I was a teenager in the 1980’s, and as impossible as it might now sound, I did not think Meryl Streep was particularly attractive.<\/p>\n
How could that be?<\/p>\n
Look at her.<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n She’s stunning.<\/p>\n I, of course, had the blunt interests of a boy who knew nothing about women or sex– although I was very interested in both– and I simply accepted Hollywood’s casual objectification of these mysteries. I didn’t know somebody was attractive unless Hollywood signalled to me that they were, something they usually did by a display of nudity. And so the promise of Jessica Lange, Kim Basinger or Jamie Lee Curtis taking off their top in some accessible, high velocity movie was simply too much for me to resist.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Streep, who even at a young age seemed to be playing adults rather than sex toys for naive adolescents, was cast in the sort of films that my parents might be interested in, in \u201cprestige\u201d films, and even though she was of the same general age as all the other celebrities I lusted after, she was stood apart from them, a European cousin, or something.<\/p>\n As an adult I came to love Meryl Streep. Not so much for her acting, which was always somehow obscured for me by her reputation for \u201cacting,\u201d but for her presence. Talented, charismatic and beautiful, she’s also fantastically articulate and charming, and like everybody else I was super keen to hear her speak at the Golden Globes.<\/p>\n Her speech was widely celebrated.<\/p>\n Meryl Streep, Hollywood’s single-combat hero, called to our better angels, and as we sat there listening it was as if the Stature of Liberty herself was speaking. Expecting to love every word of it, I was surprised to discover that I did not.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Although she might have been joking when she referred to the roomful of beautiful, insanely wealthy and adored people sitting before her as, \u201cThe most vilified segment of American society,\u201d it made me roll my eyes . Whether she intended it with any irony or not is unclear, but the thrust of her argument was that Hollywood, full of outsiders and foreigners, was representative of some sort of scrappy refugee success story rather than a consumerist ideal of near-unattainable privilege. She continued, saying that if Trump had his way, all America would have left would be football and mixed martial arts– and as she said this, her voice rising in certainty, finger wagging, she admonished, \u201cWhich are not the arts!\u201d<\/p>\n The home crowd cheered.<\/p>\n I don’t know.<\/p>\n I had thought I was the home crowd, too, but was I supposed to believe that actors were rescuing America from the things that the people who lived there liked? That football and MMA were unworthy to watch unless they were recreated in movie format starring celebrities?<\/p>\n