Last month (September 25), Lena Dunham got married to musician Luis Felber (who performs as Attawalpa) with a “whirlwind” ceremony at a members-only club in Soho, London. Following the marriage, the Girls creator and her recent husband travelled to the country for a transient honeymoon. As Dunham says on social media: “I got a bit of break from work, which jogged my memory how much I like what I do and the way excited I’m to share what I have been making with you in 2022.”

“I say this because through the years, I’ve shared many challenges with you,” she adds within the recent Instagram post. “And these moments of joy had me considering that we should always admit after we’re glad too – it isn’t against the law.”

Nevertheless, Dunham adds that being surrounded by family and friends caused her to forget “why (she’s) created such intense boundaries with the web over the past few years”. Unfortunately (if unsurprisingly), she was quickly reminded of this when she went online to view the response to her wedding photos, shared in a Vogue feature last week.

“I took a peek, and saw some gnarly shit, most not price responding to and even sharing with you,” she adds. One narrative she does openly take issue with, nevertheless, is about her body – a near-constant subject of conversation over the course of her profession. This narrative, she says, suggests: “I should one way or the other be ashamed because my body has modified since I used to be last on television.”

In response, Dunham takes issue with a wide range of critics’ points – ”’Did Lena eat the forged of Girls’ just isn’t a superb joke” – and adds that it’s “ironic” to have her body in comparison with a body that was also widely scorned, even when she had lost weight in an effort to raised control her chronic illness, endometriosis.

“When will we learn to stop equating thinness with health/happiness?” she writes, having long been outspoken on the difficulty of body positivity. “In fact weight reduction could be the results of positive change in habits, but guess what? So can weight gain.” The pictures that her wedding photos are being in comparison with, she says, are from when she was “in energetic addiction with undiagnosed illness”. Within the 4 years since, she’s change into sober and apparently began living as “someone who aspires toward health and never just achievement”. 

“These changes have allowed me to be the type of sister/friend/daughter that I would like to be,” she continues, “and yes, meet my husband (who, by the best way, doesn’t recognize me in those old photos because he sees how dimmed my light was).”

Addressing her statement to “another person whose appearance has been modified with time, illness, or circumstance”, Dunham concludes: “​​It’s okay to live in your present body without treating it as transitional.” Read Lena Dunham’s full statement on the response to her wedding photos below, and revisit her reflections on a decade of being celebrated and hated in a 2019 interview with Dazed here.