Emma Watson’s recent Vanity Fair cover shoot, which saw the actress pose ‘topless’ in an open crochet bolero, sparked controversy last week, with some commentators finding the photos to contradict and undermine her work as a high-profile advocate for feminism and gender equality.
In a later interview with news agency Reuters, the Beauty and the Beast star hit back at her critics, clarifying that ‘feminism is about giving women choice. Feminism is not a stick with which to beat other women with. It’s about giving freedom, it’s about liberation, it’s about equality.’
‘I really don’t know what my tits have to do with it,’ she added.
Beyoncé fans, however, soon took the actress to task for her comments, resurfacing an interview between Emma and Tavi Gevinson published in Wonderland back in 2014, when she apparently criticised the singer for playing up to the ‘male voyeuristic experience’ of the camera while sampling Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s feminist manifesto.
Quoting from the interview, Twitter users were quick to highlight hypocrisy on Emma’s part, arguing that she applied one rule to herself and another to other women.
Wanting to clear up any confusion, Emma took to Twitter to post the 2014 article in full, placing her words in the correct context.
‘This is the part of my 2014 interview with Tavi where we talked about Beyoncé. My words are in bold,’ she captioned the screengrab from the Wonderland interview. In it, after expressing how she initially felt ‘conflicted’ by Beyoncé’s self-titled video album, she explains how she came to release that the singer’s choice is actually an empowering one.
‘The fact she wasn’t doing it for a label, she was doing it for herself and the control that she has directing it and putting it out there, I agree is making her sexuality empowering because it is her choice,’ she said.
‘I would say you do get a sense of, “I can be a feminist, I can be an intellectual, I can be all these other things, but I can also be ok with my femininity and being pretty and with all these things that I thought might negate my message or negate what I am about.” That really is the most interesting thing about the album,’ she added. ‘It is so inclusive and puts feminism and femininity and female empowerment on such a broad spectrum.’
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