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Lena Dunham criticizes Kanye West's 'Famous' video for 'disturbing' portrayal of naked women

"...prone, unconscious, waxy bodies of famous women, twisted like they’ve been drugged and chucked aside at a rager..."

By Daniel Uria
Lena Dunham arrives on the red carpet at the 2016 CFDA Fashion Awards at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City on June 6, 2016. Dunham shared a Facebook post criticizing Kanye West's "Famous" video, saying its portrayal of women such as Taylor Swift and Rihanna made her feel "a sickening sense of dis-ease." Photo by John Angelillo/UPI
Lena Dunham arrives on the red carpet at the 2016 CFDA Fashion Awards at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City on June 6, 2016. Dunham shared a Facebook post criticizing Kanye West's "Famous" video, saying its portrayal of women such as Taylor Swift and Rihanna made her feel "a sickening sense of dis-ease." Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

LOS ANGELES, June 28 (UPI) -- Lena Dunham criticized Kanye West's "Famous" music video, which features West and his wife Kim Kardashian lying naked in a bed with likenesses of Donald Trump, Bill Cosby and George W. Bush, among others.

Dunham, star and writer of HBO's Girls, wrote in a Facebook post that the video's "disturbing" portrayal of naked celebrities and its potentially negative impact on teenage girls made her feel "a sickening sense of dis-ease."

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The video was unveiled in front of thousands of fans at The Forum in Inglewood before being released on Tidal. While Dunham said she was initially excited upon viewing the video she found it to be "one of the more disturbing 'artistic' efforts in recent memory" and that she had a hard time watching it.

"Here's the thing, Kanye: you're cool. Make a statement on fame and privacy and the Illuminati or whatever is on your mind!" Dunham wrote. "But I can't watch it, don't want to watch it, if it feels informed and inspired by the aspects of our culture that make women feel unsafe even in their own beds, in their own bodies."

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The video shows the naked wax likenesses of a number of celebrities including prominent women such as Rihanna who lends her vocals to the track and Taylor Swift who is referenced in a line in which West speculates that they "might still have sex."

In her post Dunham writes that the portrayal of these women made the video difficult for her to watch as she felt the video reduced them to "a pair of waxy breasts made by some special effects guy in the Valley."

"It makes me feel sad and unsafe and worried for the teenage girls who watch this and may not understand that grainy roving camera as the stuff of snuff films," she wrote.

West commented to Vanity Fair about the video saying that it was not intended to be a commentary on any of the celebrities featured in the video.

"It's not in support or anti any of [the people in the video]," he said. "It's a comment on fame."

Dunham also referenced her experience with art created by her parents which featured nude images and "aggro scenes of sexuality and war," but described a different feeling from West's video.

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"If it's been banned, I'll probably love it. Because I know that art's job is to make us think in ways that aren't always tidy or comfortable," she wrote. "But this feels different."

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