American writer, director, actress and producer Lena Dunham has revealed an unexpected advice she received during a recent cosmetic consultation.
The 39-year-old shared the update on Thursday via a TikTok video, looking back on a fresh visit to a dermatologist ahead of her 40th birthday.
Dunham elaborated that the doctor also happens to be an expert plastic surgeon, which drove the actress curious to ask what changes would be recommended if there were no limits.
“Let’s call it what it is. She’s a plastic surgeon. I said to her, ‘If I were to fully let you loose on my face, money were no object, healing were no object, just tell me what would you do?’ ”
Dunham admitted in the video that she expected a long list of procedures, but the doctor told her she would not make major changes.
“She looked at me and she said, ‘I wouldn’t go crazy. I like to really highlight my client’s natural beauty,’” Dunham said.
She said the doctor pointed out that the strongest part of her face is the area between her brow and just below her nose.
The Girls creator then quipped, “I was like okay, so what you can see through a criminal ski mask? And the rest you would obliterate in a meat grinder basically?”
Dunham’s admission comes after several instances where she spoke about the criticism she has faced over her appearance. In a past post marking the 13th anniversary of her show Girls, Dunham said she was judged for how her body looked when she was younger.
“The feedback that came at me-at least the feedback I could hear-was about all the ways that young body was unacceptable,” Dunham wrote in April 2025, recalling that she was just 25 years old at the time.
Dunham added that those experiences helped her become more comfortable with changes in her body over time.
“I didn’t know how grateful I would come to be for it all,” she later continued. “As a result of my years dabbling in the comments section, the shifts in my human form- aging, illness, scrapes and scars- haven’t rattled me like they could have. This body had already been an object of scorn and so the rest of the road smoothed out before me.”
Her next project is the film Good Sex, starring Natalie Portman, which is set to release on Netflix later this year.
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