By 
Lena Dunham's home in Los Angeles is a model of bohemian graciousness. It has lots of jazzy touches: Missoni poufs, striped cushions, and a large faux-floral feature. (It also, very briefly, had pastel rainbow curtains—until they were dismantled by Dunham's boyfriend, Jack Antonoff.) One bathroom is wallpapered with leopards, while one remains a polite white. "I want to do something to it," Dunham says, midway through a home tour. "But Jack said, 'Lena, it's just a nice bathroom.'"
Despite her kitsch urges, what's striking about the Dunham-Antonoff residence is how mature it is. While the kitchen houses a pinboard covered with notes and pop culture ephemera, there's a shelf filled with Smartwater.
Dunham will, after all, be 30 next year. "I am so excited about turning 30," she says, sitting on her porch, eating gluten-free pancakes and a particular L.A. creation, the "breakfast salad." "I'm psyched about it because I think that being in your 20s—especially as a woman—there's an inherent tension. Ageism exists in all directions, but it isn't the sweet spot for being taken seriously in the workplace. I've been really lucky. I got to do a lot of things before I was 30 that most people don't."
And Dunham went for it, swiftly becoming the emeritus of the millennials. After her 2010 debut, Tiny Furniture, she has cranked through four seasons of her HBO series, Girls; a best-selling memoir, Not That Kind of Girl; and frequent essays for The New Yorker, which she pens as naturally as a grocery list. "I think women, when they're given an opportunity are so afraid it's going to disappear," she explains of her prodigious output. "That was my 20s. I was like, 'This may never strike again. I'm a kind of weird-looking girl, with a very specific voice, and the fact that I get to have a job is insane.'" Now, as she cozies into her domestic trappings, "I'm just as excited for my experience and my age to catch up with each other."
Dunham has just completed shooting the penultimate season of Girls and will wrap up the series, and her own girlhood, next year. "When we were turning 25," she remembers, "one of my best friends said, 'I hate this. We will never be considered precocious again.' But I was like, 'I don't want to be precocious. I just want to be a person who's in my life.' There's so much torture that come with being young, female, and trying to figure it out. I mean, I made a whole TV show about it."
The kick of conversation with Dunham is that words come to her easily, tied up with a verbal bow. Ask her the old "If I met myself at a party question" and she answers, "'That's a polite lady who seems interested in other people but also has a mind of her own and a fun perspective.' I also hope I'd think, Her outfit seems like it was thrown together with speed yet panache, and her attitude is positive even in the face of adversity."
Dunham is the voice of a generation: girls who have growing pains, doubt themselves, stretch the elastic in a swimsuit. Human girls. "I never claimed to be that voice," she lightly protests. "Except once in a character as a joke, when my character was stoned." She describes her mission: "To spread positivity. I know I'm not most moms' idea of a role model, but I try to use the attention that comes with that wisely and not foolishly." When Dunham tweets, people listen. "Yes, I will tweet about my issues with underpants, but I also want to say things that matter. I don't want to be out on the town spreading messages I can't get behind. Which is good because I never leave my house."
She is in L.A. editing Girls with co-producers Judd Apatow and Jenni Konner, and launching the feminist e-letter Lenny, with Konner. Ask Dunham about her typical day and Antonoff handily appears. "For Lena? Set an alarm for 7. Hit snooze until 9:45 or 10. Go to work. Have a major physical issue that sends her home from work, potentially an hour later. Take a nap, go back to work. Have lunch with a friend, enjoying another nap. Quick visit to the hospital, pick up the dog, meet me for dinner, write all night." Dunham rejoices, "You nailed it!" before adding a key point. "I go to the hospital for myself." Dunham and Antonoff have been together for almost four years, and have a light, bantering groove. Both travel incessantly, especially Antonoff, who tours with his bands, Fun and Bleachers. "Whenever people ask, "What's the secret to a long-distance relationship?," she says, "I'm like, 'It's hard.' That's why it's really important that we share a home because you see the person's stuff, and you're like, 'Okay, you're coming back here.'"
She is a huge advocate of Antonoff's music. "I couldn't be with someone whose work I didn't respect. I would be so resentful about him being on the road if I didn't think, 'You being out there is bringing joy to people at your shows.' You have to go, 'my relationship makes everything else possible because it's love.'"
Next on Dunham's schedule is the launch of Lenny, which was born after her book tour for Not That Kind of Girl. "There were all these incredible young women there—radical, smart. I felt like there should be a space for these girls who care just as much about politics as about how to color their hair pink or whatever. Our grand ambition is to really becomes a safe place for women on the Internet that's funny and not snarky."
And Dunham knows the subject, having so often been the Internet's whipping girl. "I've been put to bed for weeks from reading things about myself on sites that used to be considered feminist gospel," she says bluntly. "I love the Internet because it helped me discover everything that matters to me. But I also hate the Internet because every piece of true pain I've experienced as an adult—with the exception of death in the family and breakups—has come from it."
She adds a disclaimer: "Celebrities can complain all they want about how cruel Twitter is, but we signed up for it. Who didn't sign up for it are the teenage girls who bully each other to suicide using Twitter. There's no shortage of stories of how Twitter and Instagram and Facebook, these incredible tools for self-expression, have also led to girls feeling ostracized, alone, slut-shamed. We just want to restore some semblance of safety."
With that in mind, Lenny will feature no comments section. Dunham laughs wryly. "It never ends well. I mean, have you ever read, 'Girls, let's all go meet for drinks! You guys are such nice people!'"
Dunham is big on nice. Being cool, she can take or leave. "Cool is when you do whatever the fuck you want, she says, adding, " I don't feel cool now, and I certainly don't feel cool when I go to industry events. If I do feel cool, I see a picture of myself later and I'm like, 'That was a disaster.' What I do feel is a freedom from certain kinds of pressures. Now I don't give a shit if you know that my jacket is from Ann Taylor." She does, in fact, have a monogrammed denim jacket from Ann Taylor. Worn with one of Antonoff's caps, it makes her look like a delivery boy from 1972. Suggest a Dunham-Ann Taylor collaboration and she squeals, "My dream!" She announces grandly, "Ann Taylor, I want to help you guys do the capsule collection of the millennium. We're secreting this into the world."
Having achieved so much young, Dunham still has marked ambitions. " I want to go back to making movies. It's how I started. I want to keep writing books, and I want to keep cultivating the social justice part of my life." She plans to campaign prominently for Hillary Clinton. "I can say passionately that I think Hillary Clinton. "I can say passionately that I think Hilary Clinton should be our next president. I believe in her skill, I believe in her experience, and, yes, I want a female president. But that's not random. I mean, I wrote my third-grade end-of-the-year paper on Hillary Clinton. So I've clearly been in it for the long haul…" She pauses. "Also, I really want to pay attention to my life. All the interesting travel I've done was before the age of seven. So I would like to travel; I would like to be a mother; to find a different way to spend time with my friends and family."
All up, it's wonderful being a wunderkind, but it doesn't leave much room for hanging. "When I die I want my friends to be like, 'She had a lot of fucking fun. She really lived it up,'" says Dunham. "Now they could say, 'She was quite productive. She got a lot done. She had a cold very often. She had a cold a lot.' I feel like the part of my life where I rock out hasn't even started yet."
Stella McCartney dress; Gianvito Rossi shoes, shopBAZAAR.com. Hair: Vi Sapyyapy; makeup: Karan Franjola for Nars Cosmetics; manicure: Katt Hassan for Olive & June; production: Brooke Ludi Production; prop styling: Colin Donahue.
This article originally appeared in the November 2015 issue of Harper's BAZAAR.
