Just weeks after Jennifer Aniston used the publication to condemn tabloid news, Renée Zellweger, Bridget Jones herself, published her own piece in the Huffington Post Friday in which she chastised the same media outlets for their comments about her face and ongoing mistreatment of celebrities—women, specifically.
In the post, entitled “We Can Do Better,” Zellweger calls the 2014 (and subsequent) coverage of her face “just one more story in the massive smut pile generated every day by the tabloid press,” and says she felt the need to “make some claim on the truths of my life...because witnessing the transmutation of tabloid fodder from speculation to truth [was] deeply troubling.”
She continues:
The ‘eye surgery’ tabloid story itself did not matter, but it became the catalyst for my inclusion in subsequent legitimate news stories about self-acceptance and women succumbing to social pressure to look and age a certain way. In my opinion, that tabloid speculations become the subject of mainstream news reporting does matter.
Not that it’s anyone’s business, but I did not make a decision to alter my face and have surgery on my eyes. This fact is of no true import to anyone at all, but that the possibility alone was discussed among respected journalists and became a public conversation is a disconcerting illustration of news/entertainment confusion and society’s fixation on physicality.
“It’s no secret a woman’s worth has historically been measured by her appearance,” she writes before condemning tabloid gossip as “negative conversation” that perpetuates “the double standard used to diminish” the contributions of women.
The resulting message is problematic for younger generations and impressionable minds, and undoubtably triggers myriad subsequent issues regarding conformity, prejudice, equality, self acceptance, bullying and health.
Zellweger ends the piece by calling on us all to “talk more about our many true societal challenges,” i.e. ones that don’t involve the faces of celebrities. You can read the entire thing here.