Girls

We're happy to present this excerpt from one of our favorite sites, The Good Men Project. Today, gender studies professor Hugo Schwyzer weighs in on the most controversial episode of Lena Dunham's Girls ever.

Since Sunday's airing of "On All Fours," the darkest and most troubling Girls episode yet, there's been plenty of debate about whether or not what happened between Adam and Natalia was rape, bad sex, or something else that's difficult to name. (I liked what Amanda Hess and Emily Heist Moss have to say.)

Like so many, I found the episode emotionally triggering to watch. Witnessing anyone — whether they're friends or fictional characters of whom one has grown fond — relapse into destructive, humiliating, or dangerous behavior is painful. I have always had a lot of sympathy for the darkly brooding Adam (played so well by the magnetic Adam Driver), not least because he's in recovery, having struggled with alcoholism since his teens. In this most recent episode, we see Adam make the conscious choice to drink again. As an addict who has been clean nearly 15 years (and who was in and out of Twelve Step programs for 11 years before that) I'm captivated by relapse. I want to watch it up close, partly because I will always be drawn to the fantasy of going back to drugs and alcohol, and partly because studying the mechanics of another's fall is a kind of prophylaxis against making a similar decision.

What haunts me about Adam isn't just that he's a fellow drunk with a compelling mix of social awkwardness and sexually-charged charisma. It's the way in which he externalizes his own self-destructiveness. Driver is a good enough actor that he's able to show us two Adams at once: the disconnected narcissist and the vulnerable boy who knows that he's capable of empathy if he can only, only get out of his own way. We never doubt why women fall in love with him, and we never doubt why they will invariably leave.

I've been Adam, both with the alcohol and with the sex. Watching him assault Natalia (I'm not gonna quarrel about words), I remembered how easy it is for the addict to use sex to disappear into one's own pain, one's own rage. And I remembered — as Girls will surely show Adam remembering — the mix of shock and fear and disgust on the face of a woman who trusted me. "Where the fuck did you go?" one ex asked me in bewilderment and anger. I'd fumble with an apology, with remorse, with soothing words that always stood in painful contrast to what had just come before. Like Adam, when I had sex high or drunk there was almost always this nearly instant post-ejaculatory regret, as if my orgasm had purged a demon and I could return to being present, empathetic, and tender. (One reason I had to be celibate in early sobriety was to learn how to connect sexually, how to stay present even when my clothes came off. That wasn't an easy lesson to learn.) Keep reading below.

During an event to celebrate her collaboration with the Golden Globe-winning comedy Girls, Deborah Lippmann couldn't stop smiling. "I almost had a heart attack when I saw it," she laughed, referring to the cameo one of her bottles made in last week's episode. In the scene, show creator Lena Dunham's character Hannah is lounging in bed, haphazardly swiping the red polish across her fingernails. "My husband actually had to put his hand over my mouth," she said. "I kept gasping because they kept cutting to it!"

The partnership was born out of Lippmann's long-standing friendship with Lena and came about after Lena asked her what it would be like if Hannah had a really cool green shade to call her own. But the nail maven's dream collaboration? Barbra Streisand. "I'm a singer, and I grew up wanting to be her," she said. "And she's known for her nails . . . her immaculate, incredible nails." Lippmann imagines that if her vision came true, they'd link up to create the perfect nude shade or the perfect red. "It's absolutely something that would scare the living daylights out of me," she says. "Sometimes I like to do things that are really scary."

Learn her Fashion Week predictions and favorite colors for Spring when you keep reading.

Want to be one of the Girls? Well, you can capture their essence with the new Deborah Lippmann nail collection inspired by the big-city quartet. The four shades are named after each of the characters on the HBO series: Hannah (hunter green), Marnie (pink), Shoshanna (violet), and Jessa (burgundy). Lena Dunham, creator of the show, has already given the line her nod of approval. "Deborah Lippmann's colors are irreverent and classy and I've always coveted them (and stolen them from my mother), so who better to embody the Girls' spirit in polish form," said Lena. "I've been wearing Hannah like it's going out of style."

This isn't Lippmann's first television collaboration. Earlier this year, she worked with True Blood to create lacquer and lipstick duos inspired by the vampire series. While the Girls-themed polishes don't release until Jan. 15, you can preorder the entire set now ($45). Stay tuned for the second-season premiere of Girls on Jan. 13. And as for Lippmann's next collaboration, only time will tell.

Those stories and more in our daily news roundup.

• Rumor has it Kate Moss was dropped as the face of David Yurman after eight years because she did a jewelry collaboration with British line Fred's. The campaign for that line was, in Yurman's estimation, "embarrassingly similar" to his own ads with Moss and factored in to her dismissal. [Stylelist]
  

• The Qatar Luxury Group is planning to open its very own clothing and accessories label, called Qela, sometime this year. The goal is for Qela to open a store in Doha, Qatar, by the end of the year and expand to international markets in 2013. [Yahoo]
  

• Emma Stone covers the September 2012 issue of Interview magazine wearing aggressive stud earrings and a bronze collar. [Design Scene]
  

• An Italian hosiery company called Zephyr is suing Victoria's Secret for $15 million, claiming that the lingerie maker is making inexpensive knockoffs of its legwear — but using cheap lace and bad construction to do it. [Elle]
  

• To clarify: Tyra Banks did not attend Harvard Business School. She attended "a non-degree-granting certificate course at Harvard called the Owner/President Management Program." [Jezebel]
  

• Jenn Rogien, costume designer behind the popular HBO show Girls, is coy when asked whether she's planning on launching her own clothing line. "Right now I'm fully immersed in costume design but I would never say never," she says. [WWD]
  

• The Cambridge Satchel Company has won a trademark infringement case against rival bag maker Zatchels, which has been ordered to pay an unspecified settlement. But Zatchels said in a statement, "The designs we have been offering over the last few months will continue to be offered and are not affected by this settlement. It is not in any way relevant to our current trading position." [Catwalk Queen]