As many fans wait for the 5th and final season of Stranger Things, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is smashing the box office. Winona Ryder is back in the spotlight, but she has never been silent. She impacted Generation X with important lessons about metal health and early adulthood with movies like Girl Interrupted and Reality Bites. This is by no means the height of her esteemed career. A career that has earned her 25 industry awards after 75 nomination. But they were the films that made a generation stop and think.
Born in late 1971 she is truly Gen X. In her current resurgence surrounded by Gen Z young actors she shows us the proper path to speaking out, being an advocate, a friend, and a mentor. Her powerful, talented, and outspoken presence leaves us with a few questions as she holds a mirror to Generation X. If we were on a movie set, would we be her partner in helping the younger generation? Or would we be what she is protecting them from? If we were to meet her in a coffeehouse, would we be told, rightfully, to get fucked?
The Coffeehouse Bully Confrontation
There is a famous story that makes the rounds about Winona Ryder on social media. Former journalist Ivy Guiler gave us tools to search for truth online in her guest article right here in Gen X Watch. Just like memes spread voraciously by my generation, there are factual inaccuracies that spread faster than glitter at a craft fair.
The original story of her facing off with a school bully as an adult is not as salacious as the memes and short vids. But it is even more poignant.
The August 2000 issue of Harper’s Bazaar features a 6 page interview with Winona by journalist Henry Alford. From the article and her own words, the bully confrontation in a coffeehouse is as follows:
“I was wearing an old Salvation Army–shop boy’s suit. I had a hall pass, so I went to the [girls’] bathroom. I heard people saying, “Hey, f—ot.” They slammed my head into a locker. I fell to the ground and they started to kick the shit out of me. I had to have stitches. The school kicked me out, not the bullies. Years later, I went to a coffee shop in Petaluma, and I ran into one of the girls who’d kicked me, and she said, “Winona, Winona, can I have your autograph?” and I said, “Do you remember me? I went to Kenilworth. Remember how, in seventh grade, you beat up that kid?” and she said, “Kind of,” and I said, “That was me. Go fuck yourself!””
For any teenager who was a victim of bullying, this is a secret dream many of us had. That one day we would be in the enviable position like Winona and Avril Lavigne’s Sk8terBoi. But we have to ask ourselves, do we deserve the autograph or the chastisement?
Toxic forgiveness is a weapon wielded against victims. My adult child and others who work on the front lines of Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault have told me that they are getting away from the language of forgiveness and this idea that victims need it to heal. And I am all about it. And in the coffeehouse moment Winona shows us something important.
In standing up for oneself it is valid to forgive those who have hurt us. It is also valid to say no to that, make your stand, and move on with your life.
If you meet that bully in the coffeehouse of life, the choice is yours. There is no wrong response if the response maintains your dignity and self worth.
But those moments we all have like this with unusual courage are not the totality of who we are. It is a moment and we often define others by moments. She has had a lot of moments, and like this one, there is hyperbolic legend and there is the nuanced truth. We are judged for our moments and not our core and it is the core of her kindness and self advocacy that makes her a hero.
Childhood Performer in an Adult World
“I have been reviewed since I was a kid. I went through my adolescence with adults reviewing me, writing about my performances. No kid should have to go through that.” This is from audio of an interview Winona did once. In prior Femme Friday Features we have written about performers who were young adolescents. Women who faced the cruel nature of Hollywood press and our collective desire for the salacious forgetting that these are young women with real experiences and feelings. Brooke Shields and Jodie Foster are two that we’ve written on.
Amazing talents who were judged for their looks, sexualized by adults, and raked over the coals with speculation on every aspect of their private lives on display for adults to judge and criticize. Knowing what this life is like, in her work on the hit series Stranger Things she has found herself working with Gen Z talents. The show exploded into popularity and thrust these children into the spotlight. She knew what they were experiencing and about to experience.
In a June 2022 story of Harpers Bazaar on Winona, Stranger Things co-creator Ross Duffer spoke to her experience. How it became advocacy and mentorship to her young castmates.
“She’s talked to the kids about what celebrity is like and how the press can be and the anxiety and confusion that comes along with celebrity. I think she’s really helped them. I know she’s specifically helped Millie [Bobby Brown, who plays Eleven on the show] a lot to work through that. And that’s something that no one else can help with, really, because so few people have experienced it. It’s not something I understand. It’s not something that, you know, even a parent would understand.”
