I'd never heard of Jones before. I had little or no interest in seeing the movie. Therefore I wasn't really paying attention.
However, I woke up just enough to prop one eye open when I heard she couldn't get somebody to design a dress for her to wear to her movie premiere or some other red carpet movie related event. I figured, like Jones herself probably figured, that she was having a problem getting designers to approach her like they run to dress other actresses because (1) she's very tall (2) she's not white, and (3) she's not built like a slightly overweight barbie doll like most actresses.
Re: The Dress Solution
She showed up. She spoke up. She conquered.
When she went public with the fact that the designers hadn't approached her, random designer A stepped up. She got a dress. She looked great.
I'm hoping her decision to stand up for herself broke a glass wall, if not a glass ceiling, for the next black actress -- because I am assuming that this was not the first time that happened to a black actress.
After the dress debacle, I went to listen to a little of her stand up just to get an idea of who she is. Then her little dress story fell into the background for me.
But now I've heard Jones's name over and over and over again, mostly because of the sexist and racist attacks against her.
While "Ghost Busters" was being promoted the racist memes got so bad that they temporarily drove her from twitter. There was one white man, an alt-right blogger named "Milo Yanniopoulos" who was actually banned from twitter for life as a result of leading the online harassment-- a type of ban that has happened before, but twitter doesn't do this too often.
The movie came and went with mediocre reviews. But the Leslie Jones continued to be attacked. Recently somebody hacked Jones and leaked nude photos of her. Sexist and misogynistic men ridiculed and blamed Leslie herself for the leak.
Maybe it's just me, but I've heard more about Jones than I've heard about the movie. The rancor and mean-spiritedness aimed at Jones have outlasted the movie. "Ghostbusters" has turned out to be one giant sociological lesson on just how targeted black women are when there are other subjects we could be discussing, like --
White movie executives, being what they are, they had Ernie Hudson, the original black character, play the only non-scientist of the ghostbuster group when the movie first came out in 1984. More than 30 years later, it is now 2016 and the black person, Leslie Jones, is still the only non-scientist on the team.
http://www.indiewire.com/2016/07/leslie-jones-the-ghostbusters-reboot-black-character-1201705359/
But I digress.
All this together should tend to make one wonder why the other women in "Ghostbusters" aren't taking this kind of abuse if a percentage of men hated the very idea of an all female remake.
[So do] "you know why they keep attacking Leslie? They keep attacking her because she’s a Black woman and think this makes her a “safe” target. I mean, why wouldn’t they think that? Historically, Black women have been cruelly and viciously attacked by white people. We have been victimized, brutalized, and vehemently attacked by men of every race. We have been belittled, ridiculed, and mocked at every turn.
And historically, we haven’t been defended, protected, or appreciated. These attacks happen and the only people who demand justice are Black women...
TaLynn
~TheEstablishment.co
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