Salon.com > Soraya Roberts

Naked if I want to: Lena Dunham’s body politic

Sat, 09 Feb 2013 20:00:00 +0000

In Hollywood, it seems you're only allowed to be naked if you're Megan Fox. If you're not, you had better be apologetic about it, like Melissa McCarthy in "Mike & Molly." But God forbid you're a woman with an unconventionally beautiful body and you're okay with it. That's when people like Howard Stern start to get hysterical: Lena Dunham, whom the radio host described as a "little fat girl who kind of looks like Jonah Hill” and likened her taking off her clothes to rape, has become a feminist heroine largely due to the fact that she unapologetically parades her naked body across the TV screen. Dunham has been both derided and deified for baring her unconventionally beautiful figure throughout both seasons of her HBO series. (And don't expect her to stop anytime soon, she told Entertainment Weekly in a February cover story: "My point with getting naked is never proven.") And through her performance, she has established a new body ideal. Carolee Schneemann, the feminist artist who originated nude performance art in the ’60s and was dubbed “body beautiful” for her stunning figure, believes Dunham does more than add a dose of reality to the “deformations” – “the swollen puffed up lips, the emaciated shapes, the huge inflated boobs” – that populate Tinseltown. “There’s nothing deformed about Dunham,” she said. “She’s the ideal of normal.”

The package deal

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 01:00:00 +0000

This may go down in history as the year the penis became omnipresent. A symbol of power since the Greco-Roman era, the phallus’s prowess in America’s post-fig leaf society has resided largely in its invisibility. But this year the penis suddenly became visible even when it wasn’t. Last month, from within his trousers, Jon Hamm’s bulge upstaged his campaign for Obama. In October, New York’s Mayor Bloomberg appeared turned on, in more ways than one, as he held a Hurricane Sandy press conference. And who can forget the Boner Rower whose Olympic bronze medal appeared to be crowned by a public happy ending? The recent swell in penises on the big screen has served to dismantle the symbolic power of the phallus and, in a time where reality and entertainment are blurred, it is little wonder that celebrities’ off-duty members are commanding our attention as much as Judd Apatow’s penile punch lines – and shedding their masculine mystique at the same time.

Kristen Stewart’s stunning apology

Thu, 26 Jul 2012 13:50:00 +0000

What's more surprising: That a celebrity publicly apologized for cheating within 24 hours of a report going public, or that that celebrity happened to be Kristen Stewart?

Considering Hollywood's cheaters are about as common as actors who lie about their age, in the wake of Us Weekly's cover photo of the "Twilight" star cuddling her “Snow White and the Huntsman” director Rupert Sanders, Stewart could have easily responded the way the rest of Tinseltown does. She could have either ignored the accusations, denied them (Photoshop!) or asked for her privacy to be respected. Instead, the 22-year-old, who in the four years she has supposedly been dating Robert Pattinson has never publicly admitted they are an item, issued a public mea culpa.

"I’m deeply sorry for the hurt and embarrassment I’ve caused to those close to me and everyone this has affected," she said in a statement to People the day after Us' scoop broke. "This momentary indiscretion has jeopardized the most important thing in my life, the person I love and respect the most, Rob. I love him, I love him, I’m so sorry."