Heidi Kole On The Jolie Mastectomy

Women: Take Back Your Power And Thrive!

by Heidi Kole

NYC busker & author of ‘The Subway Diaries

Boobs, or as the fledgling Illuminati might call them: “Yet another chance at a mass Blue Pill moment”.

First off let me say, I’m not a Doctor; I’m a singer and stunt person – and this is, as with my commentary last week on the healing power of plants, purely my opinion.

There are so many factors wrapped up in movie star / sex icon Angelina Jolie’s recent announcement to dismember herself by prophylactically removing her, currently perfectly healthy breasts, that I won’t be able to cover all the dark layers of this recent Illuminati creation, but I’ll try my best to touch on a few of the pertinent ones.

First of all, let me say this trend of mutilating women is nothing new in America and the planet as a whole. It would be interesting to know what percentage of women reading this right now have had Women: Take Back Your Power And Thrive!the ‘H’ word, i.e. hysterectomy, thrown at them at least once in their lifetime. As for years now, hysterectomies have been the ‘cure of choice’ offered by mainstream medicine for symptoms ranging from excessive menstrual bleeding to fibroids to endometriosis to even sadness. I, myself, was offered this ‘easy breezy panacea’ over 5 times in my life and had to search high and low for my own way out. I had to create my own balance and health to avoid the mutilation option that was being sold to me with the zeal and fervor of a door-to-door salesman.

So this ‘just cut it off tactic’ is nothing new. What is new is using a movie star/sex icon with such global reach in the digital age to ‘sell’ the completely warped concept to women all over the world that this is the only option one has to not be killed by your breasts, your ovaries or uterus.  The message: “Just remove body parts and all will be fine.”

All is not fine – let me say this very clearly to anyone who has up to this point bought the whole Jolie double mastectomy story: Cancer is not a breast problem. It is an environment problem and by that I mean it’s the environment you create for yourself –i.e. What you take in in the form of nutrition, supplements, air, food, water, physical activity, life purpose, the people you choose to surround yourself with, the stress you allow yourself to put up with and the amount of joy you allow in. The phrase ‘Epigenetics’ is often used to encompass many of these factors

It’s not just absurd, it’s downright dangerous what’s being sold to women via this latest media / Big Pharma move. To mis-direct women even farther away than they’ve already been led…farther away from taking true care of, honoring and loving their bodies and keeping them healthy and vital for life (which by the way is possible…) is vastly unhealthy.

Instead women are being fed the message that:
* Everything is out of your control
* You have no power
* Your breast, your uterus, your ovaries, essentially everything that makes you a woman is dangerous and can and will kill you so your best bet…rip it all out and cut it all off.

This dangerous message, this lie, in my humble opinion, is bordering on abuse of women on a mass scale.

Curious, as I write this that the same ‘hard sell’ has not been pushed on the males of the world. I’ve not heard one male superstar or actor or celebrity yet announce that all young men should have their testicles removed. If it’s really a game changer to remove body parts prophylactically to prevent death (which by the way is going to happen with or without breasts, testicles or any other organ you remove to quote ‘save your life’) – shouldn’t it apply to men as well? But we’ve never heard Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt jumping on the mass media bandwagon saying “I’ve decided to remove my testicles as they have proven to be a health hazard” thereby encouraging young men all over the world to follow suit. No, we have yet to hear that announcement …

Finally, we all probably know by now know of the blatant ties of this latest move to Corporate Profits as we watched the stock prices of Myriad Genetics, the company who developed the $3,000 BRAC Analysis test that Jolie referred to in her Times piece soar since her announcement. In addition, it’s now known that a whopping 20% of women’s genes are currently owned by private corporations/monopolies, poised to farm their future billions off you. Yes, that’s right, a Corporation owns your genes women. Not only that, every cancer patient diagnosed and put through ‘the system’ yields $1million in profits for Big Phrama and the medical money machine. Are you now connecting the dots?

I’d like to conclude by saying to women everywhere: You are not powerless. You are not wrong. Your body is not wrong. Your body is not bad or evil or dangerous. Your body is not in need of changing or mutilation to live. Your body is your best friend, an amazing creation and will never steer you wrong if you speak to it, develop an intimate relationship with it, and listen to it.

So, do your homework, take responsibility for your own state of mind, body and happiness and don’t willingly give it away to someone else to decide for you. If, after doing your research you decided that mastectomy or hysterectomy or another removal of a body part is best then it will serve you. But you’ll have come to that conclusion on your own not by following someone else’s directives.

