Lena Dunham doesn't have all the answers, and she's not afraid to admit it. In a hilariously charming throwback post on Thursday, Aug. 22, the Girls creator shared a series of photos showing a letter she once wrote to Time Out New York's sex columnist, Jamie Bufalino, about — what else? — losing the all-important V-card.
"I'm a 19-year-old girl who has been reading your column since its inception, and I've always wanted to write in," she began her well-crafted letter. "Well, I finally have a question."
The question that now-27-year-old Dunham had? Whether there is a proper "etiquette" to informing a would-be lover that one is a virgin at 19, and whether it is a good idea to set a one-year deadline during which to change her status.
"Once you're 19, people seem to expect that you've done it six ways to Sunday," Dunham wrote. "So it can come as quite a shock when a girl my age admits that she's still on the v-team. …It seems to freak guys out, like they think that you're going to get too attached to them if they devirginize you."
Dunham goes on to worry about being seen as a "huge dork" for breaking the news to a guy who might not think it's "worth their time to sleep with an inexperienced girl."
Longtime sex columnist Bufalino responded with equal candor and humor, first commending Dunham (whose letter was, of course, published anonymously) on her use of the antiquated phrase "six ways to Sunday."
He advised the worried teen to "hang on to that v-card" and not rush into anything she wasn't ready for.
"There will be no deadline-setting or peer-pressuring," he wrote. "You will simply live your Intermix-clad, iPod-accessorized, O.C.-obsessed life until you meet a young man who doesn't give a whit about your sexual status, but just wants to express his love for you through three timid thrusts and premature ejaculation."
He concludes his rationalization with an acute observation: "Besides, you'll have plenty of time in your twenties and thirties to sleep with total bozos."
Dunham is currently dating Fun.'s Jack Antonoff, and is frequently topless for her hit HBO series, which openly addresses the sexual shenanigans of 20-somethings in Brooklyn.
