A Victim of Diminished Value

I don't feel "threatened" by Kristen Stewart's cover story, I feel deeply sad for her

Actress Kristen Stewart (Twilight franchise/Charlie’s Angels) recently received what is still a very high honor in the entertainment industry - a cover story in Rolling Stone magazine.

The article and cover image were about what you’d expect from a progressive entertainment publication featuring a proud, progressive lesbian. It was a giant, figurative middle finger to middle America, average America, “dull” America, straight America, MAGA America - all the parts of America Stewart and her interviewer think they hate, the parts they truly believe are responsible for their unhappiness.

The social media posts promoting the story were unsurprisingly YAAAS QUEEEN. Stewart is featured in gender-bending attire, posing in that strangely aloof manner that liberal women seem to always imagine as the prototypical male posture.

It is clear that we are all meant to be grossly offended and shocked, and that is certainly the read Stewart got from the right-wing responses. I would expect nothing less. Unsophisticated thinkers have thick filters. They see what they want and if something doesn’t reflect their narrow views of humanity they simply change the filter to something easier.

I don’t know if I can speak for most conservatives, but at least among the punditry class I can safely say none of us were “shocked” or “outraged” at Stewart’s masculine cosplay. We were saddened…for her, not for ourselves.

I read the entire piece. Stewart and her interviewer went to great lengths to show her as happy, content, and at peace with herself. What I and many others saw was completely the opposite. I saw an emaciated young woman, forced to conform her body to the standards of the very industry she says (right there in the article and in many comments before and after) abused and disrespected her body her entire life. I saw a woman begging for agency over her own body, and landing on the false premise that the only way for a woman to have agency over herself is to be more like a man.

The article’s author conducted the interview over several weeks and spent hours hanging out with Stewart at various places, including her own Hollywood home.

Stewart talked about growing up in the industry as a girl. She is from a privileged family, a show biz family, having been raised in Los Angeles and thrust into the business since before she could read. It is tempting for us to look at her as just another “rich bitch” complaining about life, but she knows what many of us don’t - the entertainment industry is brutal and wealth cannot protect you from the predators who lurk behind every casting couch and every contract. Stewart shared the discomfort of having to go through puberty in front of the world, and the awkwardness and shame of having to stumble in romance and life in front the ever-watchful eye of the press.

She talked about wanting to shock people with her queerness, what she learned from other queer people in her business, and how she views her sexuality as a type of defiance. She talked about being a woman and finding sexual gratification. She talked about wanting to help people expand their notions of sexuality.

She talked and talked and talked and all of it - at least all the interviewer used - was about sexuality. All of it was about sex. All of it was about her body. Every last word. Right to the end.

So, no, I did not find Stewart’s behavior or words shocking. I found it to be boring but even more so, I felt heartbroken for her. What I see is clearly a young woman who has been so broken and so abused her entire life that she is steeped in the very sickness that caused others to wound her in the first place. I see a woman lecturing others from her ivory tower, not even feeling the chains around her feet that keep her locked in said tower.

I see a woman who was told from a very young age that her body was not her own. She was sexualized and ogled and then thrown to the publicity wolves to face the inevitable criticism and judgment that comes from living a public life. As an adult that is certainly a trade-off one must consider. For a child, it is devastating. Stewart’s hyper sexual expression is the only type of a “rebellion” she can engage in safely, without fear of industry repercussions. She can use her sexuality as a middle finger to all of those “horrible Republicans” out there (even though Republicans don’t run her city and certainly not her industry and she probably has never even known an open Republican) for whatever problems she has, perceived or real. Her body has been wounded, most likely by horrible men, and like many female victims of abuse, she has shed the feminine to embrace the masculine as a type of protection for herself. Her hair, her clothes, her masculine energy, even the amount of cussing she uses in the article (no judgement here, this is just an observation) all reveal to me a frightened girl who has had to learn how to repel inappropriate sexual attention by becoming repulsive to the type of people who have abused her.

Victims of sexual abuse can sometimes become hyper sexual as another form of protection. The perverted sexual attention becomes internalized, and that person may seek out validation through sexual expression moving forward because it’s the only kind of attention they know to seek. It is also an attempt to shift power. You can’t abuse me sexually if I don’t even recognize sex as a big deal in the first place.

I think the most telling quote of the article was when Stewart suggested she feels desperate to be as “in your face” as possible with her homosexuality.

“I want to do the gayest fucking thing you’ve ever seen in your life,” Kristen Stewart says in Rolling Stone’s new cover story. “If I could grow a little mustache, if I could grow a fucking happy trail and unbutton my pants, I would.”

It’s interesting she conflates “the gayest thing ever” to simply being a man. That is indicative of the typical Hollywood starlet. They imagine themselves to be heroic figures defending the dignity of women everywhere, but they are just products of their own environments, curve-less, emaciated automatons who are only allowed to be the kind of women the men around them want them to be.

Oscar-winning actress Michelle Williams once proudly told an audience that she was grateful for her abortion as a younