' The social circles I exist within, the ones populated by me, and my friends, and the people in Dunham’s memoir, still uphold the stratifications of power and the modes of gatekeeping that allow for celebrity worship in the first place, in spite of being populated by “freaks.” Friends with clout publish one another, put one another in shows, travel together on unacknowledged dimes. Many of us may have felt alienated and monstrous growing up, frightened of ourselves and the ways we felt different, but we’re still aliens and monsters with significant institutional access and, as far as I can tell, we’re always clamoring for more. I admit I’m a cynic, but as a symbol, Dunham’s work reads to me as simply another example in this vein: a book centered around marginality and privilege shame that, however genuine, ultimately earns him more cultural clout while doing little to trouble the whitewashed fame machine he professes to hate. '