Andrea Peyser: Why Patricia Arquette's call to arms is bogus

Why Patricia Arquette's call to arms is bogus

Patricia Arquette, shut up! The rich movie star is so delusional and self-absorbed, she claims that American women are victims of rampant gender discrimination — a problem that she finds so pervasive, she turned up at Sunday’s Oscars ceremony in an unmoving hairdo that looked as if she’d stuck her finger in a light socket.

Most women are doing just fine, Patricia. It’s your sisters in the tone-deaf colony of Hollywood about whom I worry.

Or not . . .

Taking the stage at the mind-numbingly boring extravaganza to collect her Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for the flick “Boyhood,’’ Arquette, 46, whose personal fortune is estimated at $24 million by CelebrityNetWorth.com, donned a pair of serious, dark-rimmed eyeglasses. And she squandered her moment in the spotlight by delivering a mini-manifesto on the dire state of chicks today. She said:

“To every woman who gave birth to every taxpayer and citizen of this nation: We have fought for everybody else’s equal rights. It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women in the United States of America.’’

From the front row, singer Jennifer Lopez, 45, (estimated by the celebrity-wealth Web site to be worth $300 million) clapped her hands and cheered, careful not to dislodge her gravity-defying breasts from the mercy of her peekaboo gown.

To J.Lo’s right, three-time Academy Award-winner Meryl Streep, 65 (personal fortune pegged online as up to $65 million), rose to her feet and thrust her right arm, forefinger extended, in Arquette’s direction while shouting, “Yes! Yes!’’— sounding like actress Meg Ryan faking an orgasm in the movie “When Harry Met Sally.’’

This orgiastic “You go, girl!’’ estrogenfest ignored a pesky fact. Everywhere, except perhaps in the acting community and in the White House, young American women earn as much — or more — than young men. Stuff it, Patricia. I don’t need to take feminist life lessons from a pampered, privileged harpy.

The old trope that females in this country make, on average, about 77 cents for every dollar earned by men has been debunked repeatedly, most recently in a study by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. It found that New York state’s female millennials — those who became adults around the year 2000 — earned $1.02 for every buck brought in by young men.

In the rest of the nation, the supposed pay gap about disappears when you compare people who do similar work, such as waiters to waitresses and corporate honchos to corporate honchos.

If a worker’s education level is factored in, and if you consider that some women simply choose to step off the fast lane in order to raise families, the difference in pay vanishes, studies have shown.

Female pay inequity is “a tired cliché,’’ Carrie Lukas, managing director of the Independent Women’s Forum, a conservative think tank, told me. “It can hurt women by perpetuating the idea that women are victims of systematic discrimination — we’re all doomed to failure.

“That’s not what you want your daughters to hear.’’

Females in Hollywood have a problem.

As hacked e-mails from within Sony Pictures reveal, actresses Amy Adams, 40, and Jennifer Lawrence, 24 — who won an Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role for 2012’s “Silver Linings Playbook’’ — were paid less than their male co-stars for their roles in the 2013 flick “American Hustle.’’ This is a terrible injustice. But I don’t think that folks at home need to join Arquette’s battle on behalf of wealthy white women who get screwed in the land of make-believe.

We’ve got bigger things to worry about. Such as working ourselves into the ground.