By now, news has reached the blogosphere that Emma Thompson has asked to remove her name from the online petition in support of Roman Polanski.  (Remember him?  He’s the famous director who was convicted of unlawful sexual contact with a minor.) 

Turns out that one of her fans had the courage to ask her to reconsider her support of Polanski.  Well now, I feel stupid.  I too was heartbroken that Thompson had signed the petition. But I didn't do anything about it.  I just complained to my friends and sulked. Thompson, through the roles she has played, and her good works on an array of worthwhile causes she's devoted herself to, is a role model for us women who don't want to play cute to get ahead. But when she signed the petition, I just felt that she was another insular superstar whose strength and cool was just for show.  I am so glad I was wrong.

But isn’t it amazing that one of the reasons Thompson says she signed in the first place was because she was getting tons and tons of calls from her film friends pressuring to sign?  You see, peer pressure doesn’t go away when you grow up and graduate from high school; it follows you wherever you go. (Sigh.) So, I’m hoping (without hope) that Thompson’s act becomes a cause célèbre and peer pressure will force all the other boldface names that I admire to also get their names removed (um, Wes Anderson, it’s your turn).  Should you be a celebrity who’s dying to take her name off and are too frightened—Emma just gave you cover.  Here, I’ll even spin it for you, free of charge.  Simply say something like this: “Emma’s courageous act has made me realize that I just didn’t know what I was signing.  A crime is a crime and nobody deserves special treatment.” 

Oh and just so you don’t seem like a pushover you can also add something like: “But I also have serious concerns that Polanski didn’t get a fair trial last time around and we have to be careful that we’re punishing him for the right things.”  That way, you can get your famous friends off your back and do the right thing. 

So far Thompson has denied our request for an interview but if we do get her on the line, we’ll thank her.

The photo showed a man in a T shirt and baseball cap standing on top of a mountain. Tien-Yi Lee, a Web-site designer who had joined Nerve.com’s online dating service, says she felt an instant connection. “I saw his picture, and he had a very kind of friendly, sparkly vibe,” she says. “He had a great smile.” A few days later, Lee met the man at a bar in Cambridge, Mass. Lee remembers thinking that the photo on Nerve provided a “very accurate” reflection of her date’s personality in real life. A year after marrying the man from the photo, Lee’s first impressions of her future husband still largely hold true. “The picture was in sync with who he is,” she says.

Lee’s experience is common among those who meet on the Internet, according to a new study on the role of physical appearance in creating first impressions. The study, which will be published in next month’s issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, found that you can actually learn a great deal about a stranger’s personality from appearance alone.