Emily Ratajkowski has been in London this week. I’m including some photos of her outside of the BBC Radio Studios (black coat pics) and some of Emily at the InStyle pre-Bafta party on Monday evening (the yellow Cushnie et Ochs Spring 2015 dress). I guess she might be around for the BAFTAs on Sunday? Maybe as a presenter. I’m surprised she hasn’t been around more this awards season – her film debut in Gone Girl was reasonably well-received and the film scored some big nominations. Anyway, while in London, Emily gave an exclusive interview to The Daily Mail – you can read the full piece here. Emily has talked about feminism and her feminist views before. Her definition of feminism is “being sexy and sexual and owning her body.” Which, when you think about it, means Emily has a better grasp of feminism than Kaley Cuoco. Some highlights:
Defending the “Blurred Lines” video: “I think you can be a sexual woman, empowered and be a feminist. I think sexuality should be empowering to women, it’s not always misogynistic or exploitative.”
Why she agreed to the video: “I had initially turned it down. I was eventually convinced by the director, who I really liked, to do it. It was kind of a good opportunity for me in a way because I couldn’t really speak to the lyrics as I didn’t write them, but I could about the video. I had all kind of ideas to say so it ended up being a good platform, because on the other side I think people were like ‘well let’s hear what the girls think.’”
Scoring the part in Gone Girl: “It was really surreal. I had read the book when it came out and it was a total page turner and stuck in my mind. I think that because I had gone through the audition process I had a little bit more confidence because they picked me, so hopefully I was there for a reason.”
How she did her nude scene with Ben Affleck: “There was only a few camera guys and David [Fincher] and Ben which made it a lot easier. ‘[Ben] just made me feel comfortable as a friend and that made it all feel good. You don’t really have much time to be overly self-conscience.”
Will she continue to act? “I’m definitely being really selective, especially coming from a modelling background and having an opportunity like Gone Girl where people are taking me seriously. And I have David in my corner… I want to establish myself as someone who can act and doesn’t have to rely on my figure or modelling background.”
She’s not chasing after an Oscar: “I don’t know about winning Oscars, I don’t think you should have those goals. I like acting, it’s creatively fulfilling; it’s fun, it makes me feel good and it’s a hard job, but when you do a scene and you know you’ve nailed it there’s nothing better than that.”
Is she a genius? Nope. But she’s not a complete idiot either. She’s a 23 year old model-turned-actress trying to find some footing in a new and exciting career. I wish her view of feminism was more nuanced, political and economic, but frankly, I’ll take what I can get. The freedom to be a sexual person is part of feminism too. As for how Ben Affleck made her feel comfortable… you guys know what I think. Ben hand-picked Emily for that role. He coached her privately too. And David Fincher likes to do a million takes. That’s like a whole day of Ben motorboating Emily on camera.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
She was on a current affairs talk show here in the UK just yesterday. I sometimes have it on in the background while I work. I’m afraid she was horribly exposed and had nothing productive to say about ANY of the issues discussed. Seemed a nice enough person – just Tim-nice-but-dim.
I weep for humanity when I hear anyone describe acting as a “hard job”.
Challenging? Maybe, but she was playing the mistress in Gone Girl, it’s not Shakespeare.
Eh. Perhaps I’m just angry because Boston is a gridlocked nightmare right now.
I think there is a very fine line between owning your sexuality and body, and just being the easily accessible (to view and do) penis vessel (most? Many?) men consider females to be. Feminism has to be more than just the freedom to flaunt your body and have sex. Right?
Sexual agency IS feminist, she can be as easily accessible to sex with whomever and that doesn’t detract from her in any way. She was speaking to one area of feminism like, suggesting that its solely “freedom to flaunt your body” feels like SUCH a reach to be honest, that isn’t what she said.
@mzizkrizten I agree. The problem that I have and Im not saying this is the case with her but some women ARE only looking for validation from men and are conforming to what men want and then try to hide behind feminism to do it so they can make it ok. I have no issue with a woman getting naked for herself or because she actually feels its empowering but I have an issue when a woman does it solely to get attention from men and ends up degrading herself in the process.
exactly. yes i feel many women try to pass it off as empowerment when it’s actually attention seeking. but they want to be liked by women too, so they term it as empowerment
This. Yes, you can be a sexual woman, empowered and be a feminist. It’s just that she is not.
