Brave

by Rose McGowan

  I’m so happy to push back at the machine that for so long has affected our minds with its narrow perspective. Because when you push back at Hollywood, you are pushing back at the stereotypes the industry peddles. And here’s the thing—cinema is dying. Do you know why men in Hollywood have run out of ideas? They’ve run out of ideas because they’ve fucked themselves. They’ve marginalized themselves by clinging to misogynistic ways and outdated ideas. And their steadfast dedication to keeping white male power in place is costing them billions, that’s how entrenched they are in their rightness. They aren’t even good businessmen, but they’ve got a hold of our minds.

  A centuries-long smear campaign against women has gone on for far too long. I call time. Tell me the truth, does the woman on-screen remind you of your mom or your sister or your aunt, or the little girl down the street? Not just in looks; I mean in action and thought. Women have interests, hopes, dreams, aspirations. Beyond being fuckable.

  The fact that the vast majority of men in Hollywood see women in such an antiquated way has boxed us in societally. I would know, I was the one helping to do it to you. So many of my interviews with their insulting, condescending questions from the male-run media were about shaming me for being a woman who didn’t fit into their narrow mold. The interview equivalent of saying a girl deserves to get raped if she wears a short skirt. Don’t make your Madonna/Whore complex mine or our issue. Grow up. Think deeper.

  In my acting career, I tried very hard to play strong roles that made an impact. No interviewer ever asked me about my craft, my methods—they don’t often ask actresses that, especially not the ones who have to wear short skirts. Too many interviewers, male and female, approach female subjects with a consistent agenda: to marginalize, sexualize, ridicule. I’ve been told my whole career I’m too smart “for an actress.” No, I’m smart, period. They did that to box me in and keep me in line. We have to recognize this gaslighting and push back.

  Hollywood maintains this fiction that they’re selling tickets to a young male audience. This is to justify the unending onslaught of objectified females. But newsflash, these young men are downloading your product illegally. They’re not buying tickets. It’s the women and the girls that Hollywood should be courting. That’s who drives ticket sales; it’s been proven over and over statistically. Women have been excluded from being directors, writers, cinematographers, tech executives, engineers, scientists, philosophers, bankers, and artists; we need to take whatever it is we want to be. Society will continue to be messed up until we start telling different stories and thinking deeper about our responsibility to the public. People go in droves when they see themselves on-screen. And guess what? We are not seeing ourselves and we are tired of it.

  There’s something particularly appalling in how media and Hollywood have gotten into lockstep with each other, operating hand in hand to dumb down the populace. If you don’t read—42 percent of US college graduates never read another book in their life after they graduate—entertainment and online media are where your thoughts are being formed. Those media products don’t provide you with a mirror of your life, do they? Do you see yourself on that screen? Probably not, so why are these men in charge of the mirror in your mind? When people finally understand where 99 percent of their media is coming from, I hope they’ll switch off or at least be aware of what they are seeing, choose wisely, and start harassing these studios until they fix their ways. Twentieth Century Fox studios has no female director on the slate for the next three years. That means it’s almost all white male content this multicolored world is getting. No wonder it sucks.

  Earlier in this book, I told you about the classic film star Frances Farmer, the one who had her brain shocked. I was using an extreme example. But guess what? Even more tragic is that the same fate is befalling women today, as Hollywood continues to strip girls of their dignity. And if they’re doing it here, they’re doing it to you, too. I was recently in Miami and I met a beautiful young actress with haunted eyes, her hair professionally blown out with three curls at the ends, the de facto L A hairstyle that they stick on every young woman. She told me that when she was seventeen, a few years earlier, she was guest starring on a series with an actor who was known for his sex addiction. They called her mother to ask permission to show her butt in a shot, and the mother gave permission, but when the girl got to the set, they said actually, for this scene you’ll be walking through the crowd, naked. Her mother wasn’t on the set. The young woman didn’t know what to do, so she did the scene. She walked naked through the crowd of extras ogling her and at the end of it, the male star got on his knees and went down on her, on camera. A seventeen-year-old girl. It was filmed. It was aired. And it was consumed by the public, maybe even you.

