Simone Person

🌙Runner-Up for the 2021 Blongprize🌙

I Make the Mistake of Going to Brunch with Lena Dunham and She Spends the Whole Time Asking Why Black Women Don’t Shave Our Thighs

Lena finishes her champagne cocktail, crunches ice between her teeth. Says she’s so glad two women can just sit together without all the bullshit, the posturing, the male gaze. She dumps every buzzword into my ears. I nod in a way that she’ll later describe as sagely, or aphoristic, or however else white women have decided to package Black women to make us sweet mammy and goddess—both here and not. Lena rattles her empty glass at a passing waiter and then turns to me and asks why Black women don’t shave our thighs—“Is it like, a Black thing?”—and she lowers her voice on Black, but not thing. I don’t have an answer for her. I mean, I do, but what I could say wouldn’t be anything close to what she wants to hear.