Gwyneth Paltrow is done with getting compared to other women in Hollywood who run successful companies. In an interview with TIME Magazine, Paltrow was asked if she looked at the lifestyle brands created by several other actresses. Her brilliant response? “I wonder if George Clooney would be asked about Puff Daddy’s ancillary liquor line.”
She brings up a good point: Why does the media continue to pit women against each other if they are doing anything even slightly similar? And why don’t men get the same treatment?
Paltrow went on to say, “People are grasping at straws to tie us together and I get it, because it makes a good story, but I’m slightly offended by this sort of generalization that happens with myself and Jessica and Reese and Blake. Yes, there are similarities. But there aren’t stories in TIME written saying, “Wow, look at Arnold Schwarzenegger, who did x, y, and z!” These woman all have lifestyle brands, they are all actresses, but they aren’t the same people. There is no need to compare them.
“I think we’re in a funny time for women. We are more and more the breadwinners in families across America or contributing equally; there’s a shift happening sociologically and psychologically. People are wrestling with this new archetype of being a woman with a brain who’s also sexual and trying to do more than one thing at a time” said Paltrow. She is right. A 2013 study from the Pew Research Center shows that women are the primary or sole source of income for 40% of households with children under the age of 18. However as women change, their image doesn’t. Feminism may be having a hot moment now, but many still see women as lesser than. Until the views about women change, Paltrow’s advice is to “just keep going in hopes the story becomes not people pitting women against each other, which is not founded in truth. There’s no competition. None of us think we’re in each other’s space. I don’t know how you do it! You just get to f—ing work!”
Read the rest of the interview here or find it in TIME Magazine on stands now.
Image courtesy of Official Gwyneth Paltrow Facebook
