14 DAY TRIAL // Almost one month ago, reports started to make the rounds online that Ashley Judd had done extensive work on her face, after she appeared on a television interview looking very puffy and slightly immobile. She's now responding to all those claims.
As we also noted at the time, countless media outlets were saying that Judd must have “certainly” had something done because she looked so different than just months before.
The next day, her rep issued a statement to say Ashley did not go under the knife, but was on medication which was giving her the so-called “moon face.”
In a lengthy essay on The Daily Beast, Ashley laments the state of our culture and the fact that it's women who initiate and engage in a conversation of this type.
She also says that having the conversation in the first place is proof of the misogynistic world we live in, and how it tells women from all over (not just herself) that they must abide by the rules and willingly have themselves subjected to talk based on appearances only.
Judd underlines that the only reason she's speaking out is because she doesn't want other girls and women to be objectified as she was when her puffy face was brought into question – of which she says was due to medication and some weight gain.
“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. It privileges, inter alia, the interests of boys and men over the bodily integrity, autonomy, and dignity of girls and women,” the actress writes.
“It is subtle, insidious, and never more dangerous than when women passionately deny that they themselves are engaging in it. This abnormal obsession with women’s faces and bodies has become so normal that we (I include myself at times – I absolutely fall for it still) have internalized patriarchy almost seamlessly,” Judd says.
Her own, recent experience is a sign of our times: women can't possibly win no matter what they do, but especially if they activate in the public sphere.
“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,” Ashley argues.
“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,” she says.
The only way to ensure winning is possible is by making sure that this type of “abuse” never takes place again, Judd concludes. It's women who must take the first step for that to happen.
The star's essay is in full here.