Renée Zellweger Writes Scathing Open Letter About Tabloid Culture
[Photo: Getty]
A month after Jennifer Aniston publicly shamed the press for its attitudes towards women, Renée Zellweger has taken down tabloid media in an open letter of her own.
Addressing its effect on self esteem and “struggles for [gender] equality”, Zellweger wrote about negative media culture in The Huffington Post a few days ago.
In a post titled ‘We Can Do Better’, she describes how “In October 2014, a tabloid newspaper article reported that I’d likely had surgery to alter my eyes”:
[Photo: Getty]
“It didn’t matter; just one more story in the massive smut pile generated every day by the tabloid press and fuelled by exploitative headlines and folks who practice cowardly cruelty from their anonymous internet pulpits.”
She goes on to describe how tabloid journalism “profits from the chaos and scandal it conjures and injects into people’s lives” and how “witnessing the transmutation of tabloid fodder from speculation to truth is deeply troubling”.
She then tackles objectification head on:
“It’s no secret a woman’s worth has historically been measured by her appearance.
[Photo: Getty]
“Ugly shoes, ugly feet, ugly smile, ugly hands, ugly dress, ugly laugh; headline material which emphasizes the implied variables meant to determine a person’s worth, and serve as parameters around a very narrow suggested margin within which every one of us must exist in order to be considered socially acceptable and professionally valuable, and to avoid painful ridicule.”
Importantly, as well as pointing out current society’s flaws, Zellweger also encourages us to imagine a different future.
Jennifer Aniston has also criticised tabloids’ treatment of women [Photo: Getty]
“Maybe we could talk more about why we seem to collectively share an appetite for witnessing people diminished and humiliated with attacks on appearance and character and how it impacts younger generations and struggles for equality, and about how legitimate news media have become vulnerable to news/entertainment ambiguity, which dangerously paves the way for worse fictions to flood the public consciousness to much greater consequence.
“Maybe we could talk more about our many true societal challenges and how we can do better.”
What do you think of Zellweger’s essay? Tweet us at @YahooStyleUK.
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