I’m gonna earn my moniker today and be an epic, judgy
This is Romola Garai at 21, appearing in men’s magazine Esquire. She’s gorgeous and she is also a wonderfully talented actress. If you’ve never heard of her, it’s probably because you don’t a have a period costume drama fetish like me.
Here she is in Vanity Fair.
And Daniel Deronda. Ooh, scarlet archery costume! Envy! Swoon!
In her younger days, Romola had no apparent opposition to using her sex appeal to advance her career, because that is surely the effect it had.
She was all over “fuck me” faces, and why not? She’s stunning.
She splayed her enviable physique and exquisite bone structure and willowy limbs across couches
And beds
And tousled her hair with the best of them.
Now, Romola has had a change of heart about those photos, saying:
‘I am very aware that I have at times in my career been part of the problem and not part of the solution, and as I have got older I have tried to correct that.
‘But it is very difficult because I believe the media in this country is inherently sexist. And so if you do a job which involves you interacting with it, that does inevitably lead to some difficult choices, and I am sure that very often I haven’t made the right choice.’
Romola has joined her voice to the chorus calling for a ban on “lad mags”. Women’s porn, in the form of bondage novels, will of course remain unaffected by this new prurience and concern for “young women exposed to pornographic images”.
We’ve already dealt with the hypocrisy of the lad mags debate, but the bitch in me simply can’t resist pointing out a little something about Ms. Garai.
Romola at 21:
Romola today, at 31.
From this:
…to this.
Oh my god, I am such a bitch! I mean really, Romola has just grown up, right? She has matured. Awareness has dawned on her! She has seen the light!!
Or, she lost control off her ass and is no longer the young hottie who can get the boys drooling over her sexy antics in the lad mags?
To be honest, Romola is still a very attractive, reasonably proportioned woman, but reasonably-proportioned doesn’t land you front covers, now does it?
At 28, she was still smoking!
‘I want people to think I’m sexy, but to know also that I’ve got an ordinary body and not feel intimidated. I’d rather enjoy food, sex and all the joyful things in life than worry about how I look.’
The lady doth protest too much?
I’m sorry if this makes me a bad person, but I am really fucking skeptical of women accustomed to the devotion of men who find that age is not so kind, and all of sudden try to limit the opportunities for other women to have the exact same advantages they themselves enjoyed while young and tight and gorgeous.
I call bullshit.
Remember Kate Winslet, railing against photoshop?
Why the British furor over the 33-year-old mom-of-two? In early 2003 Britain’s GQ magazine – a stablemate of Vanity Fair – ran digitally “slimmed” photos of Winslet that drew much criticism. Within days Winslet apologized.
“I just didn’t want people to think I was a hypocrite and that I’d suddenly lost 30 lbs. or whatever,” the youngest ever five-time Oscar nominee said at the time. “So I just came out and said, ‘Look, I don’t look like that’. I’m not mad at the magazine, but I have no intention of looking like that.”
http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20237699,00.html
Well, here’s Kate on the cover of the current Vogue.
Oh ho ho! What happened to hating the photoshop here, Kate?
No doubt, Kate will issue an apologetic statement sometime tomorrow, and all the while the magazines will circulate, helping to uphold the beauty standard that she benefits from in real, practical, financial terms. Sure, Kate is a wonderful actress, but that isn’t enough. Her beauty matters, and without it she would be a character actor playing a frumpy housewife on Cornation Street and not a multiple Oscar nominee.
It’s such bullshit when women claim all the advantages of beauty culture and then scream foul when they can no longer compete. And you know, if a bit of pissing and moaning is ALL they did, I would have no problem.
Yeah, wah wah wah.
But women like Romola are actively trying to limit younger women’s chances to capitalize on their own beauty, and to me that looks like one thing:
Sour fucking grapes.
This isn’t about feminism or sexism or an overly superficial culture.
Bullshit.
It’s about losing the edge.
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, indeed. If it makes me a bitch to point that out, well, so be it.
Bitchiness is something you never have to worry about losing.
Lots of love,
JB
judgybitch 
This is the best rant you’ve ever had:
I’m sorry if this makes me a bad person, but I am really fucking skeptical of women accustomed to the devotion of men who find that age is not so kind, and all of sudden try to limit the opportunities for other women to have the exact same advantages they themselves enjoyed while young and tight and gorgeous.
I call bullshit.
This needs to be plastered on every everything, everywhere, everywhen.
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Romola, you were gorgeous in “The crimson petal and the white”
You were gorgeous in “The Hour”
You are just gorgeous.
