Emma Watson hits back at critics
EMMA WATSON, best known for portraying Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter film adaptations, has spent much of her off-screen time as a feminist advocate.
The British actress and Brown University graduate was appointed a UN women’s goodwill ambassador in July 2014, and served as an advocate for HeForShe, a programme that hopes “to mobilise 1 billion men to accelerate the achievement of gender equality”.
But now, thanks to a photo in Vanity Fair, some are calling her a hypocrite. The cover story, which focused on her feminist views, came out as her new film, Beauty and the Beast, is about to hit cinemas.
In one photograph, Watson stands in a room with fur-covered walls. In another, she is trapped in what appears to be a birdcage. And in another, her breasts are loosely covered by a white crocheted capelet.
That led some people to dismiss her history of advocacy.
British radio commentator, Julia Hartley-Brewer, tweeted a photograph of the Sun’s page 3, which reproduced the photo with the headline “Beauty & the breasts”. Hartley-Brewer tweeted this caption: “Emma Watson: “Feminism, feminism … gender wage gap … why oh why am I not taken seriously … feminism … oh, and here are my t**s!”
The tweet was liked 4 500 times and retweeted more than 2 150 times, as of early Monday.
Other users fired similar barbs at the actress. “Attention seeking hypocrite. acting like a slut and flashing her t**s is not what a real feminist does,” tweeted one.
“Is Actress and Feminist Emma Watson a Hypocrite for Going Topless in Vanity Fair?” asked the Hollywood Reporter. “Did Emma Watson pose ‘topless’ because of the patriarchy or despite of it? I doubt she knows herself,” announced one particularly bold headline in The Independent.
Even CNN ran a headline posing the question: “Emma Watson’s revealing Vanity Fair photo: Feminism or hypocrisy?”
The criticism reached such intensity, Watson responded during an interview on Sunday. She said she mostly felt “quietly stunned”.
“It just always reveals to me how many misconceptions and what a misunderstanding there is about what feminism is,” she continued. “Feminism is about giving women choice. Feminism is not a stick with which to beat other women with. It’s about freedom, it’s about liberation, it’s about equality. I really don’t know what my t**s have to do with it.”
She wasn’t short on defenders, either. “If we belabour these attempts to essentialise feminism as a specific set of traits and behaviours, we’re going to trudge through an elliptical – not to mention deeply unproductive – conversation,” wrote Jezebel contributor Rachel Vorona Cote.
Feminist organisers and writer Gloria Steinem put it most bluntly.
“Feminists can wear anything they f ****** want,” Steinem said. – The Washington Post