Dawn French: Women came close to equality ... then turned into Jessica Rabbits instead
DAWN French has said women came close to equality but ‘buggered it up’ by becoming Jessica Rabbits.
The animated sex symbol from the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit has an exaggerated, ultra-curvy figure plus over-sized lips and eyes.
The comedian and actress compared the character to the current trend for big lips, ‘Kardashian shapes’ shown off by the reality TV stars and a tan.
Miss French, 64, said she feels for her daughter and girls growing up today who feel pressure to achieve an ‘impossible’ version of physical perfection.
‘I cannot entirely love perfect people,’ she added. ‘I cannot understand why people only want to show us [how perfect they are]. It makes me sad actually, especially with young people.
‘I feel for my own daughter and Jennifer’s [Saunders’] daughters – and all the daughters – feeling like they’ve got to have the big lips and they’ve got to be orange and that they’ve got to have lashes on all the time.
‘And that they’ve got to have Kardashian shapes. Impossible stuff.
Whereas their flawed real beauty is just heavenly – it’s bliss. It’s bliss. I would love us to creep back to that.’
On the Joe Black Meets podcast, she continued: ‘ And after all the fights women have had to be anywhere near equal [to men]. We’ve kind of gone and buggered it all up at the last minute by becoming Jessica Rabbits.’
Miss French, who has previously told of her weight loss struggles, has daughter Billie, 30, with her first husband Sir Lenny Henry.
Her close friend and collaborator Miss Saunders has three daughters – Ella, 36, Beattie, 35, and Freya, 31 – with comedian Ade Edmondson.
The Vicar of Dibley star also opened up about having to fight to be taken seriously in publishing, claiming she has rallied against suggestions to have cosy ‘girly’ front covers featuring cupcakes or kitten heels.
The author of four novels, she said: ‘That was not what the writing was. And that’s not who I am either. So I fought and fought to have very plain covers with one plain little image.
‘It’s an effort to say “take me seriously”. Some of this book will be funny but take me seriously.’
‘Flawed real beauty is just heavenly’