 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. I do not, for example, read interviews I do with news outlets. But Judd skips that equivocating bullshit entirely and engages the broader issue with a level of sensitivity and personal transparency that we, the public, definitely don't deserve: 
 
 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. More importantly, Judd points out that it's women who drive a lot of this kind of sniping: 
 
 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. It is subtle, insidious, and never more dangerous than when women passionately deny that they themselves are engaging in it. Like it or not, Hollywood actresses are aspirational figures -- They are thinner than normal, less wrinkly than normal, more glamorous than normal, and they are paid more than normal to look that way. We are unable at times to identify ourselves as our own denigrating abusers, or as abusing other girls and women. After explaining that her puffy face was a result of steroid treatment for a sinus infection and her larger frame the result of "a lazy six months of not exercising," Judd has this to say: 
 
 I hope the sharing of my thoughts can generate a new conversation: Why was a puffy face cause for such a conversation in the first place? How, and why, did people participate? If not in the conversation about me, in parallel ones about women in your sphere? What is the gloating about? What is the condemnation about? What is the self-righteous alleged “all knowing” stance of the media about? I fully support a woman's "right to be simply as we are, at any given moment," as Ashley puts it, but doesn't the nature of her profession mean that she has knowingly traded that right in exchange for fame and fortune? How can we as individuals in our private lives make adjustments that support us in shedding unconscious actions, internalized beliefs, and fears about our worthiness, that perpetuate such meanness? What can we do as families, as groups of friends? Is what girls and women can do different from what boys and men can do? What does this have to do with how women are treated in the workplace?
– Ashley Judd made a TV appearance last month looking larger than normal and with a puffier face, and the ensuing criticism of her appearance led her to write a scathing but eloquent response in the Daily Beast. Judd was on steroids due to an illness (leading some to assume her puffy face was the result of having had work done) and had gained a little weight over the winter (leading some to joke that her husband must be looking for a new woman). "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," Judd writes. Particularly worrisome is the fact that women themselves jumped right into the objectification. "Patriarchy," she writes, "is not men. Patriarchy is a system in which both women and men participate." Her piece (worth a read in full here) garnered quite a reaction. Samples from both sides: "Like it or not, Hollywood actresses are ... thinner than normal, less wrinkly than normal, and they are paid more than normal to look that way," writes Lindsay Ferrier on The Stir. "Any woman who chooses to be a movie star also chooses to take the media knocks that come with the job." Full piece here. Judd is "a smart, bold, kickass feminist," declares Lindy West on Jezebel, noting that the older she gets, the more she rejects "the notion that when you profit from being a public figure you become public property." As for West, she's done with covering "the flavor-of-the-week's gaping coke nostril. ... My feminism doesn't end where your celebrity begins." Full piece here.