Brave

by Rose McGowan

  Soon enough, Good Morning America came calling. It was a great interview. I was passionate and the questions were respectful. You generally only see a woman be intense on-screen when she’s being two-timed by a man or something. You rarely see intense women being interviewed. We women have historically been trained to be pleasant at all times. We need to stop that and be authentic; justifiable anger is a part of that. Being angry is okay; no one is going to die if we women let our anger out in healthy ways. It’s more than okay for women and girls to have emotion that is their own and not connected to what a man does or society says.

  Just as the Adam Sandler of it all was dying down, something else happened that I knew I could use as an example for change needed. In June 2016, the new head film critic of Variety magazine, Owen Gleiberman, published a nasty piece shaming the actress Renée Zellweger for, in his estimation, appearing different than she had the last time he’d seen her, implying she had “had work done,” and asking if she is still the same actress if she “no longer looks like herself.” I decided to push back at this shameful excuse for journalism by penning a public letter to its writer and breaking it down so others could see and understand that it’s not really about Renée Zellweger, it’s about all of us women:

  Owen Gleiberman, this is not a counterpoint. There is no counterpoint, there is no defense for the indefensible.

  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.

  You are an active endorser of what is tantamount to harassment and abuse of actresses and women. I speak as someone who was abused by Hollywood and by people like you in the media, but I’m a different breed, one they didn’t count on. I refuse and reject this bullshit on behalf of those who feel they can’t speak. I am someone who was forced by a studio to go on Howard Stern, where he asked me to show him my labia while my grinning male and female publicists stood to the side and did nothing to protect me. I am someone who has withstood death threats from fan boys, had fat sites devoted to me. I’ve withstood harassment on a level you can’t comprehend, Owen.

  I was so confused by the heaping tons of abuse, I actually forgot what I looked like. Which is awesome because I rose up from some serious ashes to finally have my say. Here’s some truth: 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.

  Any studio that Renee Zellweger has made money for, any co-star she’s supported or anyone who takes a percentage of her income should be doing what’s right: They should be calling this harassment out.

  As a woman who has been bullied for years by a vicious pack of lower beings, I can relate to this. Many are probably silent because they do not wish for the proverbial pen to be pointed at them; I say point away. Short of killing me, you can’t possibly do more than what was done to me in my tenure as an actress. I don’t care if you’re afraid. Be brave. Do what’s right, for once. 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. Fear of being blacklisted, fear of being branded difficult, fear of . . . fear of . . . fear of.

  Well, guess what, Owen? I am not afraid of you or anyone. It is a small, small, myopic, self-fellating town that loves to love itself. I am here to ask you all to put the mirror down and look out at society, because whether you’re aware of it or not, you too are part of society, and by retreating to the standard go-to—silence—you are hurting all of us. Look at what you’re doing and where you bear responsibility and culpability. Who are you all protecting and why? Who are you helping and why? . . .

  Owen, the last line in your article, “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” is quite the mind fuck.

  Guess what? It is time to stop fucking with women’s minds.

  Do you know what my interests are, Owen?

  My interests are bigger than pondering a stranger’s face. My interest is destroying the status quo. My interest as a card-carrying member of society is to STOP the brainwashing Hollywood and the media have for too long gotten away with. The brainwashing that you have long been a friend to and a supporter of.

  Let’s talk about Hollywood writers: Joan Didion, John Fante, Raymond Chandler, Robert Towne, Dorothy Parker, John Gregory Dunne, Preston Sturges, I.A.L. Diamond, Pauline Kael and Billy Wilder. These were writers on Hollywood.

  You, Owen Gleiberman, are not they.

  You are simply a bully on semigloss paper.

  Renée Zellweger never reached out, but I didn’t really expect her to. I didn’t really do it for her, I did it for all women who get affected by this strain of bullying and shaming, myself included. People in the industry do not go up against Variety or Hollywood Reporter, ever. They want a good review. The problem with these dailies is that it’s often the only news that Hollywood cult members consume. And it is white industry dudes talking to white industry dudes. Echo chamber. The way they talk about women is a big fat yuck. They reinforce the fucked-up ideas so many in Hollywood have. My reality is that I deal with worldwide press. Two little industry papers aren’t really of interest to me. Not until they change their ways. Also, it turns out that for years Variety was on the Monster’s side, doing his bidding.

