Lena Dunham has been praised for her ‘stirring’ thoughts on the death of Caroline Flack.
In a poignant piece, the Girls star wrote about the tragic passing of Love Island host Caroline, who was found dead on 15 February having taken her own life.
Speaking of her adoration for Caroline, after she became obsessed with Love Island during her time working in the UK, Lena admitted she ‘pored over Flack’s Instagram’ and scrolled through the countless articles written about her.
However, as someone who can relate to the pitfalls of fame – having been revered by fans while also being on the end of backlash just as quickly – Lena said Caroline’s death hit her ‘with a sickening power’.
She wrote for the Guardian, urging people to celebrate Caroline’s ‘complexity’ in order to change the narrative moving forward: ‘I wish we could have shown Flack a more hopeful reality: that women who err are as worthy of love as men who do the same.’
Writing ‘the deepest rage is reserved for women’, Lena made reference to the assault charge Caroline faced, after being arrested following an incident with Lewis Burton. Caroline denied the charge, while Lewis also didn’t support the prosecution.
Speaking of the social media push for everyone to #bekind, Lena added to that notion: ‘I would ask that we also consider our ability to accept contradiction, complexity and grey areas in the women we idolise, and consider the violence of suspending them in mid-air above us and then cutting the harness.
‘Our ability to forgive men in power, to celebrate their contradictory aspects, is well-documented. But the people who have lately been speaking to Flack’s inner beauty, work ethic and vivaciously engaging presence were mostly too afraid to do so in the weeks after her arrest in December.
‘Their willingness to say, “A woman I admire may have done something that I don’t,” could have gone a long way to lessen her shame and expand her sense of possibility.’
However, to this, Lena wanted to make it clear she wasn’t trying to take away from the ‘seriousness’ of Caroline’s assault charge, while also not wanting her attempts to stay on the ‘right side of public opinion’ stop her from saying what she meant, adding that ‘public vilification, especially as it follows public celebration, is almost too painful to bear for most, and a trauma like any other’.
Lena recalled experiencing herself the dizzying highs of adoration to then be forced to search for another way to ‘measure’ her worth when it was turned on its head.
Imagining Caroline ‘was reeling from several kinds of heartbreak’, Lena wished she could have spoken with Caroline to tell her ‘it changes’.
Readers applauded Lena’s nuanced take on Caroline’s death, with Fleabag star Sian Clifford writing on Twitter: ‘God this is vital and stirring.’
Another wrote in praise of the piece: ‘A great article highlighting ‘the pain & powerlessness that accompany so many forms of female identity’ and that in all forms of living a life in the public gaze ‘the deepest rage is reserved for women’.’
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