So, I’m currently reading my backlog of magazines, and last night I was reading the December 10th edition of US (why do they even bother to put dates on the stupid things, I wonder – how can there be a magazine out for a date that hasn’t occurred yet?), and US must be reaching, because this particular issue’s cover story was Women of the Year – Courage, Love, Tears, Compassion.
I get to page 46 and see that Nicole Kidman is the first Woman of the Year they’re listing. Why is Nicole Kidman Woman of the Year, you wonder? Because she sang and danced and played opposite Ewan McGregor in Moulin Rouge? Because she got to kiss (I assume; I haven’t actually seen the movie yet) Ewan McGregor? Because she solved that whole pesky world-peace issue? No, none of these. Nicole Kidman is a Woman of the Year because, and I’ll quote the headline, "For making it on her own."
Tom Cruise (and I think we all know how I feel about HIM) leaves her high and dry, stunning her and us (and most importantly ME), doesn’t seem to give a shit when she miscarries his child, she doesn’t roll over and die, and that makes Nicole Kidman a Woman of the Year.
You know what? Bobby Sue in Kansas, whose husband left HER high and dry with their three kids, ages 5, 7 and 9, so he could run off with the local skank ho, and so Bobby Sue has to work three jobs just to make ends meet and pay the rent on their one-bedroom apartment, and has no health or life insurance, and worries the entire time she’s working at the diner that her 9 year-old will burn down the apartment trying to heat up some fucking SPAGHETTI-OS for his siblings, and can only come home for ten minutes between the end of her shift at the diner and the beginning of her shift at the hospital, to hug her kids and make sure they’re all alive and try to talk to them for a few moments and tell them that she loves them and beg them to stay in the apartment and don’t answer the door if anyone knocks, and you have my number at work, right? Call me before you go to sleep, and prays to god that no one calls the fucking DHS, and won’t be home until midnight until her kids are (pleasegod) sound asleep, and the five year-old continually asks where daddy is and has started to wet the bed at night, and the 7 year-old is such a good kid that she just gets lost in the shuffle, in fact, they’re all good kids and she knows that this life is a disservice to them, and sometimes she’d like to curl up in a ball and just give up, but she CAN’T, because you CANNOT DO THAT, you don’t just curl up in a ball and give up when you have three children to raise, and so Bobby Sue WOULD LIKE TO KNOW WHERE HER FUCKING WOMAN OF THE YEAR AWARD IS, AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DOES IT COME WITH ANY MONEY, OR MAYBE A PART-TIME NANNY?
Jesus Christ. Women – and men – from one end of this country to the other are left every fucking day, and they don’t throw up their hands and die. They go on because there is no choice, because that’s what life is about, taking the shit you’re dealt and going on. And some of them have good support structures and some of them do not, and yet they still go on. And they don’t have millions, and they don’t have fame, they don’t have magazines to slaver over every detail of their fabulous I-managed-to-go-on life, and they struggle, and they go on. No awards. No magazine covers. No millions of dollars – and please, for the love of god, do not DARE email me and tell me that your heart breaks the same whether you’re a millionaire or have 29 cents in your pocket until payday in two weeks – it is INFINITELY fucking easier to get through life with money behind you, and anyone who whines the opposite should shut the fuck up and send me their entire fortune this very second. When you have money, you have the time to give your broken heart the attention and care it needs instead of working 60 hours a week and worrying endlessly about your children and how you’re going to survive from paycheck to paycheck.
And when you think of the thousands of people who will be going through this holiday season without the spouses, children, siblings, and friends killed in one fell swoop by unexpected acts of terrorism, the fact that Nicole Kidman is actually "making it on her own" is not so terribly worthy of a Woman of the Year award.
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