I recently read an interview with Mindy Kaling in Parade magazine. It was then made into a meme in Upworthy, which I then saw on Facebook (got that?) Well, let me get back to the point. I think Mindy Kaling is amazing. She has achieved so much and is funny and talented. Not for an Asian woman, nor one who is not supermodel thin, just as a woman.
This is what she said, ‘“I always get asked, ‘Where do you get your confidence?’” she says. “I think people are well meaning, but it’s pretty insulting. Because what it means to me is, ‘You, Mindy Kaling, have all the trappings of a very marginalized person. You’re not skinny, you’re not white, you’re a woman. Why on earth would you feel like you’re worth anything?’”
I think Kaling is being super sensitive here. I am white, I am (relatively) skinny, a UK size 8/10 and you know what? People ask me where I get my confidence all the time. Because that is the thing about confidence, when people have the courage to go for their dreams and work hard, everyone else wants to know how to do it too. I get asked where I get my confidence in interviews, at parties, by friends and family, and as a writer, I also ask other people where they get their confidence, not because they are an ethnic minority or different in any way, but because it is a question people want to know the answer to. Hell, I always want to know the answer because even though I come across as confident, I have my off days.
So Mindy, I love you, I really do. You are gorgeous, funny, witty and super successful, but sometimes a question is just a question or like Freud said: A spade is just a spade.
Now for Michael Fassbender. Fassbender has been complaining about people talking about his penis. Apparently this would never happen to a woman. Really Michael? Are you kidding? People have been talking about Sharon Stone’s Basic Instinct vagina for decades. ‘It wouldn’t be acceptable it would be seen as sexual harassment, people saying [to an actress], “Your vagina …” You know?’ he complained.
I don’t know if you have seen Shame but I have. If you don’t want people to discuss your penis maybe don’t get it out in such graphic detail. And as for this not happening to woman; it happens to woman all the time. Screenshots are taken and put on porn sites, Seth MacFarlane’s ‘Boob Song’ happens at the Oscars (which didn’t upset me even if it upset many others, you can’t do nudity in a film and then get offended when people mention it) and in films such as Knocked Up, nudity by women is talked about openly. Even the Daily Mail and celebrity magazines take screenshots from both sexes and publicise it out of context. Which is why nudity in a film is never just of that film, it is now you, naked, all over the internet and media for the rest of time. It is not fortunate, or even moral, it just is.