So this! She admitted she got talked into doing a video topless by a male director when she initially turned it down. Sounds like real female empowerment to me *rolls eyes*
Exactly! That’s one of the reasons I hate the term “sex-positive” feminism. All the feminists I know are very sexual, so its ridiculous to assume that traditional feminists are somehow sex-negative. I see us challenging the boundaries of what is sexy, eschewing restrictions on age, size, color, etc. that define mainstream sexuality. The sex-positive feminists I know have been all about essentially maintaining the male-defined status quo, seeking validation, not empowerment. I think that while Emily seems like a nice girl, she isn’t bright enough to get the real debate at play. It’s not about sex vs. no sex, it’s about sex-defined-by-self vs. sex-defined-by-society!
@Tifygoddess24: I really appreciate the fact that you said “some women” instead of “all”. So many people assume that any woman who is sexual and scantily clad must be doing so out of a desperation for straight male approval when that’s not the case. Talking over women when they’re speaking about their own choices, preferences, experiences, and beliefs when it comes to their own bodies and sexualities to push a more sinister explanation for their choices is a habit societies have had for a long time and probably won’t be able to abandon for a long time.
@Qwerty: I don’t think we know this woman well enough to decide for her whether or not she is empowered as a person or feminist. We don’t have the authority to decide that she’s not one just because we don’t approve of something she’s done with her body either. We can decide that Blurred Lines isn’t feminist though.
@MaiGirl: Whether or not someone is sex-positive isn’t determined by how sexual they are or the kind of sex they are or aren’t having. Sex-positivity is more about respecting bodily autonomy and consent, and the idea that all people (regardless of gender, sexual orientation, race, class , etc. )should be able to choose whether or not to express and explore their sexuality and do what they want with their bodies (as long as they don’t violate anyone’s consent) without being subjected to discrimination, harassment, violence, abuse of ANY kind, or victim-blaming. You can be a virgin or asexual and be sex-positive, You could also have had lots of sex and not be sex-positive, And I don’t see sex-positive feminists only promoting that for people who look a certain male-defined way or who are of the same background either. The term sex-positive exists not because we think feminists are collectively anti-sex. It’s because there are some people both inside and outside of the feminist movement who DO promote respectability politics, victim-blaming, slut-shaming, whorephobia, and the idea that our equality is dependent on women not being sexual in certain ways.
It always depends on what the woman actually wants and how free she is in her choice to be “easily accessible”. If she feels no pressure, I think it’s fine and any woman can do whatever she wants. To me, it’s about the freedom to choose and the lack of pressure to act a certain way.
The problem is that for most of us, it’s incredibly hard to tell how much we actually cave to outside pressure. Do I wear makeup because I love it or because it is suggested to me I should? Do I reject the idea of it because I feel like I shouldn’t have to conform to this notion of a flawless face that’s thrown at me every day wherever I look? These questions are much more difficult to answer than we realize until we really try to answer them honestly. This girl is 23. At 23, I had no idea why I did the things I did. I’m 30 and I’m still not always sure.
That’s a really good point about the relative amount we cave to outside pressure, but as I get older, I am more and more clear about what I really want to do, what really defines me. It’s a journey, but I don’t think its in any way impossible.
I think the age when people become aware of what physical choices are just for others vs. when it’s for them, or a combination of both, varies based on the person. For me, by the time I was in my early or mid teens (probably 15) I pretty much knew when I was dressing for myself, when I was dressing for others, or when it was a compromise between the two, and had quite an attitude about it. For me I do think make-up is beautiful and sometimes wear it for myself, but I also sometimes wear it to have the right look for others as well.
She looks like a second-string Kardashian.
I finally saw Gone Girl and she was barely in it…so why the press?
Her role was more pivotal in the book. ***book spoilers*** she confesses the affair because Ben tries to dump her and she doesn’t take it well.*** But, they could’ve just cropped the whole role out besides her going to Margot’s house and it wouldn’t make much of a difference.
If you blink you miss her. The scenes she was in didn’t really bode well for her acting prowess either.
God knows why she’s getting publicity. Her acting is more wooden than Pinocchio.
2014 was the year that feminism became a meaningless word.
Sexual agency IS feminist.
Sexual agency is a PORTION of being a feminist. But, feminism should also include political, intellectual, and economic agency.
Building only one pillar makes a weak structure.
@MsGoblin +1000!
I haven’t actually read any of this as I’ve found previous interviews incredibly vapid, but her body is just amazing. Full blown jealousy, here.
