Lenny, Lena Dunham's Forthcoming Newsletter, Is 'Goop Meets Grantland'

Lena Dunham and her BFF/Girls showrunner Jenni Konner are already a staple of your former coworker’s friend’s aunt’s HBO GO account, and soon they’ll be headed for your inbox with a newsletter called Lenny. (Why wasn’t it spelled “Lenni”? Oh, whatever.)

Dunham spoke with BuzzFeed about the project and explained its target audience:

[Lenny will be for] an army of like-minded intellectually curious women and the people who love them, who want to bring change but also want to know, like, where to buy the best tube top for summer that isn’t going to cost your entire paycheck.”

With a deep focus on building a community through “common reading,” Lenny will be joining a landscape of similar sites and newsletters like Femsplain and The Skimm. EIC (and former Jezebel writer) Jessica Grose says “its inspiration is less Feministing or Jezebel and more “Rookie’s Big Sister… or Goop meets Grantland.”

“We love Goop,” Dunham said. “Jenni and I have always been obsessed with Goop. We feel strongly that even if some of it is aspirational, it’s aspirations like ‘I want to know how to take care of my body and soufflé something.’”

Dunham and Konner already have already pulled together quite the staff for the project, which is currently self-funded.

Lenny will be filled with writing from Dunham’s vast network of celebrity friends, but will also draw from its own staff — including…associate editor and Rookie writer Laia Garcia; and editor-at-large Doreen St. Félix, who has written for Pitchfork, The Hairpin, and BuzzFeed.

The newsletter will “eventually morph into a something of a website-letter hybrid” complete with “e-commerce that collaborates with independent female artists and designers in ethical, affordable, and witty apparel and design items.” Yes, Lenny plans on being and doing quite a number of things on its mission to become a Goop/Grantland hybrid—but one thing it will never be, they say, is hostile.

“Women spend so much time trying to align themselves with an image in the media that they can’t match,” Dunham said, “that their hostility towards themselves and others becomes overwhelming.” To disrupt that hostility in a way that’s generative and generous, that’s exploratory and fun — that’s Lenny’s mission.