Actress and HIV education and prevention advocate, Ashley Judd, wrote a response to the onslaught of negative media attention she has been receiving about her body. Here’s the first paragraph to her response:

The Conversation about women’s bodies exists largely outside of us, while it is also directed at (and marketed to) us, and used to define and control us. The Conversation about women happens everywhere, publicly and privately. We are described and detailed, our faces and bodies analyzed and picked apart, our worth ascertained and ascribed based on the reduction of personhood to simple physical objectification. Our voices, our personhood, our potential, and our accomplishments are regularly minimized and muted.

Continue reading Judd’s Response to Patriarchal Media and Beliefs.

Judd speaks perfectly to the patriarchy and misogyny that defines our culture and shapes how we view, speak about and treat women, and proposes questions to help us think of ways to create a counter culture. The Love Warrior Community is all about cultivating a counter culture that creates and publishes empowering, uplifting and body positive media.

Judd speaks clearly and intelligently to this issue. If we need a spark to help us ignite conversation about how we define our self-worth, happiness and beauty, if we need a spark to awaken people to the patriarchal underlining that’s visible in mainstream media, if we need a spark to impassion you, me, all of us to change our culture and to create a counter culture where our body doesn’t define our worth — let this article be that spark.

Let us use this conversation to analyze, reflect on and question our culture’s beliefs and our own thoughts.

Read Judd’s Response to Patriarchal Media and Beliefs.

Share this article, tweet it, post it on Facebook, talk about it with friends and leave your thoughts below. Let’s not only start a conversation, but ignite it.

Like my mom, Michelle Minero says, we can change our culture because we are our culture.

- Emelina Minero