March 22 (UPI) — Lena Dunham says she was “frustrated” by backlash toward her recent weight loss.
The 30-year-old actress responded to criticism of her slimmer figure on Tuesday’s episode of “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.”
“It’s just so crazy because I spent six years of my career being called things like ‘bag of milk’ on the Internet. ‘Bag of milk,’ ‘baby cow,’ ‘aging cow,'” Dunham told DeGeneres. “I never felt self-conscious about it.”
“Then I had this experience of my body changing and suddenly I got all these things like, ‘You’re a hypocrite,’ ‘I thought you were body positive,’ ‘I thought you were a person who embraced bodies of all sizes.’ I was like, ‘I do. I just understand that bodies change. We live a long time. Things happen,'” she said.
“I was frustrated by it,” the star admitted. “It really was evidence that as a woman in Hollywood, you just can’t win.”
Dunham had showed off her weight loss in a yoga-inspired spread in the February issue of Nylon. She responded to backlash in a lengthy post last week after attending the opening of personal trainer Tracy Anderson’s flagship studio in New York.
“I’ve accepted that my body is an ever changing organism, not a fixed entity — what goes up must come down and vice versa. I smile just as wide no matter my current size because I’m proud of what this body has seen and done and represented,” the actress wrote.
“My weight loss isn’t a triumph and it also isn’t some sign I’ve finally given into the voices of trolls. Because my body belongs to ME — at every phrase, in every iteration, and whatever I’m doing with it, I’m not handing in my feminist card to anyone,” she asserted.
Dunham is best known as the creator and star of the HBO series “Girls.” The show co-stars Allison Williams, Jemima Kirke and Zosia Mamet, and premiered a sixth and final season in February.
