And so it seems appropriate that Lena Dunham and Amy Poehler, influential female actors and writers in their respected realms of comedy, would choose this year to publish memoirs detailing their experiences as women in entertainment. Dunham’s Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She’s Learned, released in September, and Poehler’s Yes Please, published a month later, build on the now well-established trend of intimate autobiographies penned by female entertainers. In fact, in her preface, Poehler cites the memoirs of comedians like Tina Fey, Mindy Kaling, Sarah Silverman, and Rachel Dratch as inspiration for her own writing. 

When a powerhouse for good is exposed for extreme deviance, supporting institutions turn their heads and trivialize grave accusations in order to protect their interests. In the cases of the Catholic Church, the Ray Rice scandal, and now the accusations against Lena Dunham, abuse is treated as a pithy mishap, a bad apple, a misleading vignette of an otherwise exemplary institution. The feminist world is abandoning its values just because we love her. It’s choosing to do PR for Lena instead of journalism.

For something to be great-- truly great-- does it have to actually be good? Not always, it seems. Before it even premiered on April 15, HBO’s “Girls” was making headlines across the country. Created by 26-year-old Lena Dunham and produced by Judd Apatow, “Girls” is a comedy that was supposed to change the way that women in their early 20s are portrayed on television, from their love lives to their bank accounts. The only problem was, not everyone thought that the change was for the better.