ETA: OK, now read the article. There are plenty of things to pick on, but this stuck out: “I couldn’t really speak to the lyrics as I didn’t write them, but I could about the video. I had all kind of ideas to say so it ended up being a good platform, because on the other side I think people were like ‘well let’s hear what the girls think.’””
Is she saying the director and film crew wanted to hear their ideas for the video? Or now others want to hear their ideas because they were the girls in the video? Either way – umm, I doubt it.
I hope she at least understands the issues with the lyrics. I would’ve been fine with the video if everyone was in underwear.
I LOVE that yellow dress!! I have a similar body type to her (tall and thin but top-heavy) and I wish I could find a dress as gorgeous and flattering as that one (maybe in another colour though, I’m blonde so yellow is tricky on me).
I have to say that yellow dress looks gorgeous on her and frames all the best parts of her figure!
Here’s the problem: sexual agency is feminist. But our culture still operates through the patriarchy and male gaze which means a substantial part of our sexual cultural experience is still designed with one purpose: to keep women pleasing to straight men.
So while it’s all well and good to defend your right to be sexual (which is true) some of these younger women don’t even understand that their sexual identity has been formed on the backs of misogyny and that when they defend this culture that exploits women and ultimately defines them first and foremost on how many men want to have sex with them….they are ultimately just reinforcing the very patriarchy that oppresses us. Yes. There are ways to express sexual agency and be feminist but I don’t believe the Blurred Lines video was it.
Great comment!!! 🙂
This is hopelessly elitist of me, but how much could a kid with a maybe a high school diploma know about feminism? I didn’t even begin to think about it seriously until I was in college. Most actors and actresses are basically uneducated and yet we keep listening to what they have to say about issues like these.
I don’t think a college degree is required to understand the concept of men and women being equal.
My mother is a feminist (no college degree) who raised a woman who’s been a feminist since grade school.
I don’t mean to sound rude, but I’m surprised it took you until college to think about feminism.
It doesn’t seem like some actresses know that feminism means equality between men and women. It shouldn’t be a hard concept to understand, but it does appear to be for some of them. I don’t know if that’s because of lack of education or because of something else, but the definition seems lost on some of them. I have wondered if a generation gap is involved and something has changed over time, though. I think Jennifer Aniston mentioned gender equality and her definition seemed to be the most concise (and I wondered if her age and the generation in which she grew up in has something to do with it), whereas younger actresses, with a few exceptions like Emma Watson, seem to either mention why they’re not a feminist, or if they are a feminist, they’ll usually mention feminism in relation to sexuality (i.e. Lena Dunham and Emily R) rather than anything else about how men and women can be equal.
this is just an anecdotal thing, and not specificallg aimed at Emily or Winterberry or anyone. and i don’t know about the syllabus or curriculum in Emily’s school when she was still in school.
anyway, this is an anecdote about my eldest child in his first year of jr high. in december, to celebrate the 130th birth anniversary of a women’s rights heroine in my country, his class had a project on feminism. he was doing this project with his friends in our house when my youngest ditched her nap and went to mess around with the older kids.
she was asking about what they were doing and such and i distinctly remember my son saying that in a nutshell it’s about girls should have the same rights, power, and opportunities as boys (like, according to
him: go to school, get the same amount of pocket money, be class monitor, spend the same amount of time doing chores, etc). my daughter asked whether her cat is a feminist and he answered if the cat believes the above, then her cat is a feminist. according to the older kids, even a zombie can be feminist (i think i should limit their tv time).
regardless of the accuracy of their perception at this young age, i’m glad that these sorts of conversations are brought into jr highschool now as well, and hopefully will be a continuing and expanding thing until they are very old (i don’t think i started learning about social sciences/sociology until final year in sr high all those years ago–i’m old).
@winterberry
Emily did go to UCLA for about a year. Also people like Mia Wasikowska, Chloe Grace Moretz and Lorde seem to have a pretty good idea about feminism and they have never been to college, granted two of them are too young but still. I have always found the idea that women can’t understand feminism unless they have gone to college to be quite classist. I think there is a real problem in modern feminism to only focus on middle class women, while ignoring working class women, who maybe didn’t have the opportunity to further their education.
I agree. It’s a very fine line. I want women to be able to experience and express their sexuality however they choose to, but Blurred Lines still feels like exploitation to me. Maybe it’s the combination of the “no means yes” message and the visuals, but it have a hard time looking at that as a feminist work.
