Feminism. What would we do without it?
All sorts of bad things, obviously. Like mourning a beloved movie star in unapproved ways. Claire Landsbaum, The Cut:
Princess Leia’s status as the catalyst of male sexual awakening has been alluded to countless times in pop culture. On Friends, when Ross confesses to Rachel that he had a sexual fantasy about bikini-clad Leia, Phoebe assures her it’s a rite of passage… And on Tuesday, Steve Martin helpfully reminded us of this fact in a now-deleted tweet when he said that for him as a young man, “she was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen.”
This is bad, according to Landsbaum, because we should remember everything about Carrie Fisher except “the way she looked onscreen.” Praising her intelligence and wit is fine, but her beauty? That’s terrible. No wonder Mr. Martin deleted his heresy against feminism.
Let this be a lesson to you, Steve Martin and all you other cis white males: The next time a movie star dies, don’t you dare mention her looks. That’s sexist. It’s misogynist. It’s rape culture.
Besides, she didn’t look that good.