The section that I highlighted and can’t figure out how to copy had to do with how Paltrow projects uncanny sense of pre-feminist and post-feminist expectations of women. The statement is made that she isn’t living up to some ideal because she has to. Point: She is the ideal. I believe the quote en francais is that every man wants the Madonna on his arm with the children in church and a whore in bed.

A great deal of my sanity came from deciding that as I was never naturally going to have long straight blond hair, an athletically lithe figure and be tall, I had to walk away from the whole grand delusion.

Paltrow is your basic princess, as is Ivanka Trump (who won’t even use her husband’s last name so bound is she to her daughterhood). Barbie is the proletarian version of the Princess. Its an archetype that plagues our culture. Right now it has me hating my hair. Not to worry, my hair is used to this.

But to get back to Paltrow and IT, the point is that a princess has no authority other than what she receives from her father or the culture or the masculine power structure to which she is completely beholden. IT had to shutter her fashion/life style business. What I noticed is that Paltrow has done basically the same thing with her career as an actor. She has one Oscar, from 20 years ago. She’s done little of note since that time other than play Pepper Potts in support of Robert Downey, Jr.’s Tony Stark/Iron Man. How is Paltrow any different from the legions of intelligent, capable talented women who score once and head back to the protective cocoon of successful motherhood and domestic partnership as opposed to even more heights of personal achievement?

Paltrow can step away from her current EWW status and go back to work as an actor. EWW is a bit beneath her, as it is any woman.