What She Should Have Said

A newspaper, last month, asked me to write a fake acceptance speech for whomever I thought would win an Oscar. I chose Charlize Theron because “Monster” was a phenomenal film and she was the reason for that phenomenon.

Here is what I wished Charlize Theron would have said:

I would like first to thank Aileen Wuornos for allowing me to tell her story, to step inside her body, to eventually learn how to become her, how to not be afraid anymore, as she ceased to be afraid, how to take back her self, her life, or at least attempt to. Perhaps what she did was terrible, but not so much more than what had been done to her, and ultimately her execution evened the score.

Thank you to the Academy for acknowledging this woman’s story told without being softened through the male gaze. On the screen, we have few stories told from a woman’s perspective. We are usually wives, mothers, girlfriends, an appendage, an afterthought, a solace, a distant and unattainable beauty, a graceful but silent presence to a male protagonist. We begin to think there is no other way to be a woman in our society.

It is motherhood, maidenhood and monsterhood. Thank you for letting me choose the latter. Thank you for the opportunity to show the beauty beneath the beast, that underneath the Medusa, lies the Madonna as well. For allowing her to stand alone, as so few women in cinema have done. For rewarding a story and a social commentary that did not uplift the spirit, but rather shed light upon a truth, that illuminates that fear, isolation and violation that most women have experienced at one time or another. For this – all thanks.

But especially, thank you for those prosthetic teeth.