20 Questions Gone Wrong

Question and answers are a great way to get to know each other, but putting them as an article did not work for Lena Dunham's interview with Playboy.

In the rather jumpy article, we get to know more about the woman behind the new hit series 'Girls' in many different ways. The first couple questions are the ones that would be expected about the show and the explicit sex that comes with it. In that sense, I think Playboy succeeded in trying to get more unique questions as compared to 'how do you come up with the sex scenes' and 'was it weird to film these'.

One question I have to give them credit for is asking about writing men's characters as a female writer. Dunham came across as very interested in this question and gave a great response:

"It’s important to me to create fully formed characters who don’t feel just like good guys, villains, creeps or sluts. I want it to feel real. I want my male friends to feel just as much of a connection to my work as my female friends do."

Another interesting question followed shortly after:

Playboy: If you woke up tomorrow in the body of a Victoria’s Secret model, what would you do for the rest of the day?

Dunham: I’d be really disoriented and wonder what had happened in the night. Which enemy had dragged me to the doctor? I don’t think I’d like it very much. There would be all kinds of weird challenges to deal with that I don’t have to deal with now. I don’t want to go through life wondering if people are talking to me because I have a big rack. Not being the babest person in the world creates a nice barrier. The people who talk to you are the people who are interested in you. It must be a big burden in some ways to look that way and be in public. That said, I probably would want to see if I could get free food at restaurants. Then I’d call a doctor and see if she could return me to my former situation.

I found this to be a controversial and amazing question on Playboy's part. Dunham is not a woman with a smaller body type. She has tattoos, a stomach and boobs. It is not like 'Sex and the City' where all the women are thin and model-like; Dunham is a normal sized woman doing sex scenes on HBO. It is something I know she must get criticized for; I hear people talk about her size during the sex scenes all the time. I enjoyed seeing her answer to this question and respect her a lot more after reading her answer. That is the type of role model that I feel all women need these days.

For me, it was hard to start paying attention after this question. Playboy seems to jump around a lot in their questions, and it was something that made it confusing for me to read. They went from 'what type of guy has a chance with you' to 'is it bad to receive all of this acknowledgment (Golden Globes) at such a young age' to 'what is your grocery checkout routine'. 

If I was Dunham and that was the actual order they asked the questions, I would be sitting there completely confused. As the reader I am confused and trying to figure out why we are jumping all over the place in this article. 

While some of the questions may be good, I find it hard to like this article because of the way it is set up. It was difficult for me to get through, and I think Playboy could have structured it in a better way for the reader. It has amazing content, just a poor structure.