In case you don’t know to what Ms. Judd is referring, let me fill you in. Recently, there has been a big brouhaha over – wait for it – her face. Yes, her face, and what some folks have decided was puffy. They came up with all kinds of reasons as to WHY this was the case. I’ll save you the suspense – they think it was from plastic surgery. (Photo Credit: entertainment.blogs.foxnews.com)

According to Ms. Judd’s piece in The Daily Beast, she does not usually pay attention to this kind of thing at all, but was encouraged to do so by those who are close to her. So, Ms. Judd has weighed in on this “crucial” issue, and oh, my, did she ever spell it out:

The Conversation about women’s bodies exists largely outside of us, while it is also directed at (and marketed to) us, and used to define and control us. The Conversation about women happens everywhere, publicly and privately. 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.

[...]However, the recent speculation and accusations in March feel different, and my colleagues and friends encouraged me to know what was being said. Consequently, I choose to address it because the conversation was pointedly nasty, gendered, and misogynistic and embodies what all girls and women in our culture, to a greater or lesser degree, endure every day, in ways both outrageous and subtle. The assault on our body image, the hypersexualization of girls and women and subsequent degradation of our sexuality as we walk through the decades, and the general incessant objectification is what this conversation allegedly about my face is really about.

Indeed. This “hypersexualization” is evident almost every day when we see little girls wearing shorts with slogans across the back of them, or being made up to look older than they are. It was just such actions that led the humorist, Celia Rivenbark, to pen her essay (and book title), “Stop Dressing Your Six Year Old Like A Skank.” It is pervasive, and insidious, this assault on our image. And even though we know it, are aware of it, have written about it, have made documentaries about it (like, “Killing Us Softly” in 1979, and its sequels), it continues. Continue reading →