Whoooooooops You Are Hugging a Rapist

[Trigger warning for rape culture; Polanski stuff.]

This is the worst thing I have seen all day. It's a picture of actress Kate Winslet hugging and kissing director Roman Polanski at the premiere of their new movie, God of Carnage, about which I wrote previously here.

It's not fair to hold women to a higher standard of principled intolerance of rape culture, and I really try not to do that, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't find it less comprehensible to me when women literally embrace an admitted rapist of other women.

And Winslet is, in truth, a particular disappointment to me because she has, in the past, been so vocal about issues surrounding body image, weight, and the industry tricks used to synthetically perfectify famous women. It's tough to see a woman who is so clever and outspoken on the artifice of beauty designed to make people feel awful about their bodies be so profoundly indifferent to a rape culture designed to facilitate the abuse of those same bodies.

That is my thoughtful, measured, intellectual response to looking at that picture. And this is my unthoughtful, visceral, lip-curling response to looking at that picture: You're gross, Kate Winslet. Yuck.