Kristen Stewart faced quite a bit of backlash this week after she said women in Hollywood should whine less and work more. Ironically, what she didn’t say turned out to be more controversial than the comments she actually made.
In an interview with Variety, Stewart complains that Hollywood’s gender pay gap is such a “boring” subject to talk about. In a video of the 90-second interview, Stewart can be seen rolling her eyes when asked a question about how difficult it is for women to break through into roles as directors and actors.
“The guys make more money because their movies make more money,” Stewart says. “It makes sense.”
“Instead of sitting around and complaining about that, go do something about it,” she says. “That subject [gender diversity] is so presently everywhere right now, and it’s boring.”
In Variety‘s initial post containing an embed of the video, it mistakenly stated that Stewart was commenting on racial diversity, not gender equality.
Diversity has become a pretty sensitive subject in Tinsel Town, especially after the Academy Award nominees for the top spots were all white individuals, prompting some of Hollywood’s elite to boycott the awards ceremony.
The Internet however, took her comments — incorrectly framed as something akin to an endorsement of the all-white Oscars — as license enough to go after her with a collective pitchfork.
Variety has since issued a correction to clarify that she was indeed talking about gender equality, but it’s still amusing to imagine the editor writing the short description corresponding with the video and making this mistake. He or she treated gender equality and racial diversity like they were interchangeable, which perhaps illuminates the way Hollywood media thinks about these issues — at least, at a subconscious level.