Agreed! It definitely wasn’t. I still don’t understand why she thinks it was so empowering when the men in the video are fully dressed and she’s parading around nearly naked. That’s classic objectification. However her views about owning your sexuality as a woman and still being feminist is correct. It’s just a bit shortsighted.
The Blurred Lines was far from it. It was solely for the male gaze and degrades the women because all the men are fully clothed.
Thank you for clearly articulating my thoughts LOL
YES. Perfectly stated.
Awesome post! Vehement “Yes” to everything you said.
(just had to say how much I love a ‘vehement yes’!!!)
@Kate
couldn’t have said it better!
+1
All of this!
@Kate: “sexual agency is feminist. But our culture still operates through the patriarchy and male gaze which means a substantial part of our sexual cultural experience is still designed with one purpose: to keep women pleasing to straight men…So while it’s all well and good to defend your right to be sexual (which is true) some of these younger women don’t even understand that their sexual identity has been formed on the backs of misogyny,”
What people forget is that there is more than one way for women to be kept pleasing to straight men in a patriarchal society. So yes, while there are straight dudes who want women to be scantily clad and sexual, there are also straight dudes who want women to cover up and reserve all of their sexuality only for their husbands/fiances/boyfriends, or only for the bedroom. Both of these ideas have been used to oppress women, but it’s only when women want to reject the second idea and be immodest that it’s seen as nothing but man-pleasing. The second idea is automatically seen as respectful and equalizing, and is demanded of women, while the first- scantily clad- is automatically seen as oppressive and as being in servitude to straight men, or as something that women can’t or wouldn’t actually choose for themselves but only do to get male attention. But really, there has been just as much violence, discrimination, and misogyny leveled at women in our patriarchal society for not being ‘ladylike’ or classy/conservative enough as there has been at women for being sexually modest. Probably even more.
And then the agency of individual women get’s lost to people. It turns into a thing where every woman making a certain choice is accused of just trying to please straight men. People forget that there are reasons a woman can be either being overtly sexual/sexy, modest, or a combination of the two that are not about pleasing straight men. A lot of people see overt sexuality as property of the straight man to begin with or by default. People forget that not all straight men want the overtly sexual, and that there are plenty of straight women, bisexual women, lesbian women, and even gay men and bisexual men, who like vulgarity, nudity, and overt sexuality too.
By the way, when I’m saying all this, I’m not talking about Blurred Lines. I’m talking about these women in general, the criticism they get for being ‘too sexual’, and the idea that any time a woman gets ‘too sexual’ or just ‘not modest enough’, it’s nothing but desperation to please straight men.
Yes feminists can and do enjoy sex. Are you helping women to be taken as seriously as men and not just valued by how desirable our bodies look by constantly posing with your boobs in your hands? No, you are not.
But is a society where all women- whether they wanted to or not- had to cover up in order to prove that there’s more to them than physical desirability and that they could be taken seriously feminist? It would still be an oppressed group of people (women) changing the way they look in order to ‘equalize’ themselves with and earn the ‘respect’ of a privileged group of people (men).
I don’t think beefcake guys that strut around in their underpants all the time are really taken seriously either though.
With Emily R, she only seems to be known for her body parts rather than anything else. This might be the problem. Whereas someone like Nicole Kidman, who has posed provocatively from time to time in magazines, seems to be known as both a beauty and a talented and skilled actress. She isn’t reduced to her body, even though she’s done nude scenes and sexy photoshoots.
That’s a great point to ponder. I think of the courts. Most female attorneys in court dress conservatively. They do this to be viewed “equal” to their male counterparts and to be taken seriously. They do so of their own valition, but they almost have to because if they don’t cover themselves, people (attorneys, judges, and jurors) might be distracted if they are physically attractive. Even though it’s their choice to dress conservative, an attractive female attorney almost has to dress conservatively in order to not detract from her purpose for being there. What is oppressive is the fact that the we, women, are built to attract – bottom line. Our bodies are designed to draw men. There’s never going to be a simple answer to the question of how do we get men to stop seing us as sexual objects when the fact is, our bodies are made to do just that – attract.
