Ashley Judd launches unlikely fightback against the media

Fightbacks can come from the most unexpected of sources. Who would have thought that Hugh Grant – who often seemed so disengaged from his own life that he ended up starring in dross like Nine Months – would be sufficiently determined and energised to take on the might of Fleet Street? Yesterday, another unexpected celebrity stepped forward to wage a similar but different media war, one that hasn't fully taken hold yet in Britain but almost certainly soon will: the war against how the media depicts women.

On Monday, The Daily Beast published a blistering article by, of all people, Ashley Judd, an actor best known for films such as Heat and Kiss the Girls, attacking the "pointedly nasty, gendered, and misogynistic" gossip in the media about her appearance. Judd is on American TV at the moment, in Missing, and that has put her back in the American gossip media's sights and, with that, pointless chatter about her looks began.

Judd's article begins by focusing on the gossip last month about her "puffy face", which some people attributed to plastic surgery, but widens this out into two bigger issues, one sad but familiar and the other infuriating and interesting. The former is, of course, the ridiculous double bind that female celebrities are in once they dare to live beyond their 30th birthday: either being accused of looking like hags or accused of having had plastic surgery because they are suspiciously un-hag-like. This point is known, but it is worth repeating, especially when done as eloquently and angrily as Judd does.

The other point she makes is about who is making the accusations. On this subject, Judd is especially enraged, saying that, in the case of her "puffy face" (the result, she says, of taking steroids to treat serious flu, in order to carry out her promotional duties) it was "promulgated largely by women" and "news outlets for whom I do serious work, such as publishing op-eds about preventing HIV." Judd does not name names but is almost certainly referring to the Huffington Post, an outlet for which she has indeed written about Aids prevention.

Judd's piece will not change the overall situation. Maybe it will shame the Huffington Post into realising that publishing serious news does not then justify the screeds of celebrity gossip that contaminate that website. Unlikely, but maybe. If nothing else, Judd has shown the public how the celebrity gossip sausage is made: "Who makes the fantastic leap from being sick … to a conclusion of plastic surgery?" she asks. And she's right: this is one ugly, sad and stupid sausage.