Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Lena Dunham Pens Gorgeous Essay About Her Hysterectomy

We are mean to Lena Dunham here at the Schmooze. She is an easy target — young, white, wealthy, successful, talented, friends with Taylor Swift, from a well-connected family, and prone to the public displays of ignorance that epitomize well-intentioned white people.

But ultimately, she is a human being. She experiences pain and loss the way all of us do — and she’s a lot better at writing about it than most of us.

Lena Dunham’s humanity really rang through in the Vogue essay published this afternoon in which Dunham shares the gritty details about the hysterectomy she underwent a few months ago after a battle with endometriosis.

Any woman who has had her pain dismissed by the medical community will find Dunham’s essay painfully relatable.

Dunham writes, “From August to November I try desperately to manage this new level of pain. I try so hard it becomes a second job. I go to pelvic-floor therapy, massage therapy, pain therapy, color therapy, acupuncture, yoga, and a brief yet horrifying foray into vaginal massage from a stranger. I am determined to outmaneuver whatever is eating me from the inside. But I can only run so well with cement blocks strapped to my feet. Finally I ask my doctor if my uterus needs to come out. She says, ‘Let’s wait and see.’”

Dunham goes on to describe how she checked herself into the hospital, refusing to leave until the doctors removed her uterus. It wasn’t until the doctors consented and the hysterectomy was performed that Dunham’s certainty was affirmed — her uterus was in terrible condition and she was bleeding into her stomach.

It’s an all-too-familiar story. Historically, women’s pain has been dismissed systematically by doctors who assume it’s all in their head. Considering that women are also more prone to diseases that result in chronic pain due to their naturally weaker muscles, this is an issue that can threaten the very life of women everywhere.

Dunham doesn’t focus primarily, however, on the sexism at play here. Instead, the heart of the essay speaks to a different but equally relevant female struggle — infertility.

Dunham writes, “The fact is, I never had a single doubt about having children. Not one, since the day I could understand how families were made. And pregnancy was the glorious beginning of that vision. As a child, I would stuff my shirt with a pile of hot laundry and march around the living room beaming. Later, wearing a prosthetic belly for my television show, I stroke it subconsciously with such natural ease that my best friend has to tell me I am creeping her out. All the men on the crew, usually brusquely focused on their morning duties, are extra sweet and careful with me. They look at me like I am carrying the Messiah, even though my stomach is silicone and ordered from Japan. I feel the innate power of pregnancy, and I look forward to the moment when my stomach swells naturally and isn’t made of the same substance as breast implants.”

But, she concludes, she has always known, in that mysterious way we feel things inexplicably in our own bodies, that she would not be able to have children.

The essay ends on a hopeful note — I recommend reading the whole thing — but it gives readers the sense that this is something that has changed Dunham forever.

Good luck, Lena, and thank you for your vulnerability. This is what celebrity is best used for.

Becky Scott is the editor of The Schmooze. Follow her on Twitter, @arr_scott

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.