Lena Dunham Apologizes for That Whole Odell Beckham Jr. Mess

On Friday, Lenny letter published an conversational interview between Lena Dunham and Amy Schumer, which contained the following quote from Lena regarding Odell Beckham Jr.:

I was sitting next to Odell Beckham Jr., and it was so amazing because it was like he looked at me and he determined I was not the shape of a woman by his standards. He was like, "That’s a marshmallow. That’s a child. That’s a dog." It wasn’t mean — he just seemed confused.

The vibe was very much like, "Do I want to fuck it? Is it wearing a … yep, it’s wearing a tuxedo. I’m going to go back to my cell phone." It was like we were forced to be together, and he literally was scrolling Instagram rather than have to look at a woman in a bow tie. I was like, "This should be called the Metropolitan Museum of Getting Rejected by Athletes."

The quote was followed by quite a bit of backlash, with detractors calling Lena narcissistic, and troubling over her choice to assign thoughts to a person she had never even met. After seeing the backlash, Lena responded with a series of tweets, defending herself and the choice to publish the anecdote.

"My story about him was clearly (to me) about my own insecurities as an average-bodied woman at a table of supermodels & athletes," she wrote. "It's not an assumption about who he is or an expectation of sexual attention. It's my sense of humor, which has kept me alive for 30 years."

And then, "Glad the outrage machine roars on though, right @amyschumer?"

Apparently, Lena has sense reconsidered this mode of response. Earlier today, she published a longer, more thoughtful apology, opting to take full accountability for her actions in lieu of excuses.

"I owe Odell Beckham Jr an apology," Lena wrote in a post shared on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. "Despite my moments of bravado, I struggle at industry events (and in life) with the sense that I don't rep a certain standard of beauty and so when I show up to the Met Ball surrounded by models and swan-like actresses it's hard not to feel like a sack of flaming garbage."

Here is the rest of her mea culpa in full:

This felt especially intense with a handsome athlete as my dinner companion and a bunch of women I was sure he'd rather be seated with. But I went ahead and projected these insecurities and made totally narcissistic assumptions about what he was thinking, then presented those assumptions as facts. I feel terrible about it. Because after listening to lots of valid criticism, I see how unfair it is to ascribe misogynistic thoughts to someone I don't know AT ALL. Like, we have never met, I have no idea the kind of day he's having or what his truth is. But most importantly, I would never intentionally contribute to a long and often violent history of the over-sexualization of black male bodies- as well as false accusations by white women towards black men. I'm so sorry, particularly to OBJ, who has every right to be on his cell phone. The fact is I don't know about his state of mind (I don't know a lot of things) and I shouldn't have acted like I did.

Related: Why Fashion Is Having Such a Hard Time Embracing Body Positivity