Nicole Kidman and Feminism

Actress, Nicole Kidman recently address congress as part of her goodwill ambassadorial role for UNIFEM, where she claimed that films had had some negative impact on women, especially their portrayal of women as “weak sex objects.”

However she has come under fire by some for making those comments and yet in one of her most famous roles she played a Parisian prostitute. This prompts the question that if women want to be taken seriously, should we ignore and block ourselves away from anything remotely sexual so as not to be seen as solely sexual objects?

I think the problem Kidman’s critics had with her comments was that they were unable to differentiate between “weak sex objects” and women who have sex. To me it would seem obvious that Kidman’s role in Moulin Rouge would be anything other than a “weak sex object”, because although her primary role as a prostitute was to “please” the other male characters, she was fully aware of it and used it to her advantage. She was not a character that was suffering because of circumstances pushed on her, but a character making the best of the situation she was in.

But of course, she was still a character that depended on men. For all her strength, it was how she made her living. And maybe it is this contradiction that Kidman’s critics struggled with.

I personally haven’t seen all of Kidman’s films, so I can’t comment on her career as a whole but from Moulin Rouge I would suggest that she isn’t a hypocrite. I would suggest that to completely ignore any relationships with men or to suggest that women being paid by men is wrong is just as damaging as suggesting that women are just weak sex objects. It is when women are seen as objects that need men because they can’t defend or think for themselves it becomes damaging.