Portman rips sexualizing of young stars
Actress Natalie Portman spoke out recently about growing up in an oversexualized culture.
Natalie Portman has been in the public eye since she was a teen and the actress, now 37, is speaking out about the inappropriate ways society treats young celebrities.
“I know I was sexualized in the ways that I was photographed or portrayed, and that was not my doing,” she recently told People of the early days of her acting career. “That becomes a part of your public identity.”
Portman’s first acting credit, The Professional, released in 1994, when Portman was just13.
The actress, currently starring in Vox Lux, previously opened up about receiving an inappropriate piece of fan mail as a young teenager.
“I understood very quickly, even as a 13-year-old, that if I were to express myself sexually I would feel unsafe and that men would feel entitled to discuss and objectify my body to my great discomfort,” she said last January.
Earlier this month, Portman made headlines after a USA TODAY interview in which she discussed growing up in an oversexualized culture.
“I remember being a teenager, and there was Jessica Simpson on the cover of a magazine saying ‘I’m a virgin’ while wearing a bikini, and I was confused. Like, I don’t know what this is trying to tell me as a woman, as a girl,” she said.
In an Instagram comment, Portman clarified her statement about Simpson, writing in part, “I only meant to say I was confused — as a girl coming of age in the public eye around the same time — by the media’s mixed message about how girls and women were supposed to behave.”