Arts & Entertainment

Gwyneth Paltrow to Working Moms: You've Got it Easy Compared to Me

Part-time Amagansett resident Gwyneth Paltrow caused a stir—and a lot of eye-rolling—recently when she announced on her blog Goop that she and her husband Chris Martin were getting a divorce--or, as she put it, a "conscious uncoupling" (that's the eyerolling part).

But Paltrow didn't stop there. She went on to give an interview on the E! Network (the same folks who are bringing the Kardashians to the Hamptons,) in which she said that working mothers with office jobs had it easy compared to movie star moms such as herself who have to undergo the grueling rigors of working on a film set.

“I think it’s different when you have an office job, because it’s routine and, you know, you can do all the stuff in the morning and then you come home in the evening,” Paltrow said. “When you’re shooting a movie, they’re like, ‘We need you to go to Wisconsin for two weeks,’ and then you work 14 hours a day, and that part of it is very difficult. I think to have a regular job and be a mom is not as, of course there are challenges, but it’s not like being on set.”


Well, at least one working mom, Mackenzie Dawson, has taken exception to Paltrow's remarks, and she's put her thoughts into a scathingly tongue-in-cheek (and right on) open letter to the actress published in the New York Post.

As Dawson puts it early in the letter:

"'Thank God I don’t make millions filming one movie per year' is what I say to myself pretty much every morning as I wait on a windy Metro-North platform, about to begin my 45-minute commute into the city. Whenever things get rough, all I have to do is keep reminding myself of that fact. It is my mantra."

Dawson goes on to skewer the idea that working moms have so much time to themselves in the morning: "After my 6 a.m. wake-up, I have a lot of time to loll around, hopping in the shower and then throwing makeup on my face, hoping that I’ll have enough time to put my tights on before my son starts crying in his crib." And she lampoons the very idea of arriving home brimming with energy for yoga, meditation, online shopping for leopard-print short shorts, and cooking dinner "using one of the recipes you post on your lifestyle Web site, Goop: slow-cooked kale, pancetta and bread crumbs, anyone?"

As for those leopard-print pants: "If there’s one thing I look good in after having a child," Dawson writes, "it’s short-shorts."

What do you think, working moms? Do you have it easy compared to Gwyneth?


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