Lena Dunham & Lorde Talk Taylor Swift’s Girl Squad for ‘Dazed’
Lorde photographed by Ryan McGinley for the Summer 2015 issue of Dazed Magazine. Photo: Ryan McGinley/Dazed
Lena Dunham’s interviewed Ella Yelich-O’Connor, aka Lorde, for the Girl’s Rule the World issue of Dazed magazine and though the Girls creator says, “I just realized that I am the least successful journalist in the world because I’m such a big interrupter,” it’s actually a refreshing, candid, real conversation that will make you want an invite to the next Swift squad sleepover.
Dunham, who should know, asks Lorde if she’s grown tired of being asked what it’s like to be a girl in her male dominated industry. Doesn’t it get old, she wonders, answering questions about her image, or creepy old men? You think it’s going where all interviews with young successful women go, until both Dunham and Lorde admit that no, they’re both strong women with an unwavering sense of self who have, for the most part, been allowed to do their own thing their own way.
Where they differ, however, is in their attitude toward the opposite sex. While Dunham says speaking to other women is by far her favorite thing to do, Lorde’s always preferred to hang with the boys. “I feel like teenage boys, all their emotions are really simple and diluted. Teenage girls feel everything so intensely and are so multi-faceted. Boys are just like, they’ll rest a head on your shoulder and you know exactly what that means.”
Dunham’s response: “It’s amazing how you get that, because I think part of my issue until recently was that I would always be overdetermining what guys were thinking. I was running an entire internal narrative for every young man I encountered, whereas they were probably just like, ‘I want pizza.’”
Luckily, both kinds of women are celebrated in Swift’s famous girl group. In fact, Lorde sounds positively grateful that Swift has seen beyond her inability to talk about boys in the way in which we expect of teenage girls. “She definitely brought me into this amazing world of supportive female friendship,” she tells Dunham. “For me, someone starts talking about boys and I’m like, ‘I just don’t know what to say.’ I’m useless in that capacity and that was why I thought, ‘Well, I can’t have girl friends (because) I don’t know how to talk about boys.’ But Taylor just glosses over the fact that I’m terrible at that and she’s just like, ‘It’s OK, I’ll love you for your other qualities.’”
If it ever feels like Swift is trying really, really hard to make her girl group happen, Dunham confirms that she is. “I feel that Taylor has really taken control and said, ‘I’m going to get us all together in the same place, I’m gonna make it very clear that friendship is powerful and women are magic and if anybody thinks this is a witches’ coven they might be right.’ She’s just made it her job in a very cool way.”
Head to Dazed to read their thoughts on feminism, the press, and the ideal day off.
Related: Taylor, Selena, Lorde: Today’s Female Rat Pack Is Baller