You have so much knowledge and power and wisdom within that the world is hungry for. Go within and seek that wisdom and knowing. You owe it to yourself . Women, this is your time. Take back your power, protect your joy and thrive.

~ Namaste

from:    http://in5d.com/take-back-your-power-and-thrive.html

Ashley Judd on Women’s Bodies

The Conversation

Posted on April 10, 2012

The Conversation about women’s bodies exists largely outside of us, while it is also directed at (and marketed to) us, and used to define and control us. The Conversation about women happens everywhere, publicly and privately. We are described and detailed, our faces and bodies analyzed and picked apart, our worth ascertained and ascribed based on the reduction of personhood to simple physical objectification. Our voices, our personhood, our potential, and our accomplishments are regularly minimized and muted.

As an actor and woman who, at times, avails herself of the media, I am painfully aware of both the conversation about women’s bodies, and it frequently migrates to my own body. I know this, even though my personal practice is to ignore what is written about me. I do not, for example, read interviews I do with news outlets. I hold that it is none of my business what people think of me. I arrived at this belief after first, when I began working as an actor eighteen years ago, reading everything. I evolved into selecting only the “good” pieces to read. Over time, I matured into the understanding that good and bad are equally fanciful interpretations. I do not want to give my power, my self-esteem, or my autonomy, to any person, place, or thing outside myself. I thus abstain from all media about myself. The only thing that matters is how I feel about myself, my personal integrity, and my relationship with my Creator. Of course, it’s wonderful to be held in esteem and fond regard by family, friends, and community, but a central part of my spiritual practice is letting go of otheration. And casting one’s lot with the public is dangerous and self-destructive, and I value myself too much to do that.

However, the recent speculation and accusations about the unusual fullness of my face in March, 2012, feels different., and my colleagues and friends encouraged me to know what was being said. Consequently, I choose to address it because the conversation was pointedly nasty, gendered and misogynistic and embodies what all girls and women in our culture, to a greater or lesser degree, endure every day, in ways both outrageous and subtle. The assault on our body image, the hyper-sexualization of girls and women and subsequent degradation of our sexuality as we walk through the decades, and the general incessant objectification is what this conversation allegedly about my face is really about.

A brief analysis demonstrates that the following “conclusions” were all made on the exact same day, March 20, 2012, about the exact same woman (me), looking the exact same way, based on the exact same television appearance. The following examples are real, and come from a variety of (so-called!) legitimate news outlets (such as HuffPo, MSNBC, etc), tabloid press, and social media:

One: When I am sick for a over a month and on medication (multiple rounds of steroids), the accusation is that because my face looks puffy, I have “clearly had work done,” with otherwise credible reporters with great bravo “identifying” precisely the procedures I allegedly have had done.

Two: When my skin is nearly flawless, and at age 43, I do not yet have visible wrinkles that can be seen on television, I have had “work done,” with media outlets bolstered by consulting with plastic surgeons I have never met who “conclude” what procedures I have “clearly” had. (Notice that this is a “back-handed compliment,” too – I look so good! It simply cannot possibly be real!)

Three: When my 2012 face looks different than it did when I filmed “Double Jeopardy” in 1998, I am accused of having “messed up” my face (polite language here, the “F” word is being used more often), with a passionate lament that “Ashley has lost her familiar beauty audiences loved her for.”

Four: When I have gained weight, going from my usual size two/four to a six/eight after a lazy six months of not exercising, and that weight gain shows in my face and arms, I am a “cow” and a “pig” and I “better watch out” because my husband “is looking for his second wife.” (Did you catch how this one engenders competition and fear between women? And suggests that my husband values me based only my physical appearance? Classic sexism. We won’t even address how extraordinary it is that a size eight would be heckled as “fat.”)

Five: In perhaps the coup de grace, when I am acting in a dramatic scene in “Missing, the plot stating I am emotionally distressed, have been awake and on the run for days, viewers remarks ranged from “What the f*&^ did she do to her face?” to cautionary gloating, “Ladies, look at the work!” Footage from “Missing” obviously dates prior to March 2012, and the remarks about how I look while playing a character powerfully illustrate the contagious and vicious nature of the conversation. The accusations and lies, introduced to the public, now apply to me as a woman across space and time; to me as any woman and to me as every woman.

That women are joining in the ongoing disassembling of my appearance is salient. Patriarchy is not men. Patriarchy is a system in which both women and men participate. It privileges, inter alia, the interests of boys and men over the bodily integrity, autonomy, and dignity of girls and women. It is subtle, insidious, and never more dangerous than when women passionately deny that they themselves are engaging in it. This abnormal obsession with women’s faces and bodies has become so normal that we (I include myself at times – I absolutely fall for it still) have internalized patriarchy almost seamlessly. We are unable at times to indentify ourselves as our own denigrating abusers, or as abusing other girls and women.

