The Time Sarah Jessica Parker Read a Story About Her 'Witch Hands'

Earlier this week, Sarah Jessica Parker was on Watch What Happens Live, and Andy Cohen asked her about the time she was accused of having “witch hands.”

SJP got into a car and there was one of those “colorful magazines” in it. She describes the rag as being “particularly vicious” and “really brutal.” So, you know, all of them. “I flipped the page,” she goes on, “and there was an article about my hands and how ugly they are and how I should go have cosmetic surgery to fix them.” But that’s not all! “And then there was a really crude drawing of my hands as a witch’s hands.” Eesh.

“Literally, I was in the car like dizzy,” she says. “I felt like I needed to be hospitalized. But it really got me to thinking. And here’s what I thunk: I thought, ‘Really? This is how low?'”

She adds:

It was so ridiculous, so outrageous to me because, here’s the thing — I will wrap this up — I love my hands. My hands, because they’ve always felt strong. I like that they weren’t feminine, but they were like, you know, really capable… And they’re my mom’s hands. And I’ve always had super veiny hands, but this is how I was born!

Hell. Yes. Hands should be capable and strong, and if she looks at her hands and sees her mother’s hands, that is beautiful. Photoshop, youthcentric media and The Gossip Industrial Complex have done their best to brainwash us into believing there is just one way to be worthy of admiration: young, smooth, “flawless,” perfect. Which only exists ins digitally altered advertising and fashion editorials. Nitpicking and criticizing women’s features and appendages is destructive and perpetuates a cycle of negativity, by encouraging us as women (we are, after all, the consumers of tabloids) to participate What Tina Fey in Mean Girls called girl-on-girl crime.
Plus, as our own Callie Beusman pointed out when we discussed this SJP clip, “Witch hands mean you are powerful — that is the hand of someone who stirs a cauldron with force and compassion.” Exactly!It was the patriarchy that turned forceful, wise, awe-inspiring healers and lady-shamans into crones and goddesses into hags. Love your hands!