Susan Sarandon, we don't deserve you. But thank you for being a beautiful gift to the world anyway.
To bring you up to speed, the 69 year-old Oscar winning actress and newly named L'Oreal spokeswoman recently stepped out at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. She'd been nominated for "The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe" and was also on hand to deliver the In Memoriam tributes, notably to her former costar and "dear friend" David Bowie. Attending with her were daughter Eva Amurri and son Jack Robbin. The ladies rocked the red carpet flaunting their assets — Amurri in a dramatic cutout royal blue gown, and Sarandon in a white Max Mara jacket and trousers that revealed a black bra underneath. This was definitely not your Hillary-style pantsuit. Let's just note here that for the record, Susan Sarandon is an objectively gorgeous individual whose beauty could smoke a great number of women half her age. More importantly, though, it's her body and her life and she can dress any way she damn well pleases.
Naturally, though, the sight of a female comfortable in her skin and marching to her own beat is deeply offensive to certain sad armchair critics. Elsewhere that evening, "Modern Family" actress Ariel Winter found herself the object of scrutiny for showing up in a strapless gown that revealed the scars from her recent breast reduction surgery. But Sarandon was soon subject to a different kind commentary — from Damon Wayans Jr. opining that "Susan Sarandon's titties look 32 years younger than her" to blogger Alexa Lardieri huffing, "Sarandon isn’t the only too-old-to-wear-that celeb who has bared it all on the red carpet or gone over the top in inappropriate situations. Other actresses have tried holding onto their youth by wearing outfits that no one wants to see them in."
But most shocked of all was full time ghoul and troll Piers Morgan, who fumed on Twitter, "Very tacky, Ms Sarandon." He then went further, asking, "Would Susan Sarandon wear this to a funeral? No. It was thus horribly inappropriate for an In Memoriam tribute. No problem with Ms Sarandon showing off her cleavage. Big problem with her doing it for 'In Memoriam' tribute. No, what's tacky is deliberately flaunting your breasts on TV for publicity, during a tribute to dead stars." (Yeah, I'm sure David Bowie would have been outraged.)
But then, like the queen she is, Sarandon offered on Thursday a #tbt image "dedicated to @piersmorgan" — a hubba hubba still from her performance in "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," a movie she spent the majority of clad in just a bra and slip. Morgan lamely attempted a witty retort via the shirtless image from his 2009 Burger King ad, dedicating it to Sarandon. But it is Sarandon, as ever, who has the last word.
Because she has literally zero effs to give in what Twitter historians are already calling #cleavagegate, Sarandon began retweeting photos other women — and men — were sending of themselves in happy, shame-free "cleavage solidarity." As one man put it, "I finally have an excuse to send @SusanSarandon a pic of the ole moobs." There were lady boobs. Man boobs. Drag queen boobs. Hairy chests. Young perky ones and older, softer ones. Boobs that have been through it. "These girls fed 2 babies; survived breast cancer," one woman wrote, adding, "STFU haters."
But though poor fuddy duddy Morgan declared Friday that this was "the day feminism ate itself," what he failed to understand was that no one actually cares what he thinks. And while he retweeted an amateur Twitter philosopher decreeing, "So feminists are objectifying themselves to prove a point to @piersmorgan it's like a vegetarian eating meat to spite a meat eater," I'd say it's more like a former editor of the Daily Mirror calling anybody else tacky.
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