I have a problem with Blake Lively. I had the problem long before going to see the much talked about film ‘It Ends With Us’; but the film undoubtedly made it worse.
My problem is this.
Blake Lively is just not fair.
It’s totally unnecessary if you’ve been blessed with that hair, to also have that face. And if you’ve been blessed with those teeth, it’s totally unnecessary to also have those legs.
And because I don’t want to seem vacuous; the second part of my problem with Blake is not based on aesthetics.
See; if you have such a successful career, why must you also seemingly have such a successful marriage? And four beautiful healthy children, and an interest in philanthropy, and also why must you be funny and witty and sharp and have the ability to take down your husband for lol’s on social media?
And if you simply have to be all of those things Blake… well you can’t also be a nice person. Okay?
And therein I believe lies ‘the problem’ with Blake. The problem which has led to her being trolled, trashed and thrown headfirst into cancel culture.
We just can’t bear, for very long anyway, for a woman to be so goddamn perfect can we? We’re all just a little bit jealous, and it’s within our flawed human condition to want to watch those picture perfect princes or princesses (let’s be honest it’s usually the princesses) fall off their pedestal.
I hope by now you’ve realised I have absolutely no problem with Blake, save for my own festering jealousy. In fact, I’ve always thought she seemed absolutely lovely. Just the right amount of sass and goofiness, funny as hell… like she’d be brilliant on a night out. In another universe Blake, Taylor and Victoria Beckham (sue me but I think she’d be a hoot) would be BFF’s rather than them being my girl-crushes.
She’s a woman who for me even though she’s a gorgeous Hollywood star, evokes a weird feeling of fondness. So it shocked me to see the absolute vitriol she’s been subjected to these past couple of weeks after the release of ‘It Ends With Us’; a film about male violence against women, directed by a man, Justin Baldoni, who also stars in the film.
Without further ado can I make my case as to why we should all back off and leave my mate Blake alone please?
// Blake Lively was not in charge of marketing that film in the way it was marketed
Huge criticism has been levelled at Blake for comments such as ‘Wear your florals, grab your girlfriends and go see this film’. I mean what is she suggesting? That it’s some fluffy rom-com? Taken in isolation perhaps. But she has also spoken widely about domestic abuse. Yes, at times she might’ve gotten it wrong, used words like ‘victim’ and ‘survivor’ which are too all-encompassing, labels which don’t fit everyone who has experienced domestic abuse.
But the overarching huge floral theme of the press-junkets, the cutesy styling started way before Lively came on board as a producer. You only have to look at author Collette Rooney’s books to see that. They’re very feminine and floral and pastel… and yes, still manage to tackle very heavy subject matters.
I’m yet to come across much hate directed towards the director Justin Baldoni for the apparently frivolous floral theme.
// We cannot judge a person on a bunch of old edited videos or biased news reports
As in lots of cases of celebs being cancelled, their actual crime gets lost in the maelstrom of dredged up old videos and interviews where we seek to prove our theory on them. What are we actually angry at them for again!?
Currently our newsfeeds are flooded with content aiming to convince us that Blake Lively is a pretty terrible human being who has been masquerading as an All-American Sweetheart. There’s that one video from five years ago where at the end of a ten hour day with the twentieth journalist on a press junket, where Blake was a bit rude and snarkey. Not good, I don’t love it. But having been both rude and snarkey myself, without a camera in my face to capture if for millions of views, I’ll let this indiscretion slide. And we can also read about the fact Blake and Ryan allegedly got together while he was still married to Scarlett Johansson (something they both refute). But since Scarlett has said that they’re still friends and ‘he’s a good guy’, is it really our fight to take up?
Oh and speaking of marriage, don’t forget that Lively and Reynolds got married on a plantation. But perhaps keep in mind that after they found out it had been the site of a plantation, they donated millions of dollars to the Black Lives Matter movement and were so mortified that they got re-married somewhere else.
// Social Media is actually telling us what to think about Blake
As much as we like to think we are autonomous human beings with our own minds and thought processes; if we own a smartphone; I beg to differ. We are sponges, polluted by whatever algorithm black-hole we’ve fallen into. We read one anti-Blake article and soon we’re flooded with them.
Australian podcast Mamamia recently talked about how they’d experimented with posting videos defending cancelled celebrities, and comparing them to their other videos where they were more in agreement, including content they’d released about Blake Lively. As I’m sure you can guess, the videos which were less angry, more in defence of Lively, got a far lower reach and therefore far lower engagement.
Whether we like it or not, our social media feeds tell us what to think. And for now they want us to believe that Blake Lively is a homewrecker, a bitch, a racist and anti-feminist. Whether we choose to believe them is of course entirely up to us.
// This is a film about violence against women
Okay, let’s get to the most important part. And the main reason I wish we could shift the focus away from Blake Lively.
She is after all a super-rich, super-beautiful and super-powerful Hollywood star. She will be Okay. She will take a couple of years off with her kids and grow her other brands and then eventually her husband will produce and direct her comeback smash-hit film and all will be good. I’m not worried about Blake.
I’m worried about what her treatment currently says about us as a society.
We are letting a film about violence against women perpetuate hate and criticism and anger towards… you’ve guessed it… a woman.
Instead of talking about the issues the film raised we are talking about how disgraceful it was that Blake wore florals and didn’t look desperately serious on the red carpet. And when I say we; I hate to say it is largely women, female journalists, podcasters and commentators who are stoking this fire.
Let’s put it out.
Let’s forget about the ‘sins’ of that pretty girl who’s been far too perfect for far too long and talk about the real sins contained within the film and the book that came before it. We could be making much better use of our time than spending it terrorising Blake dontcha think?