*sigh*
Love,
Korhomme
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Excellent analysis once again, JB. But I felt like we should dig slightly deeper.
Let’s see, wikipedia says she gave birth to a daughter in 2012, the father is her current boyfriend. Yes, boyfriend, not husband. Celebrities usually marry, no? If not for the status, then at least the ability to get a lot of cash upon divorce. So we have a new mommy who, despite her fame, has not been able to secure the commitment of the father of her child, and probably feels a big uglier due to some pregnancy weight. It’s so obvious she’s aware that she just hit the wall, and her hamster probably tells her that the blow wouldn’t be so bad if she wasn’t exposing herself in that way in her youth, so of course she has to make sure all the young hotties don’t have to go through all that in the future.
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Isn’t the saying – sour grapes make better whine?
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I still think she’s beautiful enough to pose in any magazine if she wants to (heaven knows photoshop will smooth out any wrinkles) so I can’t judge Romola on that. But I do think that you’re correct in saying that she’s a hypocrite for wanting to deny young women the same avenues she had to success. She might not like the path she chose but why try to decide what path other women should take?
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This is kind of cute. She actually thinks we won’t notice her saying:
“I built my fame on these kinds of magazines, and now that they aren’t paying me anymore attention – er – no, wait…
…Now that I’ve gotten older and wiser, I feel like that was totally wrong, and I want to make certain that none of the younger woman today have the same opportunities…
…erm, I mean, make the same mistakesas I did when I was young and hot…
…uhh, I mean young and foolish like they are. Of course, I’m going to give back every dollar I earned posing for these mags…
…oh, wait, no I’m not!…
…but even though I’m keeping it, that money is tainted and I’d hate for any young, ho- er, foolish women to be able to make money like I did, I MEAN…
…Oh, to hell with it. I’m jealous and envious of their youth and beauty, and pissed that I don’t have mine anymore and I’m just BITTER.”
Sour. Fucking. Grapes.
I feel sorry for her boyfriend, who she probably won’t marry because “fish/bicycle,” and who will probably get to pay for his daughter to be raised by some other dude, while never getting to see her, for his troubles.
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Including her daughter, to add some extra creepy sexual rivalry.
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My thoughts run the other direction. The “lad mag’s” really do objectify women, they objectify women in the exact same way with the exact same images and the exact same words as “Women’s Mag’s”. If we want to ban mags that objectify women lets ban ALL mags that objectify women. Esquire, Cosmo, Playboy, Vanity Fair, Maxim and Vouge. All of them. Hey Equality is equality!!!
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Yeah, funny how all the women’s magazines that objectify women are never critiqued for the crime, isn’t it?
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The weird thing is if she just lost a little weight and toned up, she could give her younger self a run for her money. Her skin still looks great — so many women with less dewy complexions get the early crows feet and such…in those Tesco photos it looks like she is wearing little to no makeup unlike the younger sexy ones. OK, so she had a kid in 2012, but….it’s almost 2014. Maybe she’s pregnant again and feeling some maternal instincts? Does she want to look mediocre? Surely she could afford a personal trainer or strength and conditioning gym membership. I think the wall, while ultimately inevitable, allows for some wiggle room. I know I take better care of my skin, body, and all of myself now that I’m in my 30s than I did in my 20s, and I hope for her sake she is doing that.
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“I’m sorry if this makes me a bad person” – you apologise too much. Let the chips fall as they may.
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Sure they are. I hear bitching about cosmo all the time.
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Hi Judgy,
Totally off topic here, but I am impressed with your ability to grind out lengthy, detailed, referenced, illustrated content on a virtual daily basis. While being a full time Mom AND working on a PhD ! What does your typical day look like. Time management tips?
Michael
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Yeah, fuck the housework!
Kinda, sorta kidding.
I’m a mentally alert person in the morning, but I do NOT like company, so I’m usually up about an hour ahead of everyone else, and I spend that time drinking coffee and reading my favorite websites, where I usually find something I want to comment on.
Then I get everyone up and organized and school lunches made and I think about what I want to make for dinner. I also start thinking through the points I want to make for my post.
After everyone is gone, I usually have a shower (my husband and I are super environmentally conscious, so we like to save water by showering together :P) He has a lot of job flexibility and doesn’t normally head into work until after 10 AM.
Once that’s done, I sit down to write my post, although lately, I have been posting later in the day, and finishing my goal, whatever that was, for my PhD first.
Either way, I spend until about noon working on my laptop with my youngest daughter keeping me company with her Barbies or coloring book or Play-doh or whatever.
