It was the usual script: a well-known actress is photographed coming out of an airport.
Her face looks a little different so people immediately jump to the conclusion that she's "had a bit of work done".
Predictably the pictures are then beamed around the world – onto gossip websites, Hollywood-obsessed blogs and celebrity-hungry news outlets. Soon the comments sections of the websites the photographs are published on fill up with elegant prose such as: "they should stop trying to foolish everyone." Or this: "what did she do to her face?!" And this: "first off, she's not pretty any more, no matter puffy cheeks or whatever."
Then something unusual happens – the actress in question, American film and TV star Ashley Judd, below, fights back. She posts a lengthy essay on her own website about what's happened, calling it The Conversation. She argues hat it's not only wrong that she should be attacked for her looks (Judd says her face looked different as a result of a steroid allergy, not surgery) but it's wrong that any woman, whether in the public eye or not, should have her looks or figure subjected to constant scrutiny or attack. She says that this is negative behaviour, which makes no-one happy, and that as a society we need to stop doing it.
Judd writes: "The Conversation about women happens everywhere, publicly and privately. We are described and detailed, our faces and bodies analysed 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 minimised and muted."
She's got a point, of course, but few seem to be interested in what she's got to say. "She's an actress," they say. "She's in the public eye, she has to take this criticism and discussion of her looks." Some chap from Houston appears to miss the meaning of Judd's argument altogether and writes: "I prefer round-faced women anyhow so who gives a flip."
Then, if that's at all possible, it gets worse. Judd, who is married to Scottish-born IndyCar racing champion Dario Franchitti and is currently starring in American TV drama Missing, is berated for using complex language in her essay. It seems the only thing worse than an actress standing up for herself in the face of physical criticism is an actress standing up for herself using words with more than one syllable.
On Twitter – that new-found technological realm of social justice – the arguments are still playing out. Judd's supporters tweet her messages of comfort, while others still prefer to criticise her personal appearance or her choice to speak out.
One person who is on her side is her husband. As a footnote to her essay Judd thanks him. She says: "I thank my husband, Dario Franchitti, as it was his outrage that began this dialogue in our home. Over a period of days, his indignation helped me grasp the "damned if I do, damned if I don't" double bind."
.... Ashley Judd
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