Brave

We need to look at why so many women believe a man is going to save us. It’s not because of evidence of saving. I haven’t seen a lot of dudes on white stallions pulling up to single women’s homes. In fact, I have seen most women get on their own damn stallion. It’s just male-dominated society that snows us into not noticing it’s we women doing the saving. We are the white stallion and we have to wait for no one but ourselves.

You may think that what happens in Hollywood doesn’t affect you. You’re wrong. My darlings, who do you think is curating your reality? Who is showing you who and what you want to be?

Whatever is different about you is what makes you amazing. Others will try to homogenize you for their own comfort level, because God forbid discomfort. Fuck that. Do not bend yourself to make others feel taller.

And THAT is how you fall into an abusive relationship: when you start acting in a way so as not to upset the other person or set them off. You’ve given away control of your own life, bit by bit, bit by bit. It’s incremental, until one day, you have hidden so much of yourself you get lost.

In our as-seen-on-TV society, the simple fact is that what you have watched and consumed, from birth, has formed you and continues to form you. Even those who’ve opted out of its false reality have to stay vigilant to remain free from the lies and from the messages that do far more harm than they should. Because they are insidious, and they are everywhere.

Why does a man’s desire supersede my right to dignity? What makes certain men think their perversions are more important than a girl’s right to exist as a free human in society?

Since I and so many brave survivors have come forward, titans of every industry have toppled. We survivors have gained our power. We survivors are using our voices in record numbers. We cannot let up, and as hard as it is, we must continue to get even louder, to push even harder. We all count. We all matter. Here’s to freedom, yours and mine. Now go breathe fire.

Here’s the thing about cults: I see them everywhere. If you’re deep into the Kardashians, you’re in a cult. If you watch your favorite TV show and go online and you’re in chat rooms with everybody else who’s obsessed with that show and you’re breaking it down episode by episode, you’re in a cult. If you’re bingeing, scrolling, absorbing from one news source more than any other, especially if it happens to be fair and balanced, you are in a cult. You’re living your life through other people.

Women in the industry: Ladies, you need to step up and realize the men are never going to scoot aside for you/ they're not going to offer you a seat at their table, so build your own damn table. Figure it out, you can do it. In all other respects in your life, your a boss, right? So figure this out. You got this.

The truth of it is, the shame was not mine, and for all victims in similar situations, it is not ours. The shame is reserved for every creep who has ever touched us inappropriately. The shame is on the abuser, not the victim, not the survivor. It is tragic that so many of us have to survive this kind of crap, and I’m so sorry if it has happened to you.

Hollywood operates like the Mafia when it comes to protecting its own. Especially if your “own” is a rich white male. Yes, I said it. But here’s the thing, it’s true. I didn’t make it so, it just is. In other news, the sky is blue.

My life, as you will read, has taken me from one dangerous cult to another, one of the biggest cults of all: Hollywood. I say biggest because short of a nuclear bomb, Hollywood has the farthest reach.

Do not bend yourself to make others feel taller. When someone comes at you telling you what you are and slapping a label on you, simply ask them why. Why would you say that? Make THEM think.

I am writing this book because I want to have a real conversation with the public and most especially you. I am honored that my words will enter your consciousness and conscience, that my thoughts will rest in your mind. I take that responsibility seriously. Call what I’m doing a public service and you’d be correct. It is. Hollywood is a dirty town up to some dirty tricks. This is not a tell-all. This is a tell-it-how-it-is.

I’ve also been on the other side of the looking glass. Watching you. Studying you. Impersonating you. All of us in Hollywood, media, and advertising do. And you know what? We are really good at it. We have had it drilled into us how best to be marketed to you. How best to be sold to you. How to implant what “we” want into your brain, into your thoughts, into your wallet. And it works. You’re sold a fake reality all for the rock-bottom price of $14.

Very few sex symbols escape Hollywood with their minds intact, if they manage to stay alive at all.

We women have historically been trained to be pleasant at all times. We need to stop that and be authentic; justifiable anger is a part of that. Being angry is okay; no one is going to die if we women let our anger out in healthy ways. It’s more than okay for women and girls to have emotion that is their own and not connected to what a man does or society says.

To the writers who create how we see one another and ourselves: You are responsible. What you write forms the thoughts and self images of billions of humans. Take care with your words and your images. Grow up. Get smarter. Think deep.

If you don't read - 42 percent of US college graduates never read another book in their life after they graduate - entertainment and online media are where your thought are being formed. Those media products don't provide you with a mirror of your life, do they? Do you see yourself on that screen? Probably not, so why are these men in charge of the mirror in your mind? When people finally understand where 99 percent of their media is coming from, I hope the'll switch off or at least be aware of what they are seeing, choose wisely, and start harassing these studios until they fix their ways.

Thinking whatever is different about you must be stripped from you is the WRONG way to approach things. Thinking you must be homogenized for everybody else’s comfort level, because God forbid discomfort, is the WRONG way, too... Do not bend yourself to make others feel taller.

Theirs was a language I didn’t, and couldn’t, speak. They had concerns in life to which I couldn’t relate; my problems were about surviving. When you have really big, dark things happen to you, it takes a lot more to care about things. It felt like I was about eight thousand years old in a small person’s body, essentially an alien among those who understood traditional societal constructs.

When I hear someone say they are not creative, I immediately think, you poor thing, they got to you. At what point was your creativity stolen from you? How old were you when they homogenized your mind?Because that is what non-creative thinking is: homogenized though.

I think it's bizarre and tragic how society pushes us to say what we are because of the job we do. The question "What do you do?" really means what do they pay you for, as if that's your defining characteristic. Everything else is a "hobby." But those are also things you are and do. Just because you don't make money at it doesn't mean you're not doing it. It's as valid as going to the office, maybe more so.

Please take heed: when someone tries to insert himself into your life very quickly and rushes to tell you he loves you, that should be a big warning sign. And as much as you want to hear it, as you're hungry to be seen with a capital S, as much as you've been lonely and just waiting for this, understand that very often these are the men who will turn on you.

You may think it’s as simple as forking over hard-earned cash for a night out at the movies or paying a cable bill to be entertained. I’m here to tell you the price you are paying is much higher than you know. You are paying with your mind, your behavior, and your patterns. Things that should have no price tag.

I want to have a frank conversation about an inner sickness that I see few, if any, addressing: how and why Hollywood creates a f’d-up mirror for you to look in. How you are seeing yourself through your own eyes, but perhaps not your own mind. Hollywood affects your life in ways you may not even be aware of.

It's time men realized their semen isn't all that.

Being brave doesn't mean you are not scared, it just means you do the scary thing anyway.

That poor girl's been brainwashed into thinking her beauty is all she's worth, because from the time she was a little child she's been getting compliments about her beauty. And it becomes something you think you owe other people.