If we have errands to run, we head out around noon and get those done, then I do some laundry, get dinner organized, do a bit of housework.
I’ll spend another hour working on either the blog or my research, and then the kids are home from school and it’s time to chat with them about their day and get dinner started.
I don’t do any work at all in the evenings – just hang out with the family. I tidy up the dishes and fold laundry, but mostly, we just kick back and relax.
That schedule works with my biorhythms, because I am very much a morning person. It would kill my husband. He’s in a fog until 2PM, and then he’s wide awake and he can still be making professional decisions and responding to emails and requests until 10PM.
The fact that we are kind of opposite in that regards makes a huge difference. He actually has to be in to set meetings twice a week for the next eight weeks at 830AM, and it’s killing him. He hates it, but it’s the only free time all the stakeholders have together for one project.
The first thing about time management is respect your body clock, I would say. Work when you are alert.
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Oh, yeah. I’m responding to this because the kids and my husband are outside at the moment, and the dinner is in the oven, cooking slowly.
I keep my laptop on the kitchen counter in the evenings so I can keep an eye on the comments. I still moderate a lot!
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You are a bitch 🙂 … but still love your work.
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Hadn’t heard of her before but she’s still beautiful, so I’m inclined to take her comments at face value. Not that I necessarily agree with them, but I’m not convinced they are driven by bitterness.
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This is part of the attraction with burkas. In a polygamous culture it is natural that older wives of desirable men would not want pretty young women on display and they would have been very keen for the young women to cover up.
On polygamy, it should be obvious that for a man to have a second, third or fourth wife it requires other men to not have wives. These men are dead, castrated or simply unable to marry. But then feminists were never good at math…
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After many years, I would have to agree with the body clock comment. Especially when it involves concentration and learning. Long ago I realized the utter futility (in my case) of studying/analyzing/planning when I’m just plain tired. How many times have i realized that i just read 50 pages of an engineering textbook, and i have no memory of the last 10 pages. Brew a pot of coffee and stay up another 2 hrs? worthless. My wife does a great job, she is 34, German, full time mom of 2 kids, and is in her second year of Nursing school ( she already was a nurse in Germany but NONE of her class work was accepted in the US…..damn educational racket, but I digress). She runs a tight ship, but I’m a bit worried about her overall energy level, she is very tired a lot of times, and oddly enough I’ve asked her to get a sitter twice a week so she can go to the gym and work out / swim. I think it would give her more energy ( she does get enough sleep ). More sex. That has to be the answer
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Hitting the wall can be a bitch…
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Just be careful about that. Your readers love your stuff but your Man and kids love you more. Few things frustrate me more than my wife texting and stuff when I truly want her company. I too have had to learn to put the iPhone away and “be there”, undivided for her and my kids
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Yeah, I hear you.
It hasn’t really been an issue for me yet, because I don’t really feel any overwhelming sense of obligation to the blog, so I quite naturally pay attention to my family first. Pixie and I have refused all offers to monetize the blog at this point partly because it’s not a lot of money but also because accepting money for what I do comes with obligations that I am not prepared to meet.
I am totally glued to my phone, but not at the expense of my family life, because I’m not beholden to anyone at this point. My kids recognize the “ping” of a comment and they will tell me “Mommy, your phone wants you”.
But they are also well aware that I will just ignore it if something else has my attention.
It’s good advice though. And I will try to stay aware.
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I don’t know who Romola Garai is. I don’t think she is all that attractive. I’d rate her an 8. One thing that strikes me about celebrities is they seem to be, generally speaking because there are always exceptions (i.e. George Carlin), pretty stupid. Self awareness, deductive logic, and being well read are not attributes one often see among. So I am not going to waste any more time on this dumb woman. Later.
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Those who can, do. Those who can’t, bitch about how sexist doing it is.
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I always thought that Cosmo was far worse for women than Playboy, because Playboy girls always seemed just a little heavier due to the need to support breasts. Playboy women always seemed in far better health than their heroin addicted Cosmo supermodel counterparts. This is especially true when Playboy gives the “everywoman” a chance with their “women of …” pictorials.
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I don’t think all celebrities are stupid; but the ones who are media whores and feel the need to vomit their opinions all over the place tend to be average to incredibly idiotic.
It’d be nice to hear from celebrities who aren’t stupid as fuck but they’re smart enough to keep the media away from them usually..
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The Feminist writer Naomi Wolf was a sex-positive feminist many years ago but is now sounding more like anti-sex feminists. Plus she bitches and moans that her most attractive male counterparts want to date younger women.
