Lena Dunham: the grubby sexy girl taking over the US Lena Dunham, if you don't already know, is a 26 year-old American writer, director and actress whose sit-com Girls (a HBO production currently showing in the UK on Sky Atlantic) is currently the thing to be watching. To say she is precocious is rather unoriginal, and also somewhat patronising, but the truth is, she's young and very confident in her own voice, and so the word is apt, if unappealing. She is already being compared with Woody Allen and Nora Ephron, and not just because she comes from New York. This week, ahead of the US elections on November 6, Dunham released a short video endorsing Barack Obama. The concept was to smudge two formative moments in anyone's life: losing your virginity, and voting for the first time, and she talks intimately and candidly about the kind of guy you would want to "do it" with (or for) - someone who sticks up for women's rights, who cares about birth control, who has nice....she never completes that sentence. Someone like Barack Obama. It's typical Dunham - a bit grubby, a bit sexy, very real and slightly unnerving. Ann Coulter, an American ultra-right commentator who has a sort of satanic glamour that is simultaneously mesmerising and also truly terrifying, subsequently went on Fox News to denounce Dunham and other "weak minded women" for sexualising their presidential candidate. She noted that it was a Democrat trait for women to want to sleep with the leader of their party (remember Obama Girl, anyone?) and looked truly repulsed by the idea. Coulter has also been busy defending herself for referring to Obama as a "retard" on Twitter, so we can see the quality of her debating skills right there. Of course, she may simply be jealous - sleeping with Mitt Romney would be a slippery experience for all the wrong reasons (all that OIL), but there I go, being "weak minded," so I'll shut up for fear of exposing myself. Dunham is an interesting writer and performer, and very funny. She also has a kind of unflinching approach to her own body that not even the average supermodel, with all their protestations of "hating my legs/ears/whatever," can muster. Her frequent nakedness in Girls is charming, but unglamorous, as she grips a roll of belly fat and talks about pursuing more "worthy goals" than losing weight. It seems like a direct punch in the taut, tanned gut of your average Hollywood popsie, and it is quite deliberate. Girls is currently showing on Sky Atlantic At an event a couple of weeks ago, she wore a pair of very short-shorts covered by a long blouse that had fashion bloggers wincing into their miso soup. Her reaction was glorious - "I don't think a girl with tiny thighs would have received such no-pants attention. I think what it really was..."Why did you all make us look at your thighs?" My response is, get used to it because I am going to live to be 100, and I am going to show my thighs every day till I die. It is clearly high on her agenda to shove any body image tyranny right back in the "patriarchy's face," and that includes attitudes to sex and virginity (it's no coincidence that her Barack Obama video is about healthy sexual awakening, given the kind of misogynist nonsense various Republicans have been spouting recently about women's bodies) and it is part of what makes her so popular. Much has been made of the fact that Dunham has signed publishing deal with Random House to write an advice book, which includes a $3.5 million advance. To whom much is given, much is expected, as the old saying goes. But based on recent form, I'd buy the book - as will many others - so perhaps the advance represents a smart investment. Only time will tell, but she's got plenty of it.