Lena Dunham was awful to Odell Beckham, Jr., the football player she sat next to at the Met Gala who stubbornly refused to objectify her like she was a piece of meat. And in response, Beckham, Jr. was and is, we now know, nothing but a gentleman to Dunham.
In an interview with another icon of “modern feminism” (taking “feminism” to mean that women can be just as creepy and gross as men), Amy Schumer, Dunham noted that Odell failed to acknowledge her captivating presence and magnetic sexuality, and preferred to stare, instead, at his phone.
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.
Aside from the fact that other people probably don’t think about Dunham as often as Dunham thinks about Dunham, the quote has some misogynistic, even racial, overtones, as plenty of social justice warriors later pointed out. Dunham eventually apologized, but Beckham, Jr., the person to whom Dunham craved to be an object of desire, was oddly silent.
Surfacing after a week of outrage in various sectors of the feminist Internet, Beckham, Jr., decided today to simply acknowledge the brouhaha and move on, telling Complex that he didn’t “have enough information to really speak on it.”
“We’ll see what happens from there,” he told the magazine. “I never want any problems with anybody in this world.”
For a man accused of sexism, misogyny and discrimination all in the same sentence, that’s a very kind answer, and shows how, well, chill Beckham, Jr., really is. Dunham accused him of being superficial, of dehumanizing and judging her based on her looks and her outfit. Beckham, Jr., really did just want to check out Instagram.
