of us are going to be scared into muumuus by faceless basement dwellers, or cruel blogs, or even our partners and friends. Thank you to the women in Hollywood (and on Instagram!) leading the way, inspiring and normalizing the female form in EVERY form, and thank you to @glamourmag for letting my cellulite do the damn thing on news stands everywhere today Love you all.”
On the cover, Dunham works it in a pair of purple metallic booty shorts and platform heels alongside her Girls costars Jemima Kirke, Zosia Mamet and Allison Williams.
In their tell-all interview, which hits newsstands on January 10, Dunham reveals that as Girls’ creator and showrunner she sometimes felt left out of the group on set.
“Sometimes I would get very lonely, because I wanted to be a part of the group, but there was also the element of, like, having to boss people around. And we would be doing all this as a team, [but] if we got criticism, I felt like it would all come down on me in this s–t-storm torrent,” said Dunham, who created the series. “Even though I was surrounded by love, there were times where I felt very ‘by myself’ in the process.”
The final season of Girls premieres on HBO on Sunday, February 12, at 10 p.m. ET.
