The Conversation

          I had a couple of weeks back signed myself up to the Miss Representation website, hoping to keep informed on the progress of the film. Just a couple of days ago, I received an email with some great updates and also a link to an article I really enjoyed. The article was written by actress Ashley Judd and posted on TheDailyBeast.com. In it, Judd bravely confronts allegations of plastic surgery. Jean Kilbourne writes, “Desperate to conform to an ideal and impossible standard, many women go to great lengths to manipulate and change their faces and bodies” (Kilbourne, 122). This is certainly true and Judd is not deprecating those who undergo plastic surgery. Rather, she is upset that that is the instant conclusion the media arrives at when they see a slight change on her face. On the surface, it seems an artificial endeavor; so what if people are talking crap about her “puffy face, ” she’s famous and should be used to it by no. But Judd makes some extremely important points, “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.”

            She is not angry or offended by what has been said about her, but fed up with how prevalent this kind of objectification is and how it affects young girls and women. But she goes beyond lamenting the negative effect this objectification has on women and demonstrates that it is equally harmful for men, “Patriarchy is not men. Patriarchy is a system in which both women and men participate. It privileges … the interests of boys and men over the bodily integrity, autonomy, and dignity of girls and women” and towards the end of the article makes the bold claim: “The insanity has to stop, because as focused on me as it appears to have been, it is about all girls and women. In fact, it’s about boys and men, too, who are equally objectified and ridiculed, according to heteronormative definitions of masculinity that deny the full and dynamic range of their personhood.” In her essay, The Will to Change, Bell Hooks points out one of the biggest challenges in the struggle against the deep-seated patriarchy we face: “To this day I hear individual feminists women express their concern for the plight of men within patriarchy, even as they share that they are unwilling to give their energy to help educate and change men”

(Hooks, 110). Judd seems to at least start a conversation where she does not point fingers as to who is to blame for patriarchy, and brings to light the fact that both men and women are equally part of both the problem and must take part in the solution. The challenge is getting the “other” to realize where they stand and where they could be instead.

            In the bigger picture, what is important is the fact that a bright woman like Judd has taken a stance against the crap that is being spoken about her, and fought back not only for herself, but for all others privately and publicly affected in similar ways. This kind of action could have easily gone another way, with Judd simply denying having undergone any plastic surgeries and defending herself by providing any explanation for her “puffy face.” But her choice to write this article at all doesn’t stem from the desire to keep her name clean, but from a frustration with the continued objectification of women.

            Judd does address the fact that as a public figure, her private life is inherently public and her image open for admiration or ridicule. But as I take it, again, she is not defending herself but how this kind of criticism affects the spectators of such harsh criticism, how it perpetuates negative body images among women, and encourages women to attack and condemn each other. If more women public figures would speak up against this kind of objectification, not for themselves but as an evil in itself, there will at least be conversations about this problem. And simply having a conversation is a great place to start.