Ashley Judd speaks out against the harsh words directed at her “puffy” face when she was battling a sinus infection last month.

The actress explains in a Daily Beast essay that she typically ignores anything written or spoken about her, but colleagues and friends urged her to listen to what was being said. What she discovered were cruel accusations that she had gotten plastic surgery because her face appeared to be “puffy.”

She chose to address the speculations and accusations because “they were pointedly nasty, gendered, and misogynistic and embodies what all girls and women in our culture, to a greater or lesser degree, endure every day, in ways both outrageous and subtle.”

She was further upset when she realized women were joining the ongoing “disassembling of my appearance.” She feels an additional betrayal from those whom she considered to be professional friends.

She feels the obsession with women’s faces and bodies is abnormal and yet is becoming the norm in society. “We are unable at times to identify ourselves as our own denigrating abuers, or as abusing other girls and women.”
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