Afternoon!
I'm typing this blog entry in my back garden at the moment. The birds are chirping in the trees, the sun is shining and a gentle breeze caresses my hot skin oft and anon. It's truly idyllic here. Feels like I'm on holiday.
So everybody is talking about that Dustin Hoffman video. The one where he gets teary eyed about the way he has automatically avoided unattractive women in the past. He apparently had a revelation about his attitude towards women while filming the movie Tootsie in which he was made over to look like a woman.
But while I think it's great that he is highlighting just how much society focuses on a certain standard of female beauty, I couldn't help but feel rather unmoved by the interview.
I particularly had a difficulty with him saying that he had been "brainwashed" by society. While I admit that society does have a huge role to play in how we think about beauty and what women should look like, I felt that word was somewhat shifting the blame.
He mentions that he would never have even talked to a woman that was not considered conventionally attractive, which I find just unfathomable.
That seems like more of a personal distortion to me, rather than something society has fostered in him.
Women are subjected to the same barrage of images of perfectly toned, and hairless men and yet I don't feel dismissive of men that don't fit that image. I have met, talked to and loved men who do not fit that mold at all, and yet to me they were wildly attractive.
I'm glad that Dustin Hoffman has come to that personal revelation, and I think it must take courage to admit what he has, but I'm not sure it's something that women should be championing all over social media.
Seems to me that they are celebrating a battle which should not have had to be won in the first place.
Victory for Dustin Hoffman personally? Absolutely!
But surely as women, we need more!
Rather than celebrating not being judged and treated according to our level of beauty, we should expect not to be.
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