Lena Dunham sparks backlash after saying she wants her coffin ‘driven through NYC Pride parade’
Lena Dunham attends the UK Premiere of “Catherine Called Birdy” at The Curzon Mayfair. (Mike Marsland/Getty)
Lena Dunham has requested New York City Pride to carry her casket through its yearly parade when she passes away and the queers have questions.
The Girls director and actor made the inexplicably baffling request in a tweet where she seemingly imagined herself being hoisted above a future parade in her casket as the LGBTQ+ community saluted in her honour.
When I go, I want my casket to be driven through the NYC pride parade with a plaque that reads “she wasn’t for everyone, but she *was* for us”- who can arrange?
— Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) October 2, 2022
“When I go, I want my casket to be driven through the NYC Pride parade with a plaque that reads ‘she wasn’t for everyone, but she was for us’ – who can arrange?” She requested, presumably believing that Pride organisers would jump at the chance to have a cis, straight woman’s coffin at their event.
LGBTQ+ Twitter users responded in confused bewilderment, asking the 36-year-old: “Do [you] have a publicist?”
“Gonna start living my life with whatever amount of confidence Lena Dunham has that makes her think she’s an LGBTQ+ icon,” another user wrote, while another replied: “She died as she lived – in a ploy for attention that was as puzzling as it was desperate.”
“She died as she lived: in a ploy for attention that was as puzzling as it was desperate”— Q (@Qban_Linx) October 2, 2022
It’s called gay pride not straight shame.— Mira Bellwether (@TheeBellwether) October 2, 2022
You aren't actually for anyone except older millennials who keep getting kicked out of social spaces for saying slurs— Kris! 2024 (@KrisWolfheart) October 2, 2022
Others pointed out how unbelievably unfitting Dunham’s wishes would be for a Pride event – whether it’s a protest, a march, or a parade – with one user writing: “It’s called gay pride, not straight shame.”
“Even if you somehow arranged a death just prior to [LGBTQ+] Pride AND your estate was left to NYC’s LGBTQI community, this is not a thing that would happen.”
Her completely unprompted self-declaration as an LGBTQ+ icon was especially shocking to queer people of colour considering the writer’s past controversies surrounding what HuffPost called “white entitlement”.
She was initially criticised after the release of Girls which, as Daily Beast journalist Kali Holloway put it, drops “four entitled white girls into a Brooklyn scrubbed of any non-white folks”.
In response to the criticism, she said in a 2012 interview that she wanted to avoid “tokenism in casting” and avoided writing “that experience [that] I wasn’t able to speak to”, which some have taken to imply that the writing team was predominantly white.
Additionally, in 2017 she responded to a sexual assault accusation by actor Aurora Perrineau against Girls writer Murray Miller by claiming that it was “misreported”.
“While our first instinct is to listen to every woman’s story, our insider knowledge of Murray’s situation makes us confident that sadly this accusation is one of the 3 per cent of assault cases that are misreported every year,” she said to Variety.
Dunham would later apologise for the statement, clarifying that it was “absolutely the wrong time to come forward with such a statement”. Indeed, several users seemed to agree, especially considering the MeToo movement was at its height during the controversy.
This and many more past controversies have left several LGBTQ+ social media users to ponder upon why a woman – who once said she wished she had an abortion in order to understand the feelings of those who have – could possibly think she was an LGBTQ+ icon.
