These celebrity broads need to lighten up.
First, there’s Academy Award-winning actress Dame Helen Mirren.
That’s right, I called her an actress. Clutch your pearls all you want. I don’t care. Many actresses now think that if they’re called actors, people will take them more serious, like the title of “actress” is less prestigious than that of an “actor.” To me, actresses who prefer to be called actors are telling the world that they want to be regarded as transsexuals, and I cannot take that as serious.
Anyway, the UK’s Daily Mail interviewed Dame Mirren in its latest edition of You Magazine, which it published the other day. In the interview that was laden with glowing terms like “radiant,” “breathtakingly striking,” and “epitome of ‘national treasure’,” Dame Helen discussed…oh, who gives a horsepuck about most of what she said. The one part of the interview that has gotten notice on both sides of the pond was this:
‘At 70 years old, if I could give my younger self one piece of advice, it would be to use the words “f*** off” much more frequently. [Classy Dame.—CO2.]
‘It annoys me when I see men with an arm slung round their girlfriend’s shoulders. It’s like ownership. Of course, when you’re young, you want the guy to take your hand and look after you.
‘But when I see girls being leaned on, I want to say, “Tell him to get his damned arm off your shoulder.”’
This tension between independence and subordination is, she says, characteristic of our age.
‘Women are still toddlers in this modern world, trying to find their position in the age of sexual liberation, birth control, education and financial independence.
‘We’re still finding our path. And yes, we’re making a lot of mistakes along the way.’
I’ll say. Women like Dame Mirren are making mistakes, insinuating that a man shouldn’t put his arm over his girlfriend’s shoulders because it’s like some subtle form of slavery.
I know there are a lot of men and women who aren’t so touchy-feely. But some are. Some women want a man who is protective of his mate. It’s instinctive. Basic. If the woman isn’t bothered by it, why should Dame Helen be bothered by it? She talks about sexual liberation, which is being free of control. She sounds like she wants to control how two consenting adults show their affection for one another.
What if the man is tall, or the woman is short? The male in a couple with a height mismatch can’t exactly get his arm around his girlfriend’s waist. The visual symbolism of a man being “over” a woman with his arm over her shoulders is only a problem in the minds of individuals like Dame Mirren who are looking for a reason to gripe.
If I were to have a girlfriend who tells me that putting my arm over her shoulders is offensive to her, I’d immediately seek the nearest way out of the room, the building, and likely the entire conjugation…although I hope I would pick up on her anti-patriarchal psychosis well before the relationship would get to the point where I’d have the urge to use my arm to prop her head from lolling backward.
For the sake of inoffensiveness, everyone should probably stop calling Mirren a dame since that’s an informal word here in the states, and all informal references to the ladies are doubleplus ungodly oppressive.
So that’s one Hollywood actress to recently utter something nonsensical.
Another actress to say what no one else was thinking is Kim Cattrall, one of the stars from the “Sex and the City” franchise. Via the Daily Mail again:
Miss Cattrall, 59, believes that although she is not a biological mother, she is still a parent because of the role she plays in the lives of young actors, actresses and her nieces and nephews.
Speaking as the guest editor on BBC Radio 4’s Women’s Hour, in an episode that will air today [Mon], she said: ‘I am not a biological parent, but I am a parent. I have young actors and actresses that I mentor, I have nieces and nephews that I am very close to.
‘There is a way to become a mother in this day and age which doesn’t include your name on the child’s birth certificate. You can express that maternal side, very clearly, very strongly. It feels very satisfying.’
She said that she ‘didn’t change nappies’ but she did help her niece though medical school and sat down with her nephew when he was going through ‘a very tough time’ to join the army.
The actress added: ‘And those are very motherly things to do, very nurturing things to do. So I feel I am a mother of sorts.’
I wonder what the moms of Cattrall’s protegees, nieces, and nephews would say to her belief that she’s their kids’ moms.
Oh sure, Kim treats them so well, I was thinking of letting her adopt my kids…
Um. The word “mother,” like “rights” or “extremist” or “access,” has a specific definition. I don’t know if she was experiencing a moment of whimsy or if she was being serious.
Hate to break it to you, Kim, but you have no offspring. Therefore, you are no one’s mother.
That wasn’t the silliest thing she had to say, however.
The actress told the show how she dislikes the term ‘childless’.
She said: ‘It’s the ‘less’ that is offensive – childless – it sounds like you’re less because you haven’t had a child.
‘I think for a lot of women from my generation it wasn’t a conscious choice. It was a feeling of, ‘Well, I’m on this road and things are going really well, I’m really happy, I’ll do it next year, I’ll do it two years, I’ll do it in five years’.
‘And then suddenly you’re in your early 40s and you think, ‘Maybe now?’ And you go to your doctor and she says, ‘Yes we can do this but you have to start to become a bit of a science experiment here because we have to find out how you can stay pregnant’.
‘And I just thought, ‘I don’t know if I want it that much’.’
Cattrall put her career ahead of finding a mate and having children. Now that she’s too old to bear children, she’s projecting her bitterness for being childless onto others because they use an accurate word to describe her situation. Maybe if she looked inward, she would see that the gratification she sought in her younger years distracted her from becoming what she now wishes she could have been–a parent. Otherwise, why would she be offended by a dang suffix?
Someone should tell her about this little thing people call “adoption.” It might cure the Hollywood actress of her feelings of…lessness.
It sure doesn’t take much to offend the mindless, cheerless women wopersons and their pointlessly countless (countlessly pointless?) reasons for being offended.
I swear these hapless, hopeless, thoughtless dames just open their mouthholes to hear themselves speak, heedless to the words that spew out of them. Regardless, I’m inclined to feel pitiless and remorseless toward such humorless celebrities who feel powerless when they encounter suffixes and dudes with arms. Neither of these women’s expectations will leave me sleepless.
(H/t for the Helen Mirren interview: VeryAnnoyedCon.)
