Much of the real world may have it in for Kate Winslet after her embarrassing Golden Globes acceptance speeches, but the celebrity aristocracy have naturally rallied round. Except they're fixated on another set of globes in Winslet's possession (copyright: every tabloid). On Tuesday, in the course of an interview with the actor on her chat show, Oprah Winfrey launched into a panegyric about Winslet's breasts.
"I love the fact that you have real breasts," Winfrey announced. "Because in all the breast scenes, your breasts do what real breasts do. There's that wonderful thing, you know, if you are a woman, you're lying on your back, your breasts they go to – they part – but if you look at a woman with not real breasts, their breasts are sticking straight up. That's how you know. God bless your real breasts!"
How do you respond to a compliment - if that's what it is - like that? (And how many times can the word "breasts" be used in five sentences?) Winslet has had some practice. Halle Berry recently mused: "Kate Winslet is always naked, sitting on a toilet, or running buck naked. I want to be the kind of actress who can really be comfortable with my body like that." To which Winslet replied: "That's so amazing! That is worth the pain! I am thrilled to hear someone like Halle say something like that. But what I would want to say to her is, 'Well, you can,' because all I do is say, 'I don't give a fuck!'"
Sadly, her response to Camille Paglia's much earlier acclaim for her chest has gone unrecorded. The academic and wind-up merchant opened her coverage of the 1998 Oscars (kind of a proto live blog for Salon) by declaring "Kate Winslet of Titanic ... should get the Oscar for best bust. Anyone with those floaters doesn't need a lifeboat." (She lost to Helen Hunt that year - for best actress rather than best bust, that is.)
This brings a few random thoughts to my mind. First, if Winslet really doesn't "give a fuck" about showing her body au naturel, why did she put herself through "pain" in the first place? Second, is it any more insulting to leer at a woman's breasts than to drench her in praise merely because she gets them out on a regular basis despite not having had them "done"? Third, if Halle Berry isn't comfortable with her body, what hope does that give to the rest of us (the charitable response) and shouldn't she get a grip (the non-charitable)? And fourth, since when was it called a "breast scene"?
