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Lena Dunham thanks Glamour for not retouching her cellulite on magazine cover

“Girls” creator-star Lena Dunham has thanked Glamour magazine for not Photoshopping her and the rest of the show’s cast on its February cover, using the occasion to strike back at social-media trolls who insult women for their appearance.

“Throughout my teens I was told, in no uncertain terms, that I was [expletive] funny looking,” Dunham, 30, wrote on Instagram. “Potbelly, rabbit teeth, knock knees — I could never seem to get it right and it haunted my every move. I posed as the sassy confident one, secretly horrified and hurt by careless comments and hostility.” She added, “Let’s get something straight: I didn’t hate what I looked like — I hated the culture that was telling me to hate it.”

When her career began, she noted, “Some people celebrated my look but always through the lens of ‘isn’t she brave? Isn’t it such a bold move to show that body on TV?’ Then there were the legions of trolls who made high school teasing look like a damned joke with the violent threats they heaped on, the sickening insults that made me ache for teen girls like me who might be reading my comments.”

With the Glamour portrait — depicting Jemima Kirke, Zosia Mamet, Allison Williams and Dunham, with some cellulite visible on her left upper thigh — “this body is on the cover of a magazine that millions of women will read, without photoshop, my thigh on full imperfect display,” wrote Dunham, an eight-time Emmy-nominee for writing, directing and acting in her series. “Whether you agree with my politics, like my show or connect to what I do, it doesn’t matter — my body isn’t fair game. No one’s is, no matter their size, color, gender identity, and there’s a place for us all in popular culture to be recognized as beautiful. “Haters,” she noted, “are gonna have to get more intellectual and creative with their disses in 2017 because none of us are going to be scared into muumuus by faceless basement dwellers, or cruel blogs, or even our partners and friends.”

She concluded by thanking “the women in Hollywood (and on Instagram!) leading the way, inspiring and normalizing the female form in EVERY form, and thank you to @glamourmag for letting my cellulite do the damn thing on news stands everywhere today. Love you all.”

As of Wednesday morning, her post had gotten more than 100,000 likes in less than 24 hours.

The issue goes on sale Jan. 10.