Lena Dunham’s Website “Lenny Letter” Is Shutting Down For Good

October 19, 2018 / Posted by:

As of tomorrow, the world will have one less platform on which to receive the blessed teachings of Lena Dunham. Digiday reports that Lena’s newsletter cum blogsite, Lenny Letter, will be going off into 404 Page Not Found heaven after today. But rest assured, those thirsting for more Lena than is reasonable, will always have Instagram.

Lenny Letters started as a newsletter back in 2015 by Lena and her producing partner Jenni Konner. Because Lena and Jenni have deep pockets and more connections than the Verizon guy, it was run in partnership with Hearst, and later, Condé Nast. Lenny wasn’t your cousin’s poorly photocopied zine (though I’m sure Lena and Co hoped to co-op that aesthetic). According to Didgiday:

Lenny was supposed to be a place where “an army of like-minded intellectually curious women and the people who love them” could write about everything from feminist issues to tube tops. It named Benjamin Cooley, an entertainment vet, as its CEO, and partnered with Hearst for ad sales.

It sounds like Lenny Letter really started feeling itself after it reached 500,000 subscribers, so they started flexing. First they made it an entire website instead of just a newsletter, then they added a podcast called “Women of the Hour” hosted by Lena, then they tried to #pivottovideo, but “the site never managed to build any momentum on new platforms”. On the site, Lena and Co. wrote the following:

While there’s no one reason for our closure, this change allows for growth and a shift in perspectives — ours and yours. But can we ask one favor? Please, continue to push forward the voices that need a platform, the untold stories that deserve to be heard, the diversity that the publishing industry claims to value but has never mastered.

However, one reason might be the taint from that ugly business of Lena’s unseemly defense of her friend and Girls writer Murray Miller against charges of rape. That episode caused Lenny Letter writer, Zinzi Clemmons, to quit a bitch in an open letter accusing Lena and her ilk (Lena’s wealthy, white, well connected college pals) of “hipster racism” (Miller’s alleged victim is black). And let’s not forget that Donald Glover implied the same.

And so as Lenny Letter crosses the pixelated rainbow bridge, Lena’s health problems continue to plague her. She has been unable to do any planned promotion for her new HBO show Camping.

View this post on Instagram

Yesterday I had a two hour surgery to remove my left ovary, which was encased in scar tissue & fibrosis, attached to my bowel and pressing on nerves that made it kinda hard to walk/pee/vamp. Over the last month it got worse and worse until I was simply a burrito posing as a human. *** My mother took this picture after I spent 9 hours in the post op recovery area with v low blood pressure that the nurses were diligently monitoring. I was so out of it that I thought I looked sensually moody a la Charlotte Rampling (turns out it was more of a constipation vibe.) *** A lot of people commented on my last post about being too sick to finish promoting my show by saying my hysterectomy should have fixed it (I mean *should* is a weird one). That I should get acupuncture and take supplements (I do). That I should see a therapist because it’s clearly psychological (year 25 of therapy, y’all. These are the fruits!) But a big lesson I’ve learned in all of this is that health, like most stuff, isn’t linear- things improve and things falter and you start living off only cranberry juice from a sippy cup/sleeping on a glorified heating pad but you’re also happier than you’ve been in years. I feel blessed creatively and tickled by my new and improved bellybutton and so so so lucky to have health insurance as well as money for care that is off of my plan. But I’m simultaneously shocked by what my body is and isn’t doing for me and red with rage that access to medical care is a privilege and not a right in this country and that women have to work extra hard just to prove what we already know about our own bodies and beg for what we need to be well. It’s humiliating. *** My health not being a given has paid spiritual dividends I could never have predicted and it’s opened me up in wild ways and it’s given me a mission: to advocate for those of us who live at the cross section of physical and physic pain, to remind women that our stories don’t have to look one way, our pain is our gain and oh shit scars and mesh “panties” are the fucking jam. Join me, won’t you? *** ? @lauriesimmons

A post shared by Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) on

What? You didn’t think we’d get through an entire Lena Dunham post without getting a peek at her vagina, did you? Are you new here?

Pic: Wenn.com

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