Why Lena Dunham is always naked

MANILA, Philippines - If there’s one thing I hate while I’m out shopping, it’s hearing the “F” word.

You know: “free size.”

It’s been pretty clear to me early on that I am living in a country that is borderline hostile to females who have inherited the height and girth of barely traceable ancestors from the West through clothing meant to fit into the petite Asian archetype.

Just to paint the picture as objectively as I can, I’m gonna go ahead and say that at 5’6”, and I am taller than the average Filipina. When you see me in person, you could even say I look like a Coke bottle. The 1.5-liter variety, that is.

Buying clothes is more than a little bit frustrating. When I find something nice, it is usually made to fit a fetus. And when something is made in my size, it seems to have the magical ability to make me look a beluga whale. A pregnant beluga whale.

Life isn’t very kind to young girls who put their bras to good use. I remember going to a Hong Kong night market one summer and saw a top hanging in a stall manned by an irate woman who said, “Don’t buy, it’s not going to fit you!” when I had just asked her how much it was. How can one not be even slightly self-loathing when the world is littered with people who make you feel grotesque for looking “less than ideal”?

It is this sort of thinking that clings to your consciousness: anyone who will look ridiculous on the runway or in a badly written fashion blog is relegated to the bench of girls with a full stock of inner beauty.

While no empirical evidence can support this claim, I think that’s also why I felt that Lena Dunham personally victimized me by taking her clothes off for the entire world to see.

If you’re a guy, you’re probably wondering why a naked chick on TV is such a bad thing, and if you’re a girl you’d think, “Hey, if I looked half as good as she does, I’d probably be naked all the time, too!” But if you were familiar with Dunham, the woman behind the film Tiny Furniture and the series Girls, you’d understand why we might have a problem with those statements.

You’d understand because Lena Dunham isn’t what a person would typically call hot, and if you saw her naked — even just once — you probably wouldn’t think she looked good. You could plunk her down in a fruit bowl and she would not look the least bit out of place. Why? Because she’s a pear. She’s a walking pear.

Dunham’s naked body has the most polarizing effect on me, to be honest. On one hand, I admire her bravery to flaunt the off-kilter ratio between her chest and her hips. It’s the stuff of an angry feminist’s wildest fantasies. But then the whole naked thing just happens so often that most of the time I’m starting to think she just has mental myopia.

Not that this is any excuse for my brashness, but I’m not the only one who thinks so. I’m just a statistic in the scores of people from all over the world who have published articles, stories, and open letters about Lena Dunham and her proclivity to show off body parts that start with a B. It’s just as much discussed as her characters’ self-centeredness or the general decadence present in her work. In fact, her naked body is such a distinctive persona that I am this close to making an IMDB account for it.

But now the question begs to be answered: why does she do it? Perhaps for catharsis. Maybe it could even be a socio-political statement. Or maybe it’s because like Britney Spears shaving off her hair in 2007, Lena Dunham gets naked in front of the camera just because she can.

I, of course, cannot personally confirm this unless we become Twitter buddies/roommates, but in trying to answer why Dunham is so fond of nudity, I am plagued by a thought that I could give an answer to: considering all the flaws on my own person that I am very much aware of, why does her naked body bother me so much?

Dunham seems to offset her hang-ups with her body by making quips about it (such as calling herself a “fat baby angel”) but then orchestrates her fictional universe by surrounding her onscreen alter-egos with an ensemble that is almost always ready to swear under oath that she is hot, beautiful, or “1960s porn star”-worthy.

It’s the greatest bipolar love story. She loves and hates herself enough to be tortured and beguiled at the same time. That’s what bothers me — that she makes me uncomfortable by reminding me that we are just messed up as she is.

Then again, how can you not love her for that? (See, I told you: polarizing.) I wouldn’t go so far as to call her a beacon of hope, but Lena Dunham’s naked body could just be a sign of the changing times, when traditional perspectives on beauty are constantly challenged in mainstream media. Dunham may not be the “voice of a generation,” but her body might just be its very awkward mascot.

Thanks to her, I’ve gotten better at coming to terms with the fact that I’ll never be a size zero. I’m trying to be less obsessive and more attune to dressing myself what I really want to wear. So what if I look like a beluga whale? At least I’m cute.