Lena Dunham Shares Her Struggles with Body Image and OCD
— -- It was a big day for “Girls” creator Lena Dunham, who stopped by “Good Morning America” to promote today’s release of her new book, “Not That Kind of Girl.”
Dunham opened up to Robin Roberts about the hardest chapter for her to write.
“You’d think it was the sexual humiliations, but for me it was being clear that I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about food,” Dunham said. “I spend a lot of my career trying to break down the negative forces that the media exerts on women in trying to control their body image, so for me it’s all very sort of anathema to who I am to admit that I too have struggled with the concept of perfection.”
Dunham attributed her booming career as the reason she started to have a healthier outlook on food.
“When you love your job and love what you do, you feel like a tool being put to its proper use and you see food as fuel and a way to get where you need to go, and less to your demise,” she explained.
The book also dives into Dunham’s struggles with her obsessive compulsive disorder and why she decided to share that with her fans.
“There is a conversion about mental health that needs to happen in the country that we’re just at the beginning of, and all of us sharing the struggles in the world inside our heads whether big or small can help us normalize mental health problems,” she said. “I was very lucky to have parents who had a forward-thinking attitude about putting me in therapy and giving me the tools I need to move forward. They had the foresight to put me in therapy and encourage me to create, and the book is dedicated to them for that reason.”