In Bang Showbiz, then 15 year old Stranger Things old castmate Noah Schnapp spoke to her mentorship in season 2 even making herself available to the kids through text.
“I first remember texting Winona about some scenes and she was talking through it and telling me how she did it […]She was a child actor so she understands a lot of things I’m doing.”
She is known not only for her mentorship but also her kindness in an industry that will throw the kind under the bus. On set, and off set. Perhaps knowing what it is to be treated unkindly has formed her dedication to kindness, maybe it was her hippie parents, or maybe it is something she learned in therapy as she addresses her mental health. Regardless, in a life where almost every setback she has had has been documented and often at the hands of others offering her no quarter or mercy for being a human being, she remains kind.
Never Silent Even if No One Listens
Winona has suffered with anxiety since she was 12. While she does not often speak of herself and she is not a conventional advocate, she has been consistently candid regarding her personal struggles with anxiety and depression. This has led to stigma and also offered hope to her female fans.
In 1999 Winona spoke candidly about her struggles with anxiety and depression. In an August 2016 interview with The New Yorker she speaks to how that interview combined with her small size led to a “crazy” stigma about her that is impossible to shake all these years later.
The same interview she also speaks to the press and media stigmatizing emotions that women have.
“I’m so sick of people shaming women for being sensitive or vulnerable. It’s so bizarre to me.”
And…
“I wish I could unknow this, but there is a perception of me that I’m supersensitive and fragile. And I am supersensitive, and I don’t think that that’s a bad thing. To do what I do, I have to remain open.”
Sensitive, anxious, and so many other terms are considered negative or weak or crazy. For those who relate, one excerpt of the interview resonated with me, learning what not to speak about in public and navigating what you want to say verses what you can say.
She learned long ago that there were a million things she shouldn’t say — and relearned this more recently when she was promoting the indie film Experimenter last year: “I talked about all this stuff, Stanley Milgram and ‘the banality of evil,’ and they didn’t print a word of it. It was all just ‘Rise to fame! Fall! Scandal! Johnny Depp!’ ” It’s not surprising, then, that Ryder might decide against saying most of the things she thinks to say. But as a result, talking to her can feel like watching someone try to drive when every single road has been closed. What’s fascinating is not that she stops in the middle of the road but that she keeps trying to get somewhere at all. Somehow she never comes across as closed or unfriendly or robotic in the slightest.
And it is in this trait that she inspires others and offers hope.
“I don’t regret opening up about what I went through [with depression], because, it sounds really cliché, but I have had women come up to me and say, ‘It meant so much to me.’ It means so much when you realize that someone was having a really hard time and feeling shame and was trying to hide this whole thing…”
Winona Ryder to Me
Her breakout role was in Lucas which released in 1986. Many scenes were filmed in the Chicago Burbs and I got to be an uncredited extra in some of those scenes. In one of the crowd scene days we got to have brief interactions in a very long day with some of the cast members.
It does not matter who was standoffish or perceived as rude that day. We were all kids and most of us do not know what pressures they were facing filming a major motion picture. But my brief encounters with Winona Ryder and Kerri Green was nothing but kindness and, in her case, a level of shyness and authenticity that I related to. As she became not only a huge star that made her the poster girl of my generation in the 80s and the 90s for anyone who felt quirky or different, I remembered that kind person who was just like me. A nervous teenager in a room full of too many people.
Though it would have been wonderful to have had a conversation with her that day about anxiety and depression and image stigma back then, in some ways we have. I’ve read her words and seen her interviews when she spoke about these things. And, encouraged by her example, I have earned the nickname Fatherman from my child’s Gen Z peers by being there for them and relating to them and supporting them.
These people who entertain us on the stage and the screen, especially the young, are not as respected as they should be. And despite all of the pressures and every perceived error being there for all the world to judge based on a stigmatized and small standard, some of them get up, persevere, and navigate the minefield of public life and still have moments to be kind, to inspire, and dare to speak what is on their minds and in their hearts even if it is not heard. Sometimes the right woman or child hears something and it gives them the strength to tarry on for one more day.
She’s an amazing actor with a body of work that is wonderful to enjoy. She’s also a good and kind and thoughtful person. That is enough and should be more than enough.
It is good to see her on the ‘A’ list again. My generation needs more like her. Perhaps her example can help us set a better tone in our own interactions with others and ourselves.
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