The rhetorics of Jodie Foster

Dear Jodie Foster,
You are a brave woman.

After doing some digging into the delightful character and Hollywood iconic actress, Jodie Foster, I found that what makes this Golden Globe Cecile B. Demille award recipient so unique is that her address to the millions of viewers is distractingly personal. I choose to say “distractingly” because all that Jodie Foster has strived to do, much of what she has come to signify in popular culture clashed with her speech.

It would be an understatement to say that Jodie Foster is a personal woman. Essentially, she has been coerced into keeping her live private once she began to show signs of her homosexual identity. She began to date ex-girlfriend Cydney Bernard in 1993 during a time when homosexuality among celebrities was best kept under wraps. During her speech she has her “coming-out-not” moment when she states, “I already did my coming out about 1,000 years ago back in the stone age, those very quaint days when a fragile young girl would open up to trusted friends and family and co-workers, and then gradually and proudly to everyone who knew her, to everyone she actually met.” It is little wonder why she strived so hard to keep her private life as low-key as possible during all of those years. For how would a huge Hollywood actress be received by a public in which homosexuality was, at the time, best kept in the closet?

Perhaps the nature of the Cecile B. Award she received was just that excuse she was looking for to make her long-awaited declaration. After all, the honorary award could be considered a stamp of approval for the actress for all her years of exceptional contribution to the field of movie making, no matter her personal beliefs.

Regardless, the public declaration of her sexual-orientation, her intimate declaration of love toward her ailing mother and her discussion of the nature of privacy among Hollywood icons is bested described as surprising due to her diligence in keeping her life as private as possible over all her years as an actress. Is this the beginning of an age of a new Jodie Foster? Time will only tell. Regardless, it was a woman of courage to take such a public stand as she did during that acceptance speech