In next month's The Girl on the Train (based on Paula Hawkins' book of the same name), Emily Blunt stars as Rachel, a woman with alcoholism who finds herself in the center of a scandalous murder mystery. While speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Blunt took promoting the film as an opportunity to highlight the major gender stigma that her character, like so many others, struggles with as a woman with alcoholism.
"A woman is a drunk, a whore, whereas the guy’s like a partyer, a player," she said. "I’ve been around both women who drink too much and guys who drink too much and it’s just as ugly on the guys. It makes me crazy."
Blunt added that this gender divide extends beyond issues of addiction: "I don’t think that [a woman] should be seen as any less sexual than a guy. And maybe she doesn’t want to settle down, and that’s OK. And maybe she doesn’t want a kid, and that’s OK. And she’s just happy playing the field. There’s so much judgment with women."
Blunt's comments remind us that, even today, women are under major pressure to conform to societal norms — and, when they don't meet expectations, they have so much more to lose than men do.
"You have to be pretty. You have to be 'likable,' which is my least favorite bloody word in the industry. Rachel isn’t 'likable,'" Blunt said. "What does that mean? To be witty and pretty and hold it together and be there for the guy? And he can just be a total drip?"
Women suffer when they aren't permitted to be flawed (and we happen to agree with Blunt's feelings about the word "likable"). Unfortunately, we're still waiting for the day when women's flaws are accepted and celebrated as often as men's usually are.
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