RENEE ZELLWEGER is speaking out about the recent, public back-and-forth surrounding her appearance.

    Zellweger published an essay titled “We Can Do Better” in the Huffington Post, calling for people to discuss more real news and less fluff. The star of the upcoming “Bridget Jones’s Baby” began by explaining that she felt compelled to write the piece not because of the speculation over the last two years about whether or not she’s altered her appearance — such as a tabloid’s October 2014 claim that she’d had surgery — but because of the effect those kinds of rumors have on society.

    “The ‘eye surgery’ tabloid story itself did not matter, but it became the catalyst for my inclusion in subsequent legitimate news stories about self-acceptance and women succumbing to social pressure to look and age a certain way,” she writes. “In my opinion, that tabloid speculations become the subject of mainstream news reporting does matter.”

    Zellweger adds that the story was false.

    “Not that it’s anyone’s business, but I did not make a decision to alter my face and have surgery on my eyes,” she says.

    However, the Oscar winner doesn’t like the message those rumors are sending to young women, as part of the negative conversation that women hear every day.

    “Too skinny, too fat, showing age, better as a brunette, cellulite thighs, facelift scandal, going bald, fat belly or bump? Ugly shoes, ugly feet, ugly smile, ugly hands, ugly dress, ugly laugh; headline material which emphasizes the implied variables meant to determine a person’s worth, and serve as parameters around a very narrow suggested margin within which every one of us must exist in order to be considered socially acceptable and professionally valuable, and to avoid painful ridicule,” Zellweger writes.(SD-Agencies)