Actress, activist, and all-around badass Ashley Judd has fired back at the media for critiquing her appearance. Tabloids (and even legit news sources) have been crowing that Judd’s face looks puffy and generally messed up, claiming that it must be due to her having pumped her face full of fillers. With her response, Judd’s established herself as a force to be reckoned with. With eloquence, intelligence, and seeming effortlessness, she slammed those who have picked apart her looks and the system that allows this backbiting to happen.
“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. We are unable at times to identify ourselves as our own denigrating abusers, or as abusing other girls and women.”
Since Judd wasn’t given the chance to comment on the rumors before she was picked apart on the interwebs, she created her own opportunity to do so, and then some. Luckily, Ashley’s allegedly “puffy” face doesn’t impede the work she’s done as a global ambassador for HIV education and prevention, as an activist against gender inequality and poverty, and as an advocate for girls in the developing world and environmental groups (to name JUST A FEW of her pursuits). Read the rest of Judd’s essay here, and prepared to be wowed.