  Everybody on that set knew the guy was a sex addict. The producers, the executives, the distribution agents. Everybody knows, but nobody does anything. These are weak fucking humans. I despise them. I despise them for still shrugging and reasoning: it’s just a girl.

  I despise Bill Cosby for being one of America’s most prolific sexual predators. Judging by the number of women who came forward, you can only imagine how many didn’t come forward because they either died or couldn’t bring themselves to go through that media hell, being written about and talked about by willfully ignorant men (and some ignoramus women) who have no idea what it’s like to be a victim. There’s a whole machine set up behind the grotesque appetites of a star like that: men who scout for the girls, men who bring the girls in, men who hush the girls up afterward. That makes it a supply chain. It was a whole cottage industry. It’s not just one person going to a bar and drugging somebody. It’s systematic and it’s not an accident. Agents, managers, entertainment lawyers, assistants, executives, unions . . . all had a hand.

  Sometimes we don’t even know we’ve been raped. We chalk it up to being a “sexual experience” because we don’t know better. When I was a teenager in Seattle, there was a store where I liked to shop in Capitol Hill—more accurately, where I liked to try on clothes, because I couldn’t afford to buy them. The place was on Broadway, a street made famous by Sir Mix-a-Lot in his classic “Posse on Broadway.” The clothes were all black and so cool. I had browsed this store before, and the manager told me he’d give me a 20 percent discount. At this time I was being given one dollar to eat lunch, so that 20 percent wasn’t going to do much good. But the manager seemed cool; he didn’t treat me like a child although he for sure knew I was one. I decided to go to the store the next day to try on clothes and wish I could buy them. When I was in the dressing room, the manager came in. He was silent. I pulled my shirt across my chest and shrank back against the wall. I didn’t understand what was going on, I hadn’t asked for any other clothing. He pulled his pants down and advanced on me. I’d never seen an erect penis before. It was big and veiny and scary. I had no frame of reference for what was happening. He pulled down my shirt and put his veiny penis between my breasts and used them to get off on my chest. I remember detaching, floating away, like I was on the ceiling looking down. Praying it would stop and I could leave. I was in shock, trying to figure out what to do, when the man’s wife came into the dressing room just as her husband was zipping up his pants. She shrieked, throwing her purse at me. He ran out, leaving me with his wife. I was frozen in place, sitting on the bench topless and covered in stinky stickiness. I tried to speak, but no sound came out. She screamed at me that I was a whore and to get the fuck away from her husband. I tried to tell her. She told me she was going to make my life miserable in Seattle. I just looked at her and said, “It already is miserable.” I wiped myself off on the dress I was about to try on and left. Numb. Shocked. Dirty. When I got home, I washed and washed myself, certain my father would see what had happened and blame me.

  Up until recently I considered that my first sexual encounter. It took me until a few years ago to realize that wasn’t sex, it was child molestation. And anyone who has experienced this, I’m truly sorry. You did not deserve it. You
did not ask for it. You were not at fault.

  I’d pushed away the shame feeling for years. Whenever I thought of it, I could hear my father telling me that I shouldn’t wear nail polish because God would see the true dirt under my nails. That’s what it made me feel like. Dirt under fingernails. Right now, by writing this, I am looking at the dirt. I am unpacking it.

  For a long time, I thought that you had to be penetrated by a penis for it to be rape. I was wrong. Anything that isn’t sexually consensual is sexual assault. Fingers, mouths, penises, if they are in you or on you without your consent, that is sexual assault. Once I was at a gay club, standing on a chair to watch a performance, and a gay man stuck his finger inside of me and he said, “Oh, I’ve always wanted to see what that was like.” Only more recently have I realized that qualifies as digital rape. It was violation and assault all under the assumption of the guy can take it because you drove him to it by causing him to want.

  What that poor young girl experienced on that set was rape, too, as far as I’m concerned. She told me about it at a cocktail party. I could tell it caused her deep pain and it broke my heart.