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But women like Romola are actively trying to limit younger women’s chances to capitalize on their own beauty, and to me that looks like one thing:
Sour fucking grapes.
[This isn’t about feminism] or sexism or an overly superficial culture.
————————————-
Actually there are some, but very few, inclined to think this kind of stuff is exactly what feminism is about.
http://historyoffeminism.com/a-history-of-feminism/
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i personally don’t like the taste of wine
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Well in that case, as Goober says, she should hand back all the money she’s made out of flaunting her body for commercial purposes. Otherwise she’s just another feminist hypocrite, plain and simple, and I haven’t heard she’s offering to do that any time soon. I don’t accept any of this anti-lad’s mag crap anyway, but at least she should do the decent thing and stand by her bigoted principles in the only way that really matters.
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Thank you for making that important point about feminist agitprop (“sour fucking grapes”). Go on making it!
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There’s no such thing as “sexual objectification” – it’s an oxymoron, because there’s no such thing as a “sexual object” (maybe a vibrator, but we call that masturbation not sex with a vibrator).
Maybe it’s just me and I’m weird, but the only “objects” I have sex with are the living breathing human objects. Here’s what wikipedia defines it as:
“Sexual objectification is the act of treating a person merely as an instrument of sexual pleasure”
“instrument of sexual pleasure” – otherwise known as a woman (if you’re a straight man). There is no such thing as an instrument of sexual pleasure for straight men (that I’m aware of) that is not a woman.
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“Objectification” is when “women lack agency”, and this is extended by feminists towards things like video game characters like Lara Croft (who isn’t a real woman but a fantasy). Why bother with “agency” of fictional characters, they are by definition without agency: they’re not real. Why? Because sex is power for a woman, and sex they cannot control erodes their power; sexy fantasies, whether magazine models or video game vixens that just exist for pleasing men, any man, without “earning” it is going to upset women who enjoy their power. So jerking off to a fantasy woman is something feminists disapprove of even though you really are hurting no one at all.
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JB, you were a grade-A bitch in writing this article. Keep up the great work!
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So she spent her youth and good looks as a way to grab attention. Well she got her reward. Those 10-15 years must have been great…but looks don’t last long.
The smart women use those things to secure a man and grow old with them gracefully.
That’s called a woman’s reality. You make the wine and drink the cup.
I enjoy listening to those who squandered their inheritance and now have to drink sour grapes.
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Fleshlights
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The notion that she’s “not hot enough anymore” just doesn’t fly, I fear.
As another writer recently wrote about another woman, but nevertheless from the same basic premise, I wouldn’t kick her out of my bed for trying to set me on fire.
I doubt it’s as much about _personal_ hypocrisy on her part, as buying into feminism’s _collective_ hypocrisy.
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It always hurts when the phone stops ringing, whether from the lover of the night before, formerly ardent suitors who have moved on to younger pastures, or the agencies that book all those glamor photo shoots. Some women are able to just deal with it, but others nurse their hurt with moaning that men should date women of “their own age,” or with a false rape or abuse charge, or lashing out to try to ban all those magazines that are no longer calling….
{sniff}
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So is she going to pay back or donate all the money she has made off her appearance, don’t think so, and ban all photos of women exactly like the Taliban, and just because men need to judge a woman as a fertile and good genetic potential mother from that appearance. Surely she knows we need this to have sex and sex means babes. Oops she is a mother now.
At the same time she is free to view all photos of men and judge them not only on looks but status, assertiveness and wealth generating potential from their clothes or lack of them as mood dictates. Funny how all the male dancers, models, sportsmen or popstars and their like bare their chest to no demand to cover up. No need to censor that.
Banning lads mags will not stop women wanting to compete on beauty with each other even if we, men that is, did not exist. At the same time most modern female popstars make even lads mags look tame. It empowers them. And of course she can still go and pose in any state of undress in womens and fashion magazines, they can go naked in those rather than just topless, but thats ok because it is only women admiring their beauty. Sounds like sexism to me but not from the men.
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True, it’s all just hypocrisy from the same people who brought you Hugo Schwyzer.
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She was so hot in Emma. No, I am not gay.
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When the successful become moribund and lazy, they like to chop off the lower rungs of the same ladder they themselves climbed. This happens with individuals and it also happens with organizations. That’s why some of the biggest champions of government regulations are the mega corporations who use them to stifle their younger, leaner upstart competitors.
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Yeah, climbing up the wall on a ladder and then trying to pull it up, so others can’t use it, seems to be the idea.
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