  A few months after that Variety piece ran, I noticed billboards everywhere for a new X-Men sequel. Twentieth Century Fox was the studio releasing and marketing this film, squarely aimed at tweens and teens. Guess what the ad campaign was? Jennifer Lawrence, America’s latest sweetheart (and a respected Oscar-winning actress), being strangled by a big stone-faced “man.” The tagline was “Only the strong survive.” I had read that many women were furious about this campaign, but that Fox was turning a deaf ear. I am assuming no one in Lawrence’s camp realized how wrong this marketing campaign was. Whoa. Red flag. This campaign to most in Hollywood looked completely A-okay. Fuck that. Once again, I decided to write an open letter. I felt an obligation to be a voice for women who have suffered from violence. I wrote:

  There is a major problem when the men and women at 20th Century Fox think casual violence against women is the way to market a film. There is no context in the ad, just a woman getting strangled. The fact that no one flagged this is offensive and frankly, stupid. The geniuses behind this, and I use that term lightly, need to take a long hard look at the mirror and see how they are contributing to society. Imagine if it were a black man being strangled by a white man, or a gay male being strangled by a hetero? The outcry would be enormous. So let’s right this wrong. 20th Century Fox, since you can’t manage to put any women directors on your slate for the next two years, how about you at least replace your ad?

  I’ll close with a text my friend sent, a conversation with his daughter. . . . Her words: “Dad, why is that monster man committing violence against a woman?” This from a 9-year-old. If she can see it, why can’t Fox?

  In a statement, Fox apologized for the billboard: “In our enthusiasm to show the villainy of the character Apocalypse we didn’t immediately recognize the upsetting connotation of this image in print form. Once we realized how insensitive it was, we quickly took steps to remove those materials. We apologize for our actions and would never condone violence against women.” To Fox’s credit they took down the campaign. That said, they wouldn’t have ha
d I not spoken up. And they still haven’t hired any female directors. Once again, it’s an all-male voice and perspective being mansplained onto the world.

  I faced blowback and harassment from the “I live in Mommy’s basement with my laptop” boys who could not seem to grasp that the image is a major reinforcement of violence against women. “She’s blue! She’s not real!” Like I wrote in my protest piece, “if a 9-year-old can see it, why can’t you?” Willful stupidity gets so exhausting to deal with, sometimes I just want to scream. I know I am not alone in this, but I am out in front and therefore prey to abuse. But it is for the greater good, even for the good of those whiny basement dwellers.

  Then came election year. In October 2016, as women came forward with their experiences of being assaulted by Trump, there was the usual pushback from rape apologists, which sparked an onslaught of comments about #whywomendontreport—particularly when the assaulter is a prominent individual. I tweeted:

  And finally, I wrote this:

  I’ve figured out a rhythm of engaging with people, using Twitter as a vehicle for it, and Facebook to an extent. I have learned to use social media as a conversation starter. I look for ways to try to join worlds, to build that bridge to reframe status quo ideas and ideology. I don’t always get it right, but my intentions are pure.

  I don’t use the word fans; that’s not how I interact with the public. It’s not a fan and celebrity: we’re all humans, in it together. I consider my supporters to be cothinkers.

  Above all, I know I speak to people like me: the disenfranchised, the hurt, the lost, the lonely, the brave ones who choose to live their lives differently, who choose to see things differently, who choose to function in a society that doesn’t want them in their own way, on their own terms. These are the people in my tribe; if they are not in yours, I suggest you get to know some. Your life will be richer for it.

  What if I’m right? What if we could live a better, freer, stronger life? Stand up and do what’s right. What if people had a conversation that everyone is so afraid to have?

  That’s what the #RoseArmy is about. It’s a hashtag used on my social media by those who identify as freethinkers. We are an army of thought. We are a group of like-minded individuals who see things differently, who live differently.

  We stand for freedom of spirit and mind. We stand for dissent. We stand for equality and the right to have our lives be unencumbered by proscribed thoughts and traditional mores.

  I highly recommend independent thought and critical thinking.

  I also think daydreaming, if you want to call it that, is essential to development, just to space out on a couch and think through life and break it down, break your situation down instead of reacting. By reflecting and giving yourself time with the TV and internet and music off, just to hear the sound of your own mind, is an incredibly important thing to do. I highly advocate it. Be brave. Be brave, look inside, consider your positions on things, ask why you feel that way, go down into that rabbit hole of thought. Get meta. Get deep. And for those who do, go even deeper.

  Most of all, I recommend creativity and taking a creative approach to every aspect of life. During the time I wrote this book, I also recorded an album, Planet 9. I decided if I can’t go to another planet directly, I will just have to create my own interplanetary realm. My album is an experience that will take you on a trip through time and space. Using my own voice and words to create and elicit emotion is a powerful thing and I am very, very proud of my album. It’s ethereal and cerebral and propulsive and makes you feel.

  Lyrics to the chorus of “RM486” are “only here to paint colors on the sun, only here to see the fires run” because that is all we are here to do. We are here to be and bring magic.

  Artistic thought is something I believe exists in every single human on the planet. It just gets beaten out of too many of us instead of being valued and nurtured. Creativity is freethinking. Innovation comes from creativity. When I say I’m a proponent for thought, I mean creative thought. If you look at how society works and you look at how it can be improved, then you’re looking at something creatively.

