Gwyneth Paltrow is great at connecting with people. Like that time she said she has it harder than working mom’s because they have routines and she has to jet off to location shoots 3 months out of the year. Mothers applauded her candor (no they didn’t). Or that time at Re/Code’s Code Conference where she compared reading snide comments about herself online to going through war. Soldiers saluted her for her bravery. Yep, that didn’t happen either. In fact, the exact opposite happened.
Army Green Beret Bryan Sikes wrote an open letter to Paltrow on ClashDaily about her harrowing experiences dealing with Internet trolls. It is everything you want an open letter to Gwyneth Paltrow to be.
To Miss Paltrow,
I’d first like to start out by saying how terrible I feel for you and all your friends that on a daily basis have to endure mean words written by people you don’t know. I can only imagine the difficulty of waking up in a 12,000 square foot Hollywood home and having your assistant retrieve your iPhone, only to see that the battery is low and someone on twitter (the social media concept that you and all of your friends contribute to on an hourly basis to feed your ego and narcissistic ways), has written a mean word or 2 about you. You’ve hit the nail on the head, war is exactly like that. You should receive a medal for the burden you have carried on your shoulders due to these meanies on social media.
You said, “Its almost like, how in war, you go through this bloody dehumanizing thing and then something is defined out of it.” I could see how you, and others like you in “the biz”, could be so insecure and mentally weak that you could pair the difficulty of your life on twitter to my brothers who have had their limbs ripped off and seen their friends shot, blown up, burned and disfigured, or wake up every morning in pain – while just starting the day is a challenge. How about our wives? The ones that sign on to be there for us through thick and thin, that help us to shake the hardships of war upon our return? And do all this while being mothers to our kids, keeping bills in order because we are always gone, and keeping our lives glued together. They do all this, by the way, without a team of accountants, nanny’s, personal assistants, and life coaches. Yeah, reading a mean tweet is just like all that.
You know what is really “dehumanizing”, Miss Paltrow? The fact that you’d even consider that your life as an “A-list” celebrity reading internet comments could even compare to war and what is endured on the battlefield. You and the other “A-listers” that think like you are laughable. You all have actually convinced yourselves that you in some way face difficulty on a regular basis. Let me be the first to burst your bubble: a long line at Starbucks, your driver being 3 minutes late, a scuff mark on your $1200 shoes and a mean tweet do not constitute difficulty in the eyes of a soldier.
Understand me when I say this: war does not define me. It is a chapter in my life that helped shaped me. Being a husband and father is what defines me. Remember, sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never…be close to what war is.
Well, la-di-dee, Mr. Green Beret. Tell me. Have you ever stood in line at a Starbucks? As a celebrity? The amount of people that have the nerve to walk up to you and ask, “Hey, are you Gwyneth Paltrow?,” is just mind-blowing. It’s like, why are you talking to me? Don’t you know my time is more valuable than yours? Please, turn around and order your venti half-decaf mocha whatever peasant drink. I have a 10 am pilates sesh to get to.