Eva Longoria has enjoyed a pretty successful career thus far despite not being all that good at acting. While she started as a model, she’s since branched out into TV and movies and is pretty well-known for being, well… hot. And while, sure, she’s part of an industry that values youth, thinness and good looks, Eva doesn’t want to hear your bullshit about girls feeling inadequate and having pressure to be perfect. After all, it’s not her fault she’s so pretty – it’s your fault for not teaching your kids that they can’t be pretty too.
From Parade:
I don’t think you can put the full blame on images. The responsibility lies in how you raise your child. I grew up surrounded by women: three sisters, nine aunts, 20 female cousins. They were my role models—smart, educated, ambitious, and very traditional at the same time. I saw my mom as a working woman who also wanted to raise children and take care of the home. Today it’s much harder to balance all of that, because everybody’s role models are celebrities. I didn’t grow up with that.
Every time I speak to kids, they say, “I want to be famous like you.” And I reply, “Then you should become the doctor who cures cancer. If you’re extremely successful in any career, you’ll become famous. But fame should not be your goal.”
This seems a bit all over the place to me. Eva admits that her generation wasn’t as into celebrity (which… it definitely was; it was just her family that wasn’t) before saying that it’s a parent’s responsibility to teach a child to go against culture. I agree to a degree – parents can really shape a child’s world view and should take that duty seriously and be invested in helping him or her become the best person they can be.
However, anyone who’s a parent also knows that kids sometimes go their own way regardless of what you teach them. If you have a 13-year-old and all her friends at school are in love with One Direction and Justin Bieber, it’s pretty rare that your kid’s gonna tell her friends, “Sorry, this is immature. We don’t know these boys and it’s not a good use of our time to worship celebrities!” I mean… really?
Anyhoo, I’m sorta just giving her a hard time here because I think it’s ignorant and obnoxious to say that the shit we see in magazines and on TV 24/7 have no affect on us – especially young girls. However, in actuality, I’m def into her telling kids to become doctors and scientists instead of actors. We have enough Hollywood idiots – we don’t need anymore.