  When you’re a girl or woman, you’re told that your greatest reward is being recognized for your beauty, and being desired. You’re supposed to play it up every time you’re in the public eye, but then downplay it offscreen, in your private life, because you don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable and you don’t want to attract the wrong kind of attention. That poor girl’s been brainwashed into thinking her beauty is all she’s worth, because from the time she was a little child she’s been getting compliments about her beauty. And it becomes something you think you owe other people.

  To all the beautiful girls out there, and the beautiful boys: you don’t owe anybody anything because of how you look. Society gives men a free pass: “They can’t help themselves.” “You drove them to it with your beauty.” I was told that so many times: “They just can’t keep their hands to themselves . . . Oh, that poor man can’t handle it.” Well, fuck you, that’s called assault. Nobody calls it what it is in this society, but it’s time to start.

  We are not disposable, we are not “just girls.” The women of Juarez, the missing indigenous women in Canada, the “child brides” kidnapped by Boko Haram in Nigeria: all just girls. It’s time to stop thinking of us as just girls. We’re not “just anything.” We are fully fledged human beings. Consider our lives.

  WE ARE BRAVE

  At this point you might be thinking to yourself, What is this woman complaining about? Doesn’t she know how lucky she is?

  I heard this throughout my entire career: “You are so lucky.”

  Those four words built invisible walls around me that kept me isolated, scared, resentful, and lonely for the better part of twenty years.

  I consider my luck to have not contracted leprosy or being a blind homeless child in Calcutta. Fame to me isn’t luck. Yes, there are people who crave being idolized, recognized, celebrated for nothing else more than existing. That was not and is not me. For me, fame was a corrosive force, something to be survived. There is so much more that I haven’t written here. Everyone deserves dignity, everybody.

  So while I am grateful for the experiences I’ve had—set camaraderie, travel, adventure—I don’t believe I owe Hollywood a thank-you letter. I owe it a kick in the proverbial head. Thanks for not protecting me, thanks for trading me, thanks for hurting me. But, sure, go ahead, call me lucky.

  To the writers who create how we see one another and ourselves: You’re responsible. What you write forms the thoughts and self-images of billions of humans. Take care with your words and your images. Grow up. Get smarter. Think deeper.

  I have repeatedly asked the head of a writers union—a very, very intelligent man, and very liberal—if I could speak to his member body. I wanted to speak to his writers, men AND women, peer to peer. I wanted to talk to these writers about their consistent misrepresentation, most especially of women. And every single time I asked the head of this union about speaking to his writers, he said, “I’ll have to ask my women’s committee.” This was about writing better characters, not just for women, for everybody. But this is typical of a male liberal who is unwittingly sexist and why we are where we are. I’ll have to ask my women’s committee. Fuck off with that. How are you supposed to fix the messaging system if no one can speak to it?

  Then there is the representative problem. The managers and agents. Based on everything I’ve experienced and seen, far too many don’t have the bandwidth to remotely understand the nature of an artist. If they did, they would protect and nurture artists, and then they would actually be of value to us. Too many agents seem to think they are the stars, that they hold the power. It’s delusional. I think anybody who profits off another human body is nothing more than a pimp. I had men negotiating how long my breasts and ass could be shown on-screen. On the street that is a pimp. In Hollywood, they make millions in commissions. That is a form of human trafficking.

  And the Screen Actors Guild (the actors’ union): You are a part of this. Don’t you get it? You should be saying: “We’re a union. We’re going to protect our members on set, especially the most vulnerable, the females and children. We’re going to make it mandatory that there’s equal pay for equal work.” You are missing out on an opportunity to set standards and right things. I paid you an incredible amount in fees so that you would protect my rights. But you didn’t. An actress is an employee just as she would be in any other job in any other industry. There should be a hotline for anonymous tips of abuse on the set and abuse of power. Our union would really make positive change by doing so. It is inexcusable how you let these crimes happen to your member body.