  Art feeds thought and art is everywhere. It’s not just inside of museums, which can be intimidating and leave people unmoved. I’m in Berlin as I write this, staring out my window at a hospital. It’s a beautiful piece of accidental art. Each of the windows in this hospital is a different shade of amber and green, so it looks like a gorgeous art installation. Art is everywhere, indeed. I’ve started to even show people my photography on my @rosemcgowanarts Instagram page and am planning a photo exhibit of my works. I like to photograph people not necessarily even because of what they look like but because of how I see their architecture, the shape of their face cutting into air. I see the lines of it, and that’s what I want to capture. Art is in the angles in the corners of your room. It’s in how the light kicks off the water. It’s everywhere, you just have to look for it.

  So many businesspeople I meet wave their hands while saying adamantly, “I’m not on the creative side.” And I think, Wow, you’ve been really messed with, haven’t you? Why wouldn’t you want to be on the creative side of everything? When I hear someone say they are not creative, I immediately think, You poor thing, they got to you. At what point was your creativity stolen from you? How old were you when they homogenized your mind? Because that is what noncreative thinking is: homogenized thought. And it keeps us all so separate.

  Why on earth would any businessperson not be creative? How are you supposed to be great at your job or life? How are you supposed to be passionate about something if you don’t look at it creatively, if you don’t see and try unique ways of doing things? I’m sure you’ve had situations in your life that have called for you to be creative so as to figure it out. Boom! Guess what that means? You are a creative. You are an artist in your own life.

  I think it’s bizarre and tragic how society pushes us to say we are what we are because of the job we do. The question “What do you do?” really means what do they pay you for, as if that’s your defining characteristic. Everything else is a “hobby.” But those are also things you are and do. Just because you don’t make money at it doesn’t mean you’re not doing it. It’s as valid as going to the office, maybe more so.

  By removing labels that people put on us, and that we put on ourselves, we can have a much richer life, so much more adventurous, so much more fun.

  How do we remove these labels? I started by writing down my beliefs about myself and traced back to whom I got them from. I started to think deeply and look at the beliefs holding me down, knowing if I got to the root cause, I could work to be free. Because guess what? By sticking to old belief systems, I was most definitely not benefiting my own spirit. By writing these old beliefs down, I was free to at least think differently about myself and carve out a different future. One based on my true strengths. One based on how I truly saw myself, not how I was seen.

  CULT OF THOUGHT

  Let’s discuss entertainment as male propaganda, shall we? Questions: Can you imagine if man’s history was only depicted, shown, and viewed through a woman’s perspective? Do you think there has ever been a film where only women were hired to tell a “man’s story”? The answers are no. Rarely is this commented on or spoken of, because once again, we are all too used to table scraps as women. Women in the world have been interpreted and sold back to us in a dangerous way. We are mirrored back to ourselves almost exclusively through a man’s idea of what we are; it is gender appropriation in the extreme. Fact: the Director’s Guild of America, the union representing working directors in Hollywood, is 96 percent male and it has been since 1946. That means for your entire lives you have been fed a steady diet of largely male “thought” and bias about what women are and can be. Why is 96 percent of our information, entertainment, and philosophy coming from men? It’s because of systemic misogyny. It’s because of zero government oversight. Film and television is a white male’s playground and through their narrow vision co
mes the manipulated mirror you’re largely forced to see yourself in. If that’s not male washing, I don’t know what it is. In 2016 only 23 percent of speaking roles on-screen were women, the majority in horror films, and we all know how they get treated. If you don’t think this is a big deal, you are wrong; it is a very big deal. This is how we form our notions about ourselves and others, and it poisons us in ways we are not always cognizant of. As of now there is no answer for this injustice; all I can tell you is to watch what you consume. Start noticing the stereotypes and the clichés. Start rejecting them. Start complaining. Tweet at the directors, studios, whatever company is behind them. But most of all, demand more. Your mind is at stake.

  A not so strange thing happened while I was writing the end of my book. A producer and writer of a very famous cable show that grossly used women as objects and props was texting me things that were wildly inappropriate. I had never engaged with him in this way. This man who sold his perspective of female ownership to millions of viewers for years. The exchange was filled with him being manipulative, pushy, and ultimately, sexually inappropriate. I rolled my eyes at this creep, but then I thought about his messages a little deeper. I realized that if he felt okay saying this stuff to me (!), me who’s obviously someone who so often calls bullshit on offensive and stereotypical bullshit male behavior, well, what is he saying and doing to other women? And even worse, he continues to spread his disregard for women to a global audience, by having them act out what he thinks women are. And so many of you have just eaten it up thinking it’s harmless, mindless entertainment. But it’s not. Everything you consume counts. It forms you, it matters. Know what you are watching so you can reject it. If Hollywood can’t change, it deserves to fail.