At 65, Jerry Hall has proven to be more than just a rich man’s hand candy, he’s a fiery feminist

If you’re anything like me, who might be called a Rolling Stones fan of a certain vintage, you’ve spent more time than you should think about Jerry Hall in particular, why you like him so much even though you don’t like him. can put your finger on the reason why. Since he came to the attention of the public in the 1970s in fashion magazines and, soon enough, in the arms of Mick Jagger, his more memorable remarks have been: “I’ve always felt men are the kings of the house and should be entertained and treated well”announce it as (how to put it?) less than an example of forward thinking.

However, if you’re anything like me, you find yourself rooting for Hall, and you must be furious when Jagger wriggled out of paying him as much as he would pay a bona fide wife when the couple, who have four children together, split in 1999. But perhaps your fear is that Hall didn’t all you want it to seem confirmed in 2016, when she married her wealthy Fox News ancestor, Rupert Murdoch, who is 25 years her senior. That the couple could marry for love is absurd, but it seems Hall has traded his looks and youth for financial security, a disappointing move straight from the rock star’s central casting.

But since Hall married Murdoch, several things have rekindled my interest and trust in him. There is a 2019 article on Harper’s Bazar about his commitment, along with his daughters, Lizzy and Georgia May Jagger, to pass the Equal Rights Amendment.

And in the same story, Hall had this to say about the #MeToo movement: “Everyone who abuses their power in the film industry, it’s totally wrong… It’s great that they put the spotlight on it. People need to be held accountable for how they behave. ” (As a scary point of contrast, consider this 2018 take on #MeToo from another former Jagger, Marianne Setia:”I think it’s really sad you know? I mean, if it happened to me, I’d just laugh at the guy. The physical attacks are too much… But overall, a smart and attractive girl can drive them away.”)

Here comes the biggest surprise of the bunch: last year Forbes reports that Hall donated $500 to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. This, coupled with the reveal of Harper’s Bazaar, makes me wonder where Hall is hiding all this bold liberalism. I did some poking around, and guess what? It was there all along.

Hall’s feminism is unmistakable in 2008 interview on Ireland’s “The Late Late Show” when he said, “I voted for Hillary… I think bitches get things done.” And while the reclamation of the nickname by feminists is debatable, we can still appreciate Hall’s participation in the 2005 reality TV show “Kept,” in which she had to choose between a dozen strappy male toys all of whom were much younger than her. he.

But my search found Hall’s feminism most enduring in “Jerry Hall’s Tall Tale,” the now-out-of-print 1985 memoir he wrote (well, “wrote”: the book acknowledgment says the text was taken from recorded conversations) with Christopher Hemphill. I didn’t have the common sense to buy “Tall Tales” as a teenager, but my local library recently tracked it down for me, which allows me to tell you that the book is like Hall: its foamy surface (cover copy: “Old Love Mick Jagger: From Texas Up! Supermodel, Jet Set Star!” ) covers the substantive core.

“Tall Tales” offers an extended version of the origin story most of us know about Hall: she grew up as one of five girls in a turbulent working-class family in Mesquite, Texas. In the book, she described her father as “very Texan and right-wing” and said, “He had so much anger inside of him. He had to vent it somehow and it will always be with us… Mama used to try to keep him from beat us girls up by jumping at him. Then he’ll throw him across the room and looks like he’s going to be beaten even more for trying to stop him from beating us.”

Hall has since said, at Security in 2010 and elsewhere, that his father’s anger must have stemmed from PTSD, which is of course unnamed, as the diagnosis did not exist in his day. “Father was a decorated war hero,” Hall says in Tall Tales. “He was gone for five years and Mama said the war changed him.” Hall plotted his escape, but Mama didn’t budge: “Sometimes the neighbors can hear it and they’ll call the police and the police will come, but my mother would never press charges. I think she was afraid that if she filed charges she would kill her. And what can he do? He can’t really go and support all of us kids.”

Hall’s mother may support her husband, but her daughter does not always support him. Readers of “Tall Tales” would cheer Hall on when, after she had achieved her dream of becoming a successful model, she broke off her engagement to Bryan Ferry in large part because the Roxy Music singer was behaving like a controlling bad guy: she wanted him to trade his fancy style for that of a British hostess. appropriate (“There’s a gray suit she wants me to wear”). Ferry also seems threatened by Hall’s success: “I think he was afraid that I would be too ambitious and that I would go and do my career and not stay with him. I think everyone has had a little bit of my experience but he was really bad.”

Jagger, for whom Hall left Ferry, was not like that (and a glimpse of his romantic history reveals a respectable trend: Jagger likes a woman with a career), and he continued to work after they were together. “I like the idea of ​​having my own money,” Hall says in “Tall Tales.” “I don’t have to go to Mick all the time to ask if I can buy something. Nice to get your own stuff.”

In her book, Hall says that when she would model in the cities where the Stones played, “The local girls, the models, all said, ‘Gosh, we can’t believe that you’re here with the Stones and that you want to work. You have to stop working.’ Sure. What for? Sitting around a hotel room like a bunch of people?”

If I was the type to keep my list of “Good Feminists” on paper rather than in my head, I’d add Hall’s name when I read it. And I’ll underline her name when I read this: “I think if a girl is successful, it’s good for women. It opens the door for more women.” And I’ll use all the ink in my pen embellishing her name with a heart when I read her thoughts on feminism: “I love a lot of things about feminism. What I don’t like is the antagonism that exists between men and women. But I believe in encouraging women into bigger things. It’s boring to sit at home and watch soap operas and do the dishes. And if you have your own career and make your own money and go out and do things, you should be a lot more fun to talk to over dinner .”

It wasn’t dinner that mattered at the Jagger-Hall house; those are the nights. Jagger’s affair, which eventually convinced Hall to leave him in 1999, began during their courtship. “Eventually I decided to move on for a bit until he knew what he wanted to do with another girl or with me,” he said in “Tall Tales.” When the press reported that Hall was making out with British horse breeder Robert Sangster, “They made me a bad person,” he said. “It wasn’t too bad for Mick. But the weird thing was that after that so many women came up to me and said, ‘You’re so brave the way you do it. So many men treat women so badly and women just stay because they don’t know what to do. .'”

It seemed that Jerry Hall always knew what to do. What she is doing now, according to Harper’s Bazaar story, is spending time with her husband and enjoying his retirement. On July 2, Hall turned 65 as an unofficial gateway to senior citizens and if it makes it a little easier to grow old it’s a rich 90 year old man who doesn’t beat him or trick him, so be it. And if her marriage allows her to throw money at the Equal Rights Amendment and the occasional Democratic candidate, then so be it: that bitch gets things done.