Kanye West's new "Famous" video features replicas of celebrities in the nude, including Taylor Swift, Bill Cosby, and George W. Bush. That creative decision has proven controversial, to say the least. While the issue hasn't frequently been discussed (probably because there are very few situations when it would ever come up), people had the sense that even though he wasn't actually showing any of these celebrities, depicting others naked without their consent is not okay. In a Facebook post on Monday, Lena Dunham pointed out another problematic aspect of the video.
"While Bill Cosby's crimes are still being uncovered and understood as traumas for the women he assaulted but also massive bruises to our national consciousness," she wrote, "now I have to see the prone, unconscious, waxy bodies of famous women, twisted like they've been drugged and chucked aside at a rager? It gives me such a sickening sense of dis-ease."
Dunham herself is known for promoting on-screen nudity, but as she points out, there's a huge difference between nudity that is performed willingly and makes a feminist statement and depicting other people nude who didn't even know about it without making any clear statement at all.
"I'm sure that Bill Cosby doll being in the bed alongside Donald Trump is some kind of statement, that I'm probably being trolled on a super high level. I know that there's a hipper or cooler reaction to have than the one I'm currently having. But guess what? I don't have a hip cool reaction," she wrote, criticizing how the women are "reduced to a pair of waxy breasts made by some special effects guy in the Valley." Read Dunham's powerful critique in full, below.
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