Ashley Judd = BAMF

If you haven't heard about Ashley Judd's smack down on the media for making a frenzy about her "puffy face" then you are missing out. Check it:

If this conversation about me is going to be had, I will do my part to insist that it is a feminist one, because it has been misogynistic from the start. Who makes the fantastic leap from being sick, or gaining some weight over the winter, to a conclusion of plastic surgery? Our culture, that’s who. The insanity has to stop, because as focused on me as it appears to have been, it is about all girls and women. In fact, it’s about boys and men, too, who are equally objectified and ridiculed, according to heteronormative definitions of masculinity that deny the full and dynamic range of their personhood. It affects each and every one of us, in multiple and nefarious ways: our self-image, how we show up in our relationships and at work, our sense of our worth, value, and potential as human beings. Join in—and help change—the Conversation.

Yes, yes, yes. Y'all a mainstream celebrity just wrote the words "feminist" and "heteronormative" and "misogynistic." And people are listening (I hope.)

I've written about Ashley Judd before. While her activism isn't always perfect, I have to applaud her for throwing this smack down at the way the media continuously hates on women's looks. I mean, this is the exact reason that I write curriculum for girls that asks them to take a critical look at the messages we are being sent. All too often, those messages are screaming over and over You're not good enough. You'll never be good enough. How can little girls focus on growing up healthy and strong, finding fulfilling career paths, and positive personal relationships when someone, at every turn is cutting down their looks and the looks of other women? It becomes all too much.

So how refreshing to have someone call this shit out. Directly. Using her own voice and feminist words. Unafraid, unapologetic. A big fuck you. A much needed fuck you, in deed.