A Fourth Reason: Insecurity

A year or two ago, the television show "Girls," was the next big thing everyone was talking about. Created by mid-twenty-something Lena Dunham, the show is often described as a modern version of "Sex and the City" for twenty-something women. I don't have HBO, and "Girls" isn't streaming on Netflix, so I never really got around to watching it. Recently, though, a friend told me about this website where you can watch a bunch of different television shows for free (illegally, of course), and "Girls" was on there. My curiosity got the best of me, and one night I sat down and binge-watched my way through the entire first season.

I don't like Lena Dunham (more on than later) so I was expecting to hate the show. But to be honest, I didn't feel that strongly about it. The characters were annoying and the dialogue was clearly contrived from eavesdropped Starbucks conversations, but nothing else really stood out to me. Except for one scene.

During one part of the first season's finale episode, Hannah Horvath (Lena Dunham's character) and her roommate, Marnie have a fight. It begins with Marnie passively-aggressively insulting Hannah, and then spirals from there. The two begin attacking each other, and Marnie says at one point,"You judge everyone, and yet you ask them not to judge you!" And then Hannah responds with a line that made me reach a new level of clarity in my quest to understand sibling abuse:  

"That is because no one could ever hate me as much as I hate myself. Any mean thing someone's gonna think of to say about me, I've already said to me, about me, probably in the last half hour!"

Pause. Rewind.

Let me take you back to the year 2010, and introduce you to another, lesser known creation produced by Lena Dunham, "Tiny Furniture." This was the first feature-length film Dunham created, and tells the story of Dunham and her post-college graduation crisis. This film doesn't say much of anything--in fact, it's one of the most boring movies I've ever seen--but it does reveal a lot (at least in my opinion) about Dunham herself.

Fiction is always at least partly autobiographical, and "Tiny Furniture" is definitely a mini-autobiography of Dunham's life. Many people will notice many different things when they see the film, but one thing that certainly stood out to me when I watched it is the relationship Dunham has with her sister. What stood out to me the most was that Lena Dunham was an abusive older sibling, and her younger sister, Grace, sought revenge in her teen years. How do I know this?

As someone who has developed an eye for abusive sibling relationships, I can confidently tell you that "sibling abuse" is written all over the relationship Dunham has (or had) with her sister. One thing I dislike about Dunham is the fact that she always portrays herself as the innocent victim. In the very first scene of "Tiny Furniture," Grace starts being snarky to Lena, who then says to Grace, "You're being mean!" (Grace then quips back with, "And you're being over-sensitive!," a remark I'm sure was always leveled at her when she defended herself.)

That film made me dislike Lena Dunham (I have no tolerance for abusive older siblings, and even less for ones who think they're innocent), and "Girls" made me understand her. Why was Dunham mean to her sister? Because she was filled with insecurities, and picking on her sister made her feel better. What we see in that episode of "Girls" is not Hannah Horvath talking, it's Lena Dunham talking. And she's telling us about the hurt that pushed her to want to destroy others.

Insecurity in the abuser is another big reason for sibling abuse. For these abusers, the words they say out loud are reflections of the thoughts inside their minds. In a weird way, the abuser is also being abused--by their very self. And if we want to stamp out sibling abuse, we should focus on all of the abusers present, even the ones not visible.