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Cruel Irony: Amazing Woman Gives Speech About Privacy. Details of Private Life Immediately Trend on Internet

"Privacy."--Jodie Foster

The role that cemented my Jodie Foster fan-dome was Dr. Ellie Arroway in Contact. At the time I first saw this movie, I was toying with pursuing a graduate degree in science. My mentors prefaced every conversation with the acknowledgement that a career in science is "not all it's cracked up to be." As a fresh-faced undergrad, I sort of blew that off considering I did not know what to crack it all up to be. All I knew was that I thought bacteria were the shit and I wanted to get to know the little critters better.


With a few years working in a hospital under my belt, working along side surgeons, trauma docs, nurses, respiratory techs, etc, I had grown a thick skin, but was still undergoing the keratinization required to hold one's own in a fast-paced, sometimes male-dominated environment. So when I watched Contact for the first time, I got sucked into the confident, tell-it-like-it-is, don't-fuck-with-me, I-know-my-shit attitude that Dr. Arroway exuded. I wanted to be her. I wanted to walk into a board room and put all of my passion into convincing a grant panel that my science is worth funding. What's funny is that one of my coworkers at the time, who knew I was moonlighting as a science student, said to me, "Tina, that is so you!" That made me feel damn good and did more to make me believe that I could make it than anything my science mentors ever said. And so my Walter Mitty existence as Dr. Arroway was born.

I don't know who the producers had in mind for that role. Perhaps they vetted all the Hollywood heavy hitters. But after seeing that movie a million times, I don't think anyone else could have pulled it off better than Jodie Foster. She portrayed the bipolar nature of passion beautifully--making one appear tough on the outside and caring to the point of tears on the inside. In a way, this is how I imagine Ms. Foster is in real life. But I wouldn't know because I've never met her. I don't need to know the details of her personal life to know her worth as an artist. The only evidence I need is what projects on the big screen.

But sadly, we live in a world where one's worth as an artist is dictated by what is reported in the press. This is just hopelessly wrong. Unfortunately, this message that Ms. Foster was trying to convey during her Golden Globe speech was lost by most as they responded with knee-jerk confusion and speculation on her state of sobriety. To help those who just didn't get it--and still don't--I'd like to take this opportunity, dear reader, to translate a few quotes from what I think is one of the most brilliant acceptance speeches ever delivered.

JF: "I’m 50! You know, I was going to bring my walker tonight but it just didn’t go with the cleavage.” 

Translation: I am technically old in the eyes of Hollywood elite, but damn, am I hot! And I know a few pop culture references, myself, so suck it, twitterheads.

JF: "I already did my coming out about a thousand years ago back in the Stone Age," 

Translation: No, seriously, I already did that. Google it.

JF: "if you’d had to fight for a life that felt real and honest and normal against all odds, then maybe you too might value privacy above all else." 

Translation: How many times do I have to say this, media? Go. The. Fuck. Away.

JF: "“That table over there, 222, way out in Idaho, Paris, Stockholm, that one, next to the bathroom with all the unfamous faces, the very same faces for all these years." 

Translation: Classy = acknowledging the little people in your life.

JF: “There is no way I could ever stand here without acknowledging one of the deepest loves of my life, my heroic co-parent, my ex-partner in love but righteous soul sister in life, my confessor, ski buddy, consigliere, most beloved BFF of 20 years, Cydney Bernard." 

Translation: I was in a loving, long-standing, committed relationship with an amazing woman whom I can still call my best friend. What we had is worthy of acknowledgement as real. It is deserving of equal rights and protections of any other committed relationship. Maybe if we had those rights, I could have called her wife. But we didn't, so I couldn't. We were not allowed to make that decision for ourselves, but rather, had the freedom to make that decision stripped from us by a society that refuses to acknowledge us as equals. [But somehow, they still like me enough to toss me an award now and then and get their cameras in my face] So get a clue, homophobes, what we had was not all about the icky sex. And making it all about the icky sex makes you the pervert, not me.

JF: " I am so proud of our modern family."

Translation:  My boys have two moms who love them more than anything. They will never hurt for loving parents as long as we are alive. What we have is not wrong. It is not icky. It is not perverted. It is love. And it is ours.







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