Lena Dunham has long discussed her painful, decade-long journey with endometriosis — candidly sharing everything from the toll its take on her emotional health to her decision to undergo an elective hysterectomy. Now, to mark Endometriosis Awareness Month, the actress is opening up about how the chronic illness has affected her relationship with body image. In a recent Instagram post, Dunham expressed how she has gone back and forth between loving her body and, well, the opposite.
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"Ya know when you're home alone and you realize you'd be happier in a hot lil' onesie than your ketchup & cat food stained pajamas? " she wrote. "And it's not about a boy or a photo shoot or a weight loss before-and-after, it's just for the feeling of glee you get from dressing your one and only corporeal form in pleasing fabrics, the unique pleasure of admiring the twists and turns of the body that loves the heck out of you even when you don't love it."
Dunham goes further to explain that while she takes comfort in the body positivity movement, she doesn't necessarily feel the term expresses how she feels: "I've never called myself 'body positive' because my relationship with my curves and scars isn't overtly political — it's wildly personal," she said. "And it isn't always positive. I take enormous comfort in the body positivity movement, but I think of myself as something more like 'body tolerant.'"
The Girls creator ended the post by describing what's it like living with her chronic illnesses, reminding herself — and, in a way, the millions of other women living with endometriosis globally — to be gentle when it comes to body judgement. "With a chronic disease (or three), it's impossible not to resent your body sometimes," she wrote. "But we are no longer in an on-and-off toxic romance. We are also not monogamous. I drift toward her and away from her, trying hard to remember that, no matter how I fight it, she is me. I am her. We only have each other, so we gotta stick together. And sometimes that means a little lace to remind her I care."
Photo via Instagram