Writer and actress Lena Dunham is a proud woman of the left. She strenuously supports Hillary Clinton. She famously compared voting for Barack Obama to losing one’s virginity. She’ll kind of do anything in support of liberal candidates and causes. And I do mean anything.
But a solid 70 percent of the time I wonder if that’s just an act. Because if you really look at her art, she makes a powerful case for conservatism. The best argument in favor of this theory is Girls, a very stealthily conservative HBO series that shows the devastation wrought by changing sexual mores. Every week is a morality tale in how urban people suffer as they attempt to navigate a world made harrowing by leftist dogma. If Family Research Council knew how to make art, this is what they’d produce. I watched the first season because it was well done, but each episode made me more and more conservative. By the end, I wondered if Phyllis Schlafly was a silent producer.
And there was the time she did a Saturday Night Live skit where she played Eve from the Garden of Eden that the most traditional among us could get behind. As I wrote then:
I mean, I don’t see how someone could do a better job of contrasting feminism with the supposedly now-outmoded idea that men and women complement each other. I don’t know how someone could show the narcissism of feminist thought any better. I don’t know how someone could better show how modern feminism exacerbates young women’s existential crises by denying them any kind of trust or reliance on male figures. Heck, I don’t know how someone could update the Genesis account in a more faithfully orthodox manner. I might always now hear the ever-present question that motivates our actions (a variation on the snake’s “Did God really say …”) in the voice of Lena Dunham’s Hannah. Or even the reference to the understanding of Adam and Eve’s sexual relationship as marriage — predating any civic definition of same! Is there a Witherspoon Institute plant over at NBC?
The deep truth in this sketch is that feminism is incompatible with the natural approach of humans being made male and female, given to each other for their mutual benefit and for the procreation and raising of children. God bless Lena Dunham for showing the ends of our new approach to the roles of the sexes — miserably self-absorbed, confusing and lonely existences — however unintentional it may be.
Which brings us to this week’s stunt. Lena Dunham announced she was going as a Planned Parenthood abortionist for Halloween.
Everyone had the typical reaction. Conservatives were disgusted. Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards cheered. For real:
Very excited about @lenadunham's newsy, sexy, cool Halloween costume in @lennyletter – our doctors are incredible! pic.twitter.com/8eG2Z4X4SY
Cecile Richards (@CecileRichards) October 28, 2015
Before I get to the obvious, a quick note on Richards’ claim that this abortion costume is newsy, sexy, and cool. It’s newsy because Planned Parenthood is embroiled in an unbelievably sketchy and horrific human organ harvesting scandal (A Quick And Easy Guide To The Planned Parenthood Videos).
However, the costume is, objectively speaking, neither sexy nor cool. I once pretended to be a sexy milkshake for Halloween, but the joke was that it wasn’t sexy, even with fishnets and high heels.
But also! Did no one notice that on a day known for evil, ghoulishness, wickedness, the consuming of children, blood-curdling screams, being blood-drenched and murderous, corpses, creepy doctors, the Grim Reaper, gruesome discoveries, vampires, spine-chilling sights and sounds, death, morbidity and all things disgusting, our culture war double agent chose to dress as a Gosnell-type character?
Because I did.
