Rose McGowan fires back at a critic who wrote about Renée Zellweger’s looks: ‘reeks of status quo white-male privilege’
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Rose McGowan is coming to Renee Zellweger’s defense after a critic wrote an entire column about the actress’ look.
Variety’s chief film critic Owen Gleiberman wrote an entire piece about Renée Zellweger’s looks after the premiere of the “Bridget Jones’s Baby” trailer, so Rose McGowan has now written an entire column about Gleiberman’s attack.
The “Charmed” and “Grindhouse” actress wrote a guest column for The Hollywood Reporter, saying Gleiberman’s critique is “indefensible” and “vile, damaging, stupid, and cruel.”
“It also reeks of status quo white-male privilege,” she wrote in the column. “You are an active endorser of what is tantamount to harassment and abuse of actresses and women. … Men like you and the women who sit idly by and say nothing should know that aiding and abetting is a moral crime, and if it were punished in Hollywood, most of you would be in some form of jail.”
McGowan said she speaks from personal experience of harassment, recounting a time when her publicists did nothing while Howard Stern asked her to show him her labia on his radio show.
Simply put, she writes that she is tired of being fearful.
“I loathe fear. And this town is built on fear. Fear was instilled in me by the men and women of this town, just as I’m sure it was instilled in Ms. Zellweger,” she wrote. “Fear of being blacklisted, fear of being branded difficult, fear of … fear of … fear of.”
To illustrate her point that too much focus is put on women’s — not men’s — appearance, she replaced Zellweger’s name in Gleiberman’s column with the names of some A-list male actors: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Cruise, Matt Damon, Ryan Reynolds, and more.
“He worked with costars who reinforced his supernova status, through their fame or their beauty or both. ROB LOWE, with pillowy cheeks and quizzically pursed lips and that singular squint, was beautiful, but not in the way that a BRAD PITT or GEORGE CLOONEY was.“
Zellweger has been on a self-imposed break from acting since 2010 but will return to the big screen when “Bridget Jones’s Baby” opens on September 16. Zellweger has said that she managed to keep herself away from previous reports about her appearance, so it’s likely she’ll stay away from the attention this time as well.
Read Rose McGowan’s full column.
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