Remember last year when Sarah Jessica Parker was seen sans mole and everyone freaked out? (A quick google search of "SJP mole" will provide enough results for you to refresh your memory.) Sarah Jessica Parker finally addressed her decision to remove her mole on David Letterman (video).In the interview, Parker claims her decision to remove the mole wasn't planned far in advance - that she never had objections to it but she just didn't care for it. Parker recalled that a woman approached her on the beach saying, "I'm so sorry but I don't know why you did that! That was your signature!"
Sarah reflected, "My mole was my signature? Isn't my brain my signature?" She admits that all she could think about for the next 15 minutes was that she may have made a terrible mistake.
While this is sort of a funny story it illustrates that women's bodies (celebrity or not) are often regarded as belonging to the public. The co-optation of women's bodies is apparent from just a cursory glance at the magazines at the supermarket check-out. The covers are filled with headlines reporting who is pregnant, who dropped the baby weight, who had plastic surgery and so on. It is clear that we are a nation obsessed with the changes in the bodies of women we sexualize.
The comments made by the woman at the beach are indicative of how much the public invests in celebrity bodies. Recall the public reaction when Jennifer Grey got a nose job or when Keri Russell cut her hair short. Both women experienced EXTREME backlash over their choice to modify their appearances. Grey had difficulty landing new acting jobs and Russell was essentially blamed for the huge drop in ratings for the series "Felicity". Consequently new policies were created that required hairstyle changes to be approved by network executives.
This begs the question, to what extent do women have ownership of their bodies?
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