Ashley Judd
sets fire to some pixels in her blast at media speculation about her looks:
The Conversation about women’s bodies exists largely outside of us, while it is also directed at (and marketed to) us, and used to define and control us. The Conversation about women happens everywhere, publicly and privately. We are described and detailed, our faces and bodies analyzed and picked apart, our worth ascertained and ascribed based on the reduction of personhood to simple physical objectification. Our voices, our personhood, our potential, and our accomplishments are regularly minimized and muted. [...]
Patriarchy makes Ashley Judd sick
As an actor and woman who, at times, avails herself of the media, I am painfully aware of the conversation about women’s bodies, and it frequently migrates to my own body. I know this, even though my personal practice is to ignore what is written about me. [...]
However, the recent speculation and accusations in March feel different, and my colleagues and friends encouraged me to know what was being said. Consequently, I choose to address it because the conversation was pointedly nasty, gendered, and misogynistic and embodies what all girls and women in our culture, to a greater or lesser degree, endure every day, in ways both outrageous and subtle. The assault on our body image, the hypersexualization of girls and women and subsequent degradation of our sexuality as we walk through the decades, and the general incessant objectification is what this conversation allegedly about my face is really about. [...]
That women are joining in the ongoing disassembling of my appearance is salient. Patriarchy is not men. Patriarchy is a system in which both women and men participate. [...]
I ask especially how we can leverage strong female-to-female alliances to confront and change that there is no winning here as women. It doesn’t actually matter if we are aging naturally, or resorting to surgical assistance. We experience brutal criticism. The dialogue is constructed so that our bodies are a source of speculation, ridicule, and invalidation, as if they belong to others—and in my case, to the actual public. (I am also aware that inevitably some will comment that because I am a creative person, I have abdicated my right to a distinction between my public and private selves, an additional, albeit related, track of highly distorted thinking that will have to be addressed at another time).
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2003:
My long-time readers know that I am a baseball fanatic. I attend at least 40 major league baseball games a season, diligently follow the Cubs and the A's, play fantasy baseball, and umpire little league games.
I never realized that the game of baseball was a political entity. In my mind, it always transcended partisanship, or religion, or race or just about any of the artificial barriers that divide us as a people. I could sit in the Wrigley Field bleachers or the Oakland Coliseum with Republicans and Satanists and anything else, but as long as you rooted for my team, it didn't matter what you did or how you looked or who you voted for.
But I guess I was wrong. The Hall of Fame, led by Reaganite Dale Petroskey, has cancelled festivities honoring the 15th anniversary of seminal baseball flick Bull Durham. The reason? Susan Sarandon, a star in the movie, is now a strident opponent of our war against Iraq.
This is galling, to say the least. And the letter cancelling the event was beyond the pale:
"In a free country such as ours, every American has the right to his or her own opinions, and to express them. Public figures, such as you, have platforms much larger than the average American's, which provides you an extraordinary opportunity to have your views heard -- and an equally large obligation to act and speak responsibly," Petroskey wrote.
"We believe your very public criticism of President Bush at this important -- and sensitive -- time in our nation's history helps undermine the U.S. position, which ultimately could put our troops in even more danger. As an institution, we stand behind our President and our troops in this conflict.
So now the Baseball Hall of Fame is determining what sort of speech is "responsible". Precious.
Tweet of the Day:
Ironically, while Zimmerman was avoiding his lawyers today, he did find time to update his website. #Trayvon
http://t.co/...
— @keithboykin via web
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