This week, I have a new hero.
Anne Hathaway is my new go-to girl for how to handle awkward situations with
perfect poise and diplomacy.
It all started when she was
photographed getting out of a car at the Les Misérables premiere. She was
wearing a tight dress which obviously needed to be a VPL-free zone.
Unfortunately, it also had a large slit, which meant that she exposed more than
she meant to. A photograph then circulated and was added to the gleeful gallery
of accidentally exposed "lady bits" as the magazines insist on
calling them.
The first interview after the
incident was with Matt Lauer on the Today Show. He
kicked off the interview with "Seen a lot of you lately!" This seemed
an unnecessarily jaunty way to open the conversation, when she was clearly
feeling pretty violated by the event. (It makes me wonder how someone like Matt
Lauer would greet a rape victim. "So, I heard you've been getting around a
bit lately....!?") But because Anne Hathaway is such a lady, she actually
said "Sorry about that".
SHE said sorry. She apologised
for the fact that someone had taken a picture up her skirt.
He blithely carried on,
"What's the lesson learned from something like that...? Other than you
keep smiling, which you always do."
What's the lesson for Anne
Hathaway to learn? Because it was obviously her fault, right?
Her answer deserves to be printed
in the celebrity survival handbook (if such a thing exists....):
"It
was obviously an unfortunate incident," she said. "It kind of made me
sad on two accounts. One was that I was very sad that we live in an age when
someone takes a picture of another person in a vulnerable moment and rather
than delete it, and do the decent thing, sells it. And I’m sorry that we live
in a culture that commodifies sexuality of unwilling participants, which brings
us back to 'Les Mis,' that's what my character is, she is someone who is forced
to sell sex to benefit her child because she has nothing and there's no social
safety net."
Well
played! Shifting the blame back to the perpetrator and bringing the
conversation back to the film, in one breath. Bravo!
However,
this incident is one more very telling moment in the "War against
women". (Which, like, totally doesn't exist. It's a complete myth,
right?
 |
| I don't recall anyone calling Kanye a slut who should have been wearing trousers which fit him properly. |
Well,
let's take a look at the media reaction. Entertainmentwise used the headline
"Where is your underwear?" and said "Do you think Anne's vag
flash was accidental or intentional? Take a look at the graphic photo in the
gallery below." (I PROMISE you this is the exact wording.)
Gawker's headline: "Anne Hathaway
shows her vagina to distract from her hideous outfit." Wow, slut shaming,
misinformed biology and fashion advice, all in one go! (As many commenters
pointed out, nobody could see Hathaway's vagina without a speculum and a torch.
It's VULVA, people! I may seem overly pedantic, but using the wrong word is
like constantly referring to your ankles as your "knees". )
The
words "wardrobe malfunction" and "flashing" were used
frequently. No mention of "Anne Hathaway violated by perv with a
camera" or "Woman's clothing choices used to justify sexual
violation. Again."
The general consensus seems to be that it's all Anne Hathaway's fault, because she "should" have been wearing underwear. I do realise that if you don't want pictures of your undercarriage to be widely circulated, going out knickerless and then exiting a car may not be the best way to go about it. But even if the photo had clearly showed her wearing panties, it would still no doubt have created a stir.) And while she has been called upon to explain herself like a naughty girl caught flashing the boys in the next classroom, the guy who made money from selling the picture has never even been named.
Naturally,
when someone works in an industry which occasionally requires them to be naked
and / or simulate sex, and this earns them millions of dollars, all bets
are off. They're "asking for it." And money makes up for every
possible infringement on your privacy, yes?
There
is also the small point that celebrities in general, but women in particular,
are considered public property. As challengers to this view, my other heroes
are Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith – parents of Willow. (No, I don't like her music.) Jada
recently used her Facebook page to answer critics who
objected to her "letting" Willow getting a buzz cut.
"The question why I would
LET Willow cut her hair. First the LET must be challenged. This is a world
where women, girls are constantly reminded that they don't belong to
themselves; that their bodies are not their own, nor their power or self
determination. I made a promise to endow my little girl with the power to
always know that her body, spirit and her mind are HER domain. Willow cut her
hair because her beauty, her value, her worth is not measured by the length of
her hair. It's also a statement that claims that even little girls have the
RIGHT to own themselves and should not be a slave to even their mother's
deepest insecurities, hopes and desires. Even little girls should not be a
slave to the preconceived ideas of what a culture believes a little girl should
be. More to come. Another day."
Back in May, Will Smith also spoke up on the concerns of raising a daughter, telling Parade: "When you have a little girl, it's like, how can you teach her that you're in control of her body? If I teach her that I'm in charge of whether or not she can touch her hair, she's going to replace me with some other man when she goes out in the world. She has got to have command of her body. So when she goes out into the world, she's going out with a command that is hers. She is used to making those decisions herself. We try to keep giving them those decisions until they can hold the full weight of their lives."
I
love this couple. (Even if that goes against every instinct I have about the
kind of people who name all of their children after themselves.)
Jada also wrote brilliantly about
how the "War on Women" is also detrimental to men:
"How is man to recognize his
full self, his full power through the eye's of an incomplete woman? The woman
who has been stripped of Goddess recognition and diminished to a big ass and
full breast for physical comfort only. The woman who has been silenced so she
may forget her spiritual essence because her words stir too much thought
outside of the pleasure space. The woman who has been diminished to covering
all that rots inside of her with weaves and red bottom shoes.
I am sure the men, who
restructured our societies from cultures that honored woman, had no idea of the
outcome. They had no idea that eventually, even men would render themselves
empty and longing for meaning, depth and connection. There is a deep sadness
when I witness a man that can't recognize the emptiness he feels when he
objectifies himself as a bank and truly believes he can buy love with things
and status. It is painful to witness the betrayal when a woman takes him up on
that offer. He doesn't recognize that the create of a half woman has
contributed to his repressed anger and frustration of feeling he is not enough.
He then may love no woman or keep many half women as his prize. He doesn't
recognize that it's his submersion in the imbalanced warrior culture, where
violence is the means of getting respect and power, as the reason he can break
the face of the woman who bore him four children.
When woman is lost, so is man.
The truth is, woman is the window to a man's heart and a man's heart is the gateway
to his soul.
Power and control will NEVER
outweigh love."
Wise woman. AND she gives me hope that I too can look better when I'm 40 than I did at 20! Hooray for Jada!
