After 23 years of comments and judgement about the way she looks, Kristin Davis has finally snapped. From the relentless analysis of her body type in Sex And The City in the 90s to the most recent social media storm over her alleged plastic surgery in And Just Like That, Kristin has now, essentially, told everybody to piss off.
Looking back over more than two decades of self-esteem shattering comments, Kristin told the Sunday Times{
‘I kind of feel like that's how it is now too. But I also feel—I'm going to be blunt—I feel like, 'Fuck you. Fuck you people, like, come over here and do it better.’ You know what I mean? Like, what are you doing?’
This rage couldn’t be more justified. And it’s sad that, in 23 years, the misogynistic comments haven’t stopped—They’ve just changed tack. We’ve swapped the sizeism for ageism and that really isn’t a step in the right direction.
But let’s talk about something other than Kristin’s appearance for a second and focus on her performance as Charlotte York-Goldenblatt. This is a 56-year-old woman who has taken on the same character as her 33-year-old self and somehow managed not to make it contrived. When Kristin told her trolls to ‘come over here and do it better’, she really had a point.
The star has tackled storylines surrounding grief and gender identification. She has engaged record-breaking audiences to make And Just Like That HBO Max’s highest series debut of all time. And, after all that, people just want to talk about her face? Not even her acting, but her wrinkles or lack of them. We’d be furious too.
Yet, Kristin hasn’t always been angry. The intrusive criticism of her appearance throughout her career previously caused her considerable ‘stress’. It’s only recently that she feels comfortable enough in her own skin to tell any trolls to get lost. Good for her.
‘I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to say that [beauty standards] don't concern me or that I don’t think about them,’ she explained to AOL in 2018. ‘But on the other hand, I feel stronger in who I am and that my body is my body, and a lot of people love my body.’
What’s admirable about Kristin’s honesty, too, is anger and explaining your discomfort can take energy in a way that laughing it off does not. ‘I feel angry,’ she admitted with a tone of exhaustion. ‘I don’t want to feel angry all the time, so I don’t look at it. I just know it’s there.’
And it could be fair to say that art has imitated reality as Charlotte also appears to be undergoing a transition away from passivity in And Just Like That. ‘That’s a powerful moment when you get to that point as a woman,’ Kristin told Vanity Fair{
‘Charlotte feels like she has been expected to be girlish and cheerful and apologise for everything—all the different things that some women feel like. So, I think the evolution is continuing. Let’s put it that way.”
Kristin has grown up and so has her character Charlotte. Wouldn’t it be nice if the discourse around women’s appearances did too?
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