  And directors: I have already said much about you guys in these pages, your infantile tantrums, the boys’ club entitlement. Please learn once and for all that a girl, a woman, is not just this thing in a skirt to get other dudes to come to your movie. Aren’t you tired of being a cliché? We are so tired of you. And STOP using rape as a tool for your storytelling; it is damaging and causes trauma.

  Most of you guys are making mediocre movies at best; at worst, you’re making shitty fucking schlock. Very few of you are making classics because you’re not good enough. Because you don’t have the skills as a human being. A great director must be great at empathy and multitasking, classically female strengths. Maybe it’s why so many of these men suck.

  One time I was in the back of a car, and Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez were in the front seats. I wanted to see the extent of the male director’s ego. I thought I would just do my own little test. I decided to see how slimy I could be, to see if these guys would buy it. I figured no way, since I’m not exactly known for being saccharine. So I laid it on thick, going on about “what it’s like for me as a woman to be ‘allowed’ to be in this car with you two men that are like walking gods. Everyone worships you, wow, what’s it like to be you, the strongest, toughest guys on earth with the hardest jobs blah blah blah.” I was so over the top with my delivery, thinking, Come on, guys. Come on. At any moment you’re going to realize and laugh and tell me to shut the fuck up. Nope. Their shoulders puffed up, and their plumes came out. It was as if I were being choked by feathers made of ego. I hated them.

  They took it 100 percent seriously because they are surrounded by people (and women producers) who coddle them and kiss their ass.

  Women in the industry: Ladies, you need to step up and realize the men are never going to scoot aside for you; they’re not going to offer you a seat at their table, so build your own damn table. Figure it out, you can do it. In all other respects in your life, you’re a boss, right? So figure this one out. You got this.

  The female producers who are hired to coddle the poor male directors through the hard, hard life of directing just pacify them at all costs. There are so few women directors who work, but there are a lot of women in producing because, of course, legions of these baby man directors want someone to mommy them. It�
�s such a cliché.

  The women who can invest in women writers and directors: Why are you still investing in men? Why do you keep playing by their rules? Why do you keep supporting a system that’s not supporting you and your kind? To women producers: Why are you not hiring women en masse? Why are you female agents not representing as many women as you can? Do it on purpose, do it every time. Be brave. If one doesn’t work out, try another. It’s not like many men haven’t worked out.

  Actresses, female actors: You are not a commodity; you are artists. Go to the female producer if there is one and demand that she stand up to the director on your behalf. If there’s no female producer, you have to find somebody who will stand up for you and become your ally. Speak out about the torment and abuse in auditions and on sets. Lodge complaints against your union if they aren’t protecting you and others. Walk out of auditions where you’re lined up with girls all wearing bikinis and given numerical ratings by douche-bag directors. Say no to demeaning, objectified, cliché roles, and say why and MAKE IT PUBLIC. Say no to being a show pony on the red carpet. Say no to rape scenes. Demand respect and equal pay.

  To men in general: I think it’s high time that you take a long look in the mirror.

  Your kind are the number one danger to women and children. You are the number one danger to animals and the planet. We’re facing extinction because of you. You are the number one reason why we have wars, mass deaths, rape, molestation, torture, and a host of other ills. In other words, the problem is your kind, maybe even you. Know that you and your kind must change. It is your responsibility to do the work. No one else is to blame, it is you who must break the cycle. Just like how racism is not POC’s problem, misogyny is not women’s job to fix, it is yours.

  Look at ways in which you’re privileged. Even with my most “awake” male friends I see casual entitlement, without their being aware of it in any way. From the first breath you draw as a male child you’re stamped by society as superior. You can be in the most down-and-out, fucked-up situation, but you’re still better than a girl in that same situation. Do you ever wonder why that is? Why? I just can’t do the math. I see no evidence of superiority. I don’t think having a penis makes you superior; in fact, I think it’s what makes you vulnerable and your vulnerability scares you. The fear that men push down causes all too many to lash out to prove their toughness. It is not working. Change.