Rose McGowan is tired of people blasting Renée Zellweger for aging and for using plastic surgery to enhance her appearance, which prompted her to write a lengthy piece to defend the actress.
In late June, Owen Gleiberman, the chief film critic for Variety did a review of Zellweger’s new film Bridget Jones’s Baby, which is due out in September.
Instead of focusing on the movie and Zellweger’s acting, Mr. Gleiberman decided to focus solely on Miss Zellweger’s appearance. In the insulting post, Gleiberman wrote:
“She doesn’t look like Renée Zellweger. I thought: She doesn’t look like Bridget Jones! Oddly, that made it matter more. Celebrities, like anyone else, have the right to look however they want, but the characters they play become part of us. I suddenly felt like something had been taken away.”
In his piece, Gleiberman went to compare Zellweger to a victim of the Invasion of the Face Snatchers. He added:
“I just hope it turns out to be a movie that stars Renée Zellweger rather than a victim of ‘Invasion of the Face Snatchers.’ I hope it turns out to be a movie about a gloriously ordinary person rather than someone who looks like she no longer wants to be who she is.”
McGowan, who said that she was often harassed for her looks, bashed Gleiberman’s “white-male privilege,” and called him a bully. She wrote:
Renee Zellweger is a human being, with feelings, with a life, with love and with triumphs and struggles, just like the rest of us. How dare you use her as a punching bag in your mistaken attempt to make a mark at your new job. How dare you bully a woman who has done nothing but try to entertain people like you. Her crime, according to you, is growing older in a way you don’t approve of. Who are you to approve of anything? What you are doing is vile, damaging, stupid and cruel. It also reeks of status quo white-male privilege. So assured are you in your place in the firmament that is Hollywood, you felt it was OK to do this. And your editors at Variety felt this was more than OK to run.
The film will be released on 16 September 2016. In the last few months, Zellweger, who is 47, had social media buzzing with every public appearance that she made, because she apparently looks different.
Some are wondering, has she aged and others are asking has she done plastic surgery? Why does her look concern us anyway?