a short unnumbered post about some celebrities
for feminism fridays
Here are a few things I hope we are not going to start seeing and hearing about Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt but I worry from past experience that we probably will.
Maybe I shouldn’t even say these things, when they are not my thoughts, not things I would say. It’s funny how internalized patriarchy works; how easily it all rolls off the tongue.
Various famous ex-girlfriends will come forward and say how they never experienced or observed any abuse from him even though we know that alcoholism is progressive and abuse is a documented symptom of alcoholism
Various people speculating how annoying she must of been with what with her multiple children and unconventional views on many things including marriage and also just seriously, Angelia Jolie, didn’t she die in the 90s
She should have known better - since he cheated on his last wife with her and so what did she expect? Slut. Maybe we will not hear this in so many words. But probably we’ll hear about how once a cheater always a cheater even though this has nothing to do with cheating
Jump to Johnny Depp who I read is running around with his lawyer and though I have little interest in this, I’d like to resurface this article about domestic violence that came out in The Guardian around the time of the Amber Heard trial. While we may all like to say how relationships are complicated, and in most cases both are to blame, in THESE cases — in the case of domestic violence — there is always, always a primary aggressor. Let that sink in. Does it sound right to you? It sure did to me.
Here’s something else in my Google discovery feed which honestly I’ve been trying to disable. Kourtney Kardashian’s husband loves her real body and now so does she. I’m giving her a little bit of a hard time. I’ll actually probably go to the grave defending my generally high regard for this sister in the family. Ever since she asked whether she could give a blow job in the fertility clinic she has won a little piece of my heart.
I had a lot of fun with the Adam Levine memes, especially this one. The worst they got the better they got if you know what I mean. I am only glad for women that more women didn’t come forward with more texts to print. I’m confused about why these are called receipts though. Does this have to do with a restaurant? If so I’ll have a steak. Ha! I’ll miss this draw to Twitter before Twitter goes down in flames.
Maybe we could just keep most men out of the news for a little while. I see that I’m doing this proposal no service with this very post. I also got mad about that vague story about Melinda Gates talking about her divorce and how painful it was and how, despite this, Covid gave her the privacy to go through it. I can’t help feeling a little jealous about this: Lockdown gave me the opportunity to be suffocatingly close to my two favorite people while having only enough breath to keep one alive.
I’ll end with a three in the morning cruise of reviews of Cate Blanchett’s new movie about a successful female conductor whose cruelty and manipulation matches that of many men. I know we are now comfortable with the trope of the successful woman having to become as brutal with other women as men have traditionally done in order to get to the top. But I don’t like what this movie has to say about gay creative women who almost definitely are at the cross-section of two already discriminated against groups. It seems too easy to flip the gender switch and keep the desires the same and then ask - is this just not all about power?
I think maybe the better question to ask is this: When do people become so talented that they are beyond reproach and do women EVER become that, in the eyes of our culture?
Is her love of woman in this story what protects her from being taken down? Is her typically male sexual identity what keeps her up? What is this story saying about this fictional character in relation to the actual real life abuse of power that we drink down in our water already every day?
Maybe I should put my head in the sand and wait for this Indigo Girl documentary.