In the olden, pre-internet days, it used to be that once you became a famous film / TV star, you gave up other careers. You’re in. You’ve made it.
Now, seven years after Gwyneth Paltrow cornered the ‘holistic living with a fuckton of cash’ market, you’re basically a talentless hack until you launch a web-based projection of your life: there’s Blake Lively’s Preserve, Kylie Jenner‘s soon-to-be-launched beauty blog, and now this: Lena Dunham‘s newsletter for young women, coming to your inbox later this year.
If you can’t watch that atm, Lenny = Lena + Jenni, a.k.a ‘Girls‘ showrunner Jenni Konner.
Lenny, described by Dunham as “Rookie’s older sister”, will be for “an army of like-minded intellectually curious women and the people who love them, who want to bring change but also want to know, like, where to buy the best tube top for summer that isn’t going to cost your entire paycheque,” Dunham told BuzzFeed News (US). The types of writers Lenny is hoping to attract are as follows:
“We want people who have totally diverse interests. People who want to talk about radical politics but also want to talk about fashion and also want to talk about Rihanna, and also understand that all of those things can be happening at the same time.”
Already on-staff are a bunch of journo heavyweights who, combined, have written for and/or edited Jezebel, Slate, Pitchfork and The Hairpin. Potentially more exciting is the promise Lenny will feature writing from Dunham’s famous mates, which draws from a potential pool of Tavi Gevinson, Caitlin Moran and Amy Poehler – but most importantly, this person:
Jeee-sus. If Taylor Swift writes for Lena Dunham’s newsletter, the internet may well straight up self implode and we’ll all be out of a job.
What Lenny is not going to be: superiority feminism. There will be no bullshit articles about whether someone is the ‘wrong kind of feminist’, nor will it just be for straight, cis-gendered white women.
“We want it to be an inclusive space,” Dunham told The Cut. “We’re not making any assumptions about your identity. We’re making the assumption that you’re passionate and you care about other people’s emotions and style and you just want to live a more connected life.”
It’s a safe bet the twosome’s decision to produce a newsletter instead of a blog is a conscious move away from the “digital sweatshop”, as Ryan Holliday described the modern day online media, and instead focuses on slow, one-way, high quality content.
Then again, it might just be a self-preservation tactic to avoid a comments section seething with the kind of hate that locks on Dunham like a heat-seeking missile with a keyboard. 
Lenny launches in September. Hella keen? Sign up here.
Lead picture: Christopher Polk via Getty Images
via The Cut / BuzzFeed News
