Jeremy Renner, Ruth Wilson Prove Sexist Double Standard at Golden Globes

by Julian Spivey
A double standard was on full display on Sunday night during the telecast of the 72nd annual Golden Globe Awards when it comes to men talking about women and women talking about men.

The controversy started when Oscar-nominated actor Jeremy Renner and Jennifer Lopez presented an award together and Renner remarked to Lopez “you got the Globes, too” while looking down at her exposed cleavage. It was obviously not one of Renner’s finest moments and frankly a little cringe-worthy in its embarrassing lack of wit.

Renner’s remark instantly burnt up social media sites like Twitter with a mixture of stupidity consisting from people praising Renner for his line to those calling him a sexist.

Within less than an hour of the remark an article (actually you can’t call it that, it’s merely a paragraph and copied and pasted tweets about the incident) was posted by Salon.com in which “journalist” Anna Silman referred to Renner as a “pervy uncle.”

To be honest, I didn’t have a problem with people giving Renner hell for his comment, because it was stupid. It wasn’t until later when actress Ruth Wilson did essentially the same thing in her acceptance speech after winning the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a TV Drama for her role in Showtime’s “The Affair” and got away without a smidge of complaints that I was angered and realized a double standard applied.

During Wilson’s acceptance speech she complemented co-star Dominic West’s backside by saying, “your ass is something of great beauty.” The social media, Salon and the rest of the Internet was crickets. Well, actually many women took to Twitter to complement Wilson for complementing West’s nice rear. Earlier many of these same women probably rolled their eyes at Renner’s remark.

It was a clear sign that a man can’t publically admire a woman’s body without being deemed sexist, where as a woman can admire a man’s body and receive absolutely no backlash whatsoever.

I didn’t like Wilson’s remark any more than I did Renner’s, but didn’t necessarily take issue with either until I saw the double standard. The problem is you can’t have it both ways. They are either both sexist or not.    

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