YouTube any performance of “Doll Parts” from the 1990s and you can feel the agony in her pleading chorus of “Someday you will ache like I ache,” sung over and over and over again. Many of the lyrics are stark (“Slit me open and suck my scars”) and blunt (“Where the fuck were you when my lights went out?”) and honest about the ugliness inside her (“I am the girl you know/ So sick I cannot try”). Put on Pretty on the Inside or Live Through This.

There’s a part of every outsider girl-even the more-controlled outsider types like myself (and perhaps Dunham)-that can’t help but admire how Love doesn’t stop her emotions from bleeding before taking pen to paper or body to stage. But I’m looking forward to whatever she keeps promising to put out this year-a memoir, a solo album, even the Hole record she teased on Instagram-because we’ve forgotten that her shamelessness is much more interesting when it’s used in her work, not when it’s in gossip magazines or cryptic tweets. It’s unfortunate that Love has spent the past decade-plus garnering more attention for her loony-tunes rants, wackadoo behavior, and tumultuous relationship with her daughter than for her talent. As someone who leans toward overthinking in her own work, I can’t help but romanticize the unfiltered oddball that is Courtney Love. In one corner, you have Dunham, the sober-minded control freak behind the HBO show Girls: “When you say something on a show and a lot of people analyze it, you definitely want to consider what you’re saying.” And then you have Love, the chaos-driven, loose cannon who enthuses, “You’ve gotta be able to play topless and feel like a fuckin’ Amazon!” And what my colleague was offering was simply her preference, which happens to be mine, too. You might not have agreed with what they had made, but you had to at least check it out-and you couldn’t help but be interested in seeing what they would do next.įor those reasons alone, I disagree with my colleague that Dunham is simply “regular.” But I will say that yes, she and Love are remarkably different women, most notably in the way they make work and how that process affects the way the rest of us experience it. But at very young ages, both Dunham and Love thrust upon the world a creativity that was so unabashed, so in-your-face that their potential seemed exciting and especially rare for women.

They use their bodies and voices in ways that are “unflattering,” unladylike your older brother probably doesn’t have a crush on them, even if he’s into quirky chicks. These are two of the most polarizing women in all of pop culture. Vincent? But the more I considered the Dunham-Love correlation, the more it made sense. Why not say, “She’s no Diablo Cody,” or “She’s no Carrie Brownstein,” referring to women who write and produce their own work? And if you’re going to compare Dunham to a musician, why not name-check barrier-breaking ladies closer to her own age, like Janelle Monáe or St. My first thought: What a random comparison. You could tell she was crazy but a genius. She’s no Courtney Love.” My ears perked up because I’m nosy, but also, huh? “When Courtney Love was 26 and you talked to her,” my colleague went on to explain, “she had this captivating spark. I recently overheard a media colleague say, “I don’t get Lena Dunham.

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