02/05/2026
Lena Dunham, writer and creator of HBO’s Girls, just released her sharply self-aware memoir, "Famesick," amid headlines, interviews, and the familiar cycle of mass consumption, rising to #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list. The suffering of the famous has become one of our preferred cultural genres, met with equal parts empathy and schadenfreude.
Yes, public figures are human beings. Their pain is real. And their lives can offer a lens through which we see—or momentarily escape—ourselves.
Dunham has spoken openly about living with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a connective tissue disorder that remains widely misunderstood—the same illness profiled in the feature documentary COMPLICATED. Her visibility offers an opportunity to better understand a condition many people still dismiss or misunderstand, especially the young people living with it outside the spotlight.
Beyond the limelight are countless people living with serious, life-altering illnesses that generate no buzz at all. They are not invited onto podcasts. They are not featured in glossy profiles. Many can barely get through the day.
Like Dunham, they live with conditions that are complex, invisible, or poorly understood. Their symptoms may not show up on tests. Their pain is dismissed as anxiety, exaggeration, or malingering. The lack of easy answers becomes a pretext to stigmatize and marginalize.
That is the world explored in COMPLICATED, which follows young people navigating debilitating conditions and systems often unequipped to handle complexity. Children are disbelieved. Parents seeking answers encounter suspicion—and sometimes accusations of medical child abuse. Families are torn apart. Their stories are invisible.
But beyond the headlines lies a larger truth. If we are going to talk about being fame-sick, we should also acknowledge those who are simply sick—and still waiting to be seen.
COMPLICATED premieres on Apple TV May 19 (https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/complicated/umc.cmc.6u10itqj2ei16o26u1ofsptda) and is available for pre-order now. It can also be streamed or purchased on DVD at ComplicatedTheMovie.com.
https://andrewabrahams.substack.com/p/theres-fame-sick-and-then-theres?r=8ttva
