Dear Kim Novak: I’m Sorry You Woke up to the Internet

A friend of mine used to call life “a bucket of shit with the handles on the insides.” I’m going to appropriate that now to the internet, thanks in large part to the disease of accepted bullying that happens every second of every day here — our formerly dignified selves taking a backseat to the worst humanity has to offer. What Novak experienced the night of the Oscars is an example of a typical day online – it has become so accepted, in fact, that almost everything and everyone is fair game for ridicule – the best way to handle it is to ignore it and go on with your life. I’m sorry that we aren’t better people. I’m sorry that you had the courage to face the public, 40 million people, who may or may not had their own things to say in the privacy of their own home, but that they took to Twitter and various — USELESS — gossip sites to make fun of your face. Just remember, it isn’t you. They (we) are addicted to the taste of blood.

But more than even that, I’m sorry that we live in a culture – and that Hollywood has become an industry that encourages “getting work done” in order to have a career. There is a reason why so few actresses go under the knife in the UK and other countries because they are allowed to age there. Their worth is beyond someone saying “she looks great for her age.” We live in a world that praises someone like Jane Fonda who gets all of the work done “right.” There are other examples – Sofia Loren, Raquel Welch – former beauties who had a skilled surgeon nip a little here, tuck a little here and aren’t we still falling all over ourselves at how young they STILL look because god knows that is all that matters — that we stay looking young.

So you’re kind of damned if you, damned if you don’t, Kim. Don’t get the work done and people say “I remember her when she looked beautiful.” Get the work done and people might say “doesn’t she look good?” But if it isn’t done “right” or if it is noticeable people will say “what happened to her?” You aren’t alone. Women are everywhere in my city with unrealistically swollen lips, puffy eyes, stretched back skin, giant rubber boobs, sucked in tummies – all trying to look like Nicole Kidman who injects to keep young looking, wears lots of sunscreen and works out like a madwoman. You see, this is the end result of a culture that values the worth of women by what they look like on the outside. It is ruining Hollywood. It is ruining women. Unfortunately, women are even worse when it comes to talking about how bad someone looks. Ever take a gander at those awful magazines in supermarkets? Perhaps we all feel so badly about ourselves we can’t really face the day unless someone else is taking a hit for cellulite or wrinkles or bad plastic surgery. Women punishing women. The endless awful cycle.

All of these things are separate issues from what you experienced the morning after the Oscars. What happens on Twitter now and in the comments sections of blogs where any user can sign up anonymously and say whatever they’re thinking, get a quick thrill from saying the unsayable, then sleep at night, knowing they caused someone somewhere great harm. On Twitter, the bullying mentality catches on wildfire – isn’t it fun to make fun? Didn’t we leave this all behind in high school? I guess we didn’t. We have an enormously powerful tool at our disposal and this is how we choose to use it. Ain’t we a grand species?

The only way to console yourself over this is the simple truth that none of it means anything. It is chew for the day, spit gathered in an overflowing spittoon until the next item for ridicule presents itself. The worst thing the media can do – and they do it all of the time – is pay any attention to globs of spit whose only future includes being flushed down the toilet. Any sentence on a news program that begins with “people on Twitter…” Lazy journalism that isn’t worthy of anyone’s time.

There isn’t much left to say except this: you’re still here. You’re still alive. What remains of your life, with or without the assclowns online, is a gift. It matters less what your face looks like and more that your soul is in intact. The only upside to your appearance at the Oscars is to perhaps remind women that sometimes those surgeries won’t earn them Jane Fonda-like status in the tribe. Sometimes it isn’t a way to age backwards in hopes of keeping that admiration we only really get freely when we’re young.