Emma Watson Has a Kickass Response for Her Photoshoot Critics: “Feminism Is Not a Stick With Which to Beat Other Women”

.@EmmaWatson on the controversy over her almost topless @VanityFair cover shoot. https://t.co/9kNDAV90w6 pic.twitter.com/Bc2b5JuVHE

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) March 5, 2017

Last week, Emma Watson found herself at the center of an online debate after posing in a loosely crocheted bolero with nothing underneath. A whole lot of people seemed not to understand how Watson could still call herself a feminist while simultaneously posing for a photo shoot that drapes fabric so as to selectively reveal part of her chest.

To which Watson, like the rest of us, responded:

It’s becoming exhausting, this endless inability to understand that a woman can call out sexual objectification while remaining a sexual being herself, without that making her a hypocrite. That argument is shallow and wholly misinformed, and doesn’t invite any form of rational discussion or debate. It exists simply as yet another attempt to own and police women’s bodies.

Luckily, in an interview with Reuters, Watson doesn’t pull any punches in shutting down these meaningless, misguided attacks.

It just always reveals to me how many misconceptions and what a misunderstanding there is about what feminism is.

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 tits have to do with it. It’s very confusing.

I’m confused. Most people are confused. No, I’m always just kind of quietly stunned.

Dan Stevens hadn’t even heard about the conversation around the shoot, and asked what the big deal was. Watson told him people were saying she “couldn’t be a feminist and…”

“And have boobs?” he suggested. She replied, “And have boobs.”

Stevens seemed genuinely perplexed. “That’s…not…true.”

No, no it’s not.

(via Reuters, image via screengrab)

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Vivian Kane

Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.

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