A case on point is that this conversation was initially promulgated largely by women; a sad and disturbing fact. (That they are professional friends of mine, and know my character and values, is an additional betrayal.)

News outlets with whom I do serious work, such as publishing Op-Eds about preventing HIV, empowering poor youth worldwide, and conflict mineral mining in Democratic Republic of Congo, all ran this “story” without checking with my office first for verification, or offering me the dignity of the opportunity to comment. It’s an indictment of them, that they would even consider the content printable, and that they, too, without using time honored journalistic standards, would perpetuate with un-edifying delight such blatantly gendered, ageists, and mean-spirited content.

I hope the sharing of my thoughts can generate a new conversation: Why was a puffy face cause for such a conversation in the first place? How, and why, did people participate? If not in the conversation about me, in parallel ones about women in your sphere? What is the gloating about? What is the condemnation about? What is the self-righteous alleged “all knowing” stance of the media about? How does this symbolize constraints on girls and women, and encroach on our right to be simply as we are, at any given moment? How can we as individuals in our private lives make adjustments that support us in shedding unconscious actions, internalized beliefs, and fears about our worthiness, that perpetuate such meanness? What can we do as families, as groups of friends? Is what girls and women can do different from what boys and men can do? What does this have to do with how women are treated in the workplace?

I ask especially how we can leverage strong female to female alliances to confront and change that there is no winning here as women. It doesn’t actually matter if we are aging naturally, or resorting to surgical assistance. We experience brutal criticism. The dialogue is constructed so that our bodies are a source of speculation, ridicule, and invalidation, as if they belong to others – and in my case, to the actual public. (I am also aware that inevitably some will comment that because I am a creative person, I have abdicated my right to a distinction between my public and private selves, an additional, albeit related, track of highly distorted thinking that will have to be addressed at another time).

If this conversation about me is going to be had, I will do my part to insist that is a feminist one, because it has been misogynist 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 hetereonormative 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 our relationships and at work, our sense of our worth, value, and potential as human beings. Join in – and help change – The Conversation.

N.B.: I would like to thank the many family members and mentors who read my essay, provided their passionate and unqualified support, and in some instances, made valuable suggestions to the text. They include my spiritual sister, Nikki Myers, who sat with me in my “office” under a red bud tree where this writing came to me; Naomi Judd and Larry Strickland; Michael Ciminella and Mollie Whitelaw; Reverend Mark Judd; Marina Franchitti, Carla Franchitti McFarlane. I thank Carol Lee Flinders, PhD, who taught me to mediate and who continually reinforces my organic understanding that pursuit of equality is fundamentally spiritual. I thank my life coach; Ted Klontz, PhD, whose unfailing presence in my life helps me become increasingly empowered and clear. I thank my colleagues Trena Keating, Michelle Bohan, Cara Trippichio, and Annett Wolf, whom I met in Hollywood yet who not only never flinch when I take a stand, stand resolutely with me. I thank Gloria Steinem for a simple yet powerful nudge toward full ownership of my reality; Dr Carol Jordan of the University of Kentucky for a lovely bit of inspired language. I am grateful for Angela McCracken, Esq., who in the age of unrestricted media frenzies supports legal rights where one still has them and helps my husband and me stand up to slander, defamation and lies. I give thanks to my extraordinary professor of “Gender Violence: Law and Social Justice” at Harvard Law, who not only teaches brilliantly but attracts to her classroom the most incredible people. My classmates, Rebecca Leventhal, Brittany Rogers, and Brittanie Hall, contributed, respectively, the reminder of the need for a clean, lucid opening paragraph, an additional infusion of steely, principled, feminist social justice values, and the insight that my body was being dissected as if it belonged to the public. Lastly, I thank BR for the soulful validation that what I had to say was beautiful and necessary. It was she who said, “you have to publish this as an Op Ed.”

Most especially, I thank my husband, Dario Franchitti, as it was his outrage that began this dialogue in our home. Over a period of days, his indignation helped me grasp the “damned if I do, damned if I don’t” double bind that inheres in The Conversation about both men and women in the public space, for which my puffy face was merely an example. Because of him, this piece became inevitable and essentially wrote itself. Dario’s thoughtful reading and astute feedback elevated its quality and breadth.

from:   http://ashleyjudd.com/2012/04/10/the-conversation/