I see nothing wrong with women loving their bodies, feeling beautiful and enjoying physical gifts we might have been blessed with, however, I do not and probably will never see promiscuity as any kind of feminism. If you’re using your body to get ahead in any way, it is a form of prostitution. People don’t want to see it that way, because it’s harsh, but there’s no getting around the fact that many of these supposed “feminists” are selling themselves in some way or another and using feminism to justify a lack of integrity. K
aley C admits she got a boob job to succeed in acting. It worked. She has every right to be an actress, but she can’t tell me she caved to the misogyny in Hollywood and America at large and call that feminism. Her right to get a boob job is feminist because feminism encompasses the right to do what you want with your body, but if you’re doing something to your body in an effort to be accepted by the Patriarchy, then it’s not feminist at all – in fact quite the opposite.
@JenniferJustice: “If you’re using your body to get ahead in any way, it is a form of prostitution. People don’t want to see it that way, because it’s harsh, but there’s no getting around the fact that many of these supposed “feminists” are selling themselves in some way or another and using feminism to justify a lack of integrity.”
We’ll just have to disagree on this part, because I don’t even think that a literal prostitute automatically lacks integrity just because he or she is having sex for money, or that having sex for money means that one can’t be a feminist. Being a feminist just means being for equality. There are sex workers male and female who are also feminists, but I doubt anyone would say to a former or present male sex worker who identified as a feminist that he couldn’t be one just because he has had sex for money. Which is just one of many examples of how even within feminism, a sexual double standard exists and limits are put on what women can do with their bodies that aren’t put on men. I also disagree that being naked, sexy, or sexual is “selling one’s self”- people still own themselves whether they’re a virgin covered from head-to-toe or whether they’re butt-naked. Selling an image or video is not the same as selling a person. Just because you’ve seen someone naked, or scantily-clad, or have even had sex with them, does not mean that you own them.
But as it is, a prostitute is someone who has sex with someone for money. But if we’re going to expand the term to cover anybody who uses their body to get ahead in ANY way, doesn’t that also mean that models (of both genders) are automatically prostitutes? Does that mean that any actor actress who’s ever done a sex scene, a nude scene, or just taken on a sexual role in a movie or TV show is a prostitute? Are athletes prostitutes as well, since they’re profiting off of their bodies?
Oh, here is another one like Kaley C, just realized she is a feminist or wondering if she is one or may be not or is she?
I was really upset with the portrayal of Andy in Gone Girl onscreen. It seemed to me that the character was just reduced down to a pair of boobs. The literary character of Andy was so complicated and nuanced and involved in the story. I didn’t hate Emily in the role. She was fine. I wonder if she had more lines and they ended up on the cutting room floor? Anyway, she isn’t wrong about owning your sexuality as a Woman being feminist but there’s so much more to it than just that.
Her delivery needs some work but she’s a new actress. Yeah, it’s disappointing that they changed her reasons to come forward. The movie implies that she got sick of being in the dark but there was more to her coming forward in the book (I talk about it above but I * for spoilers)
Andie came across as really stupid in the book. She starts a relationship with her college instructor even though knows he is married. She believes him when he continues to tell her that he will get a divorce, yet a year into the affair he hasn’t done so. And the reality is, he was never going to initiate a divorce from Amy. Maybe he hoped Amy would divorce him, but he was never going to start the process. All of the money was Amy’s, the bar had been bought with the rest of her trust fund. So both he and Go would have lost their jobs. And if the community college found out about the affair, which they do because Andie reveals it later, then that job is now gone too. Then Andie makes his wife’s disappearance all about her. When it comes down to it the character is just a jerk and a stupid one at that.
I think women’s sexuality was commodified in the video. That’s what I got from it.
Sorry, I don’t agree that she’s much better than Cuoco.
The sexual part is exactly that a part of being feminist. I may argue that every Victorian woman, who took a lover was in charge of her body and affections and still was not taken as an equal. So?
Yes, women from the Victorian era were definitely not equal socially, politically, or economically. Does that mean that no woman living during that era was in charge of her body or sexually liberated? maybe not. But a woman’s worth was determined by her sexual purity and sexual modesty even more so then than it is now, and being gay was a huge taboo, so it’s hard to say that women as a group were equal and empowered or that those were feminist times.
You know, I’m a 70’s child and feminism is for me the very basic form- men and women have equal rights. However when I googled feminism some time ago I was surprised by the abundance of descriptions of “what feminism is/could be”
I was prompted by the never ending celeb. interviews and different takes on the topic but afterwards I was no longer surprised that there are such heated discussions. I don’t think they’ll ever stop because you can take your pick from that pile of “feminism” and denounce everything else as BS.
Anything that touches on political systems, social practices, and inequity/discrimination is going to be an involved topic–feminism is much like racism in that sense. Yet none of the sub-topics attached to each word negates the basic definition.
Grrr, I hate the idea that somehow feminism has become linked to the idea that we should all be comfortable prancing around naked! Blurred Lines has to be the most sexist music video of last year. It’s appalling! Women are objects for men to fondle and stare at. They prance around for the entertainment of men. THIS IS NOT EMPOWERING.
Be a sexual person. Be an equal partner in the bedroom. Don’t have sex because you feel like you have to to make a man happy. Do it because you want to, yada yada. But please, don’t pretend that when you dance around naked with a blank expression on your face and flaunt yourself to a bunch of drooling men, that you’re somehow furthering the feminist movement.
If she would have been prepared to do the video for free then maybe I could buy some of what she was saying. But she did the video to get paid and to get noticed for future jobs, so the nudity was more about capitalism than feminism. There was no empowerment there since it wasn’t about expressing her sexuality, but to attract the male gaze for the purpose of future employment. Her comment about the lyrics shows that she is at least aware of the rapey tone of the song, which makes the video seem even more skeevy than usual.
Performers profit off of music videos and movies they’re in, yes. I don’t think that automatically means that what’s done in a mu sic video or movie can’t also be empowering- something doesn’t have to be free in order to be empowering- but I also don’t think the people who came up with Blurred Lines were doing it for feminism either. I think it was just supposed to be something sexy.
@Otaku fairy
Blurred Lines was supposed to be “sexy” for straight men. But it is just a gross song and video. The lyrics are rapey in tone and just ick.
I’m sure Emily finds the whole thing empowering. It gave her a career boost that she never would have had otherwise. She can’t act so her career will eventually fade out.
“Grrr, I hate the idea that somehow feminism has become linked to the idea that we should all be comfortable prancing around naked!”
I have yet to see anyone argue that feminism means that WE SHOULD ALL be comfortable prancing around naked though. I’m not seeing these people dictating that we do as they do in order to prove we’re feminists, but I am seeing people arguing that women can do that and still be feminists.
Do you know that Blurred Lines has been out since 2013, and I still have yet to actually watch the video for myself? I’ve heard the song many times and seen the Robin Thicke/Miley Cyrus performance at the VMAs. but I haven’t taken the time to actually watch the video for myself. I know about the lyrics and don’t see that as empowering.
She’s gorgeous. I have no problem with her.
Hope she is enjoying her fame. Good for her.
She’s absolutely right, I can’t really find any nonsense here. Except for the fact that, well, the Blurred Lines video DOES happen to be misogynistic and exploitative.
Whenever I read about her, she comes across as stupid. When i read her Cosmo interview last year, it was clear she didn’t get “Gone Girl” at all. She plays up the “cool girl” crap like crazy, which the book comes down on. Her 15 minutes need to end already.
I think women/actresses/model who benefit from sexism always say it’s “empowering”.
Sex, sexy costumes, nudity, vulgarity, and raunch are not in and of themselves sexist or anti-woman though, and you don’t even have to be an entertainer to find those things empowering. But I do think being in the entertainment industry gives a person more of a chance to play with that, let that side of them out and be open about it; more of an outlet than someone who’s, say, a lawyer or a politician.
Her modeling ads are similar to Miranda Kerr’s. I wonder if she’d really ever be taken seriously as an actress.
She’s 23?!?!?! Wow. I thought she was well into her late 20s.
Something nice: she does have a rockin’ bod.
(Edit: not implying that any comments upthread are mean-spirited. I just don’t care enough about her to comment on anything other than her zero gravity space boobs)
I feel like that’s what women say when they do it for attention or money but don’t want to admit it, so they say they’re empowered instead. Like I work with women who wear lowcut tops but if you were to say something about it, then you’d be in the wrong. but h*ll, if your tatas are hanging out and someone looks at them, how can you be offended? obviously you want someone to notice them or you wouldn’t have them out. if your nipples are practically exposed don’t be surprised if people look or comment on that instead of your great work ethic. i’m gonna get hammered for that but whatever. I would rather be known for my sales ability than my nice rack. Although I do feel “empowered” to expose my breasts when I’m off work, so I guess i’m a feminist. call me crazy, but feminism is about equal opportunities and I don’t see feminist men in the workplace with their zipper down so they can show how empowered they are, acting sexy is not the same as being an empowered feminist.
I agree Snowflake. I call it the “Myley Cyrusing” of feminism. Sure owning your sexuality is a positive thing, to not feel like you’re being slut-shamed or having to keep it under wraps at risk being accused of exploiting it. But let’s get honest here, if that’s the only criterion by which you are in the spotlight, for which you are famous, don’t call it anti-feminism when you get some well-deserved negative backlash. That’s just hiding behind the word to legitimize capitalizing on nothing more than titillation for money and fame (you listening Madonna…?)
thanks Jaded
@Snowflake: Well, you’re free to believe that any woman who says she’s empowered by rejecting sexual modesty is really just doing it for money and lying about it, but that speaks more to your own mistrust of women and inability (or unwillingness) to accept and empathize with those whose personal choices with their bodies don’t fit within your worldview. And in the case of topless equality and wearing low- cut shirts, no, a woman is not looking for people to notice her boobs every time she wears a shirt that’s low-cut. And not every woman who goes braless or feels that women should be just as free to go shirtless as men are is looking for physical attention either. We don’t say that men are attention-seeking when they go shirtless. Not everyone believes that it’s a woman’s responsibility or obligation to tiptoe around the male libido.
I do agree that sexy isn’t automatically feminist or empowering. And I think a large part of the reason why we see women finding it liberating and empowering to be openly sexual and to be able to wear sexy costumes, but not men doing it, is not only because of societal attitudes toward men who wear or do anything that’s considered feminine, but also because straight men’s bodies and sexuality aren’t treated and viewed as scandalous like womens’ are.
@jaded: ..”don’t call it anti-feminism when you get some well-deserved negative backlash”.
People do NOT deserve backlash for wearing what they want or doing what they want with their own bodies, as long as they’re not violating others in their choice. The ‘criticism’ the women get is almost always anti-feminist in nature because it almost always goes back to either basing female worth, respectability, value, and status on sexual modesty or just policing what women do with their bodies.
I don’t think regular, non-famous people deserve backlash, but if Miley Cyrus or Madonna put a music video out there for the public at large to consume I think it’s fair enough to critique it. Whether it’s art or entertainment, I think entertainers are expecting some kind of feedback on it, otherwise what was the point of going to all that effort to create it and THEN asking the public to view, consume, and possibly purchase it (i.e the music that goes along with video)?
@Perplexed: I’m definitely not saying that music videos or any other forms of art should not be criticized. But it goes way beyond critiquing art forms- it goes into attacking and verbally abusing people for what they do with their bodies, and not just what they do in music videos either, but in their day to day lives. It’s about people getting mad at a woman for not projecting their image of the ‘proper’ way to be a woman.
She was the worst part of the movie IMO. I liked the book & she’s gorgeous but she was terrible. I cringed while watching her parts.
I didn’t. She came across like a college student who was banging an older married man in an affair. She played it fine, but she could be interchangeable with tons of other ingenue actresses.
I think the worst part about the movie was the movie.
I thought she was bad – but I liked that she was bad. There was an element of self-parody in the movie. One reviewer at RT nailed for me describing Gone Girl as the smartest and most exquisitely tailored piece of trash ever made. So casting the hot girl of the moment just for the sake of having Ben Affleck motorboat her several times made so much sense to me.
I agree with this. She was supposed to be the hot broad with come on me breasts. She succeeded at her role. Was she supposed to play the role some other way?
I don’t know if she was supposed to play the role some other way, but the reviews made it sound as if a star was born when she showed up in the film. The hype didn’t match up to what she actually did in the film (which seemed to be nothing?). To be fair, maybe that’s how promotion for movies is done — get a a lot of publicity for not much of anything in the hopes of getting better roles.
Emily’s a funny case. She clearly has no idea what feminism is but she embraces it. And heck, that’s better than Kaley Cuoco.
I guess she’s alright. I’m not bothered by her.
*yawn* Is she still at it? For months now she’s been running around throwing “feminism” around, trying to stay relevant. Promoting the DVD release? LOL, okay. Kinda glad Gone Girl didn’t get nominated for BP at the Oscars, or we’d have been subjected to even more of this useless person.
How did Ben hand-pick Emily for the role? He wasn’t the director or even casting director. Maybe he felt he had the most chemistry with her during the audition process. But did he just randomly say, “How about the naked girl from the Blurred Lines video?”
I was surprised to learn that she’s the daughter of a professor. I don’t know why this shocked me.
She looks better in still photos than she does on tv.