A run of the mill interview with Variety became something more when someone put a live mic in front of Kristen Stewart and asked her about feminism.
Stewart went on a rambling monologue about women making less in Hollywood that either seems uninformed or like the product of a twentysomething on her thirtieth time answering the same question.
“Like in any business that's so old, it's going to have a somewhat narrow view," Stewart said. "It's hard for me to speak to that, because, it's awkward. I'm so fucking lucky and so stimulated and driven, like not bored, and I have something in front of me all the time. It sounds weird for me to sit around and be like, ‘It's not fair!’ Guys make more money because their movies make more money. Let's start making more movies. It makes sense.”
She starts out pretty well before going into the ditch of an argument that men make more because they earn more. That’s an old patriarchal saw that gets trotted out in service of maintaining a hierarchy that doesn’t offer opportunity to the less advantaged.
Stewart is right in that she’s lucky to be an extremely busy actress that’s probably more focused on her next role than she is on fixing systemic issues in a system that’s been very, very kind to her. Her monologue, however, continued.
"If you're bored, or if you feel like there's a lack of something in front of you… It's silly for me to say, 'Go do something' My mom was a painter. She was a script supervisor as well. So when she wasn’t working, she was always making something. Instead of sitting around and complaining about that, do something. And you know, that's easy for me to say. Like fuck, it's hard to get movies made. It's a huge luxury. Who gets to just make movies? That subject is just so prevalently everywhere right now, it's boring."
What she’s trying to say, we think, is that women should look for creative fulfillment outside of an industry in which the gatekeepers are predominantly male, old, and white. She does wave her hand at acknowledging her privilege as an extremely famous beautiful person, but quickly moves on.
Some might say that she’s just trying not to mess up her money, but the same is true for a whole host of other women that would like the opportunity to make the same as men. While it’s unclear if two minute interviews to trade publications have ever effected widespread social change, her messaging is troubling. Just keep your head down and work is not a solution for widespread and systematic inequality.
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT