Step Back - A Rant's a-Comin

Instead of losing a push-up contest to Julie Bowen to see who gets to play Kevin James’s mean wife who he’s sick of having sex with, I’m going to skip ahead to being an amazing slut who wins Oscars

- Jenna Maroney

Today the Internet gathered together as one to clutch at their pearls and cluck their tongues because Renee Zellweger went and got herself a little plastic surgery. The concern trollers today have just done outdid themselves.

Here's something I've learned in my 45 years of walking around with a couple of x chromosomes: Men are allowed to age gracefully; women aren't.  And you can just spare me right now your #notallmen bullshit.  Your willingness to do Helen Mirren the profound favor of tapping her septuagenarian ass does not nullify a pop culture reality in which actresses go from fuckably nubile to second billing as someone's nagging wife or mother while their male counterparts end up cast opposite the next wave of fuckably nubile actresses.

Here's something else: men are allowed to be "interesting" looking; women are not.  For every Melissa McCarthy, there are a baker's dozen Steve Buscemi's or Kevin James or even Tom Fucking Hanks.  If you want to put your girl face up on a screen, no matter what else you’re bringing to the table you’d better make good and goddamn sure that the first thing you bring is your pretty face and your skinny toned ass which both better fit right into the narrowest definition of physical attractiveness.

Actresses will spend their whole career endlessly being told that their main value is to be objects of desire for straight white men because straight white men are still (dear sweet jesus for the love of all that's holy can we PLEASE get to a future where what I'm fixing to say stops being true) the normal thing to be.  Women (and gay men) are not the normal thing to be – so actors get to function beyond objects of desire.  They get to age (and be weird looking and lazy and fart) because that’s the normal thing for men to do.   Actresses, on the other hand, are endlessly compelled to first and foremost be something men want

And so an actress who has been mocked for her appearance literally her entire goddamn career gets plastic surgery to erase the source of the mocking and everyone is just so shocked SHOCKED that she did it

You don’t want actresses to hack up their faces in endless pursuit of the youth and the narrowest approximation of physical beauty?  Well, stop making fucking fun of them for not adhering to the system.  Stop talking about cougars and wondering if this one’s teeth are weird of if that one has cellulite.  Treat Renee Zellweger like we treat George Clooney. And then maybe actresses will stop shocking us by doing exactly what we’ve been telling them they should do their whole career.

And, Jesus Christ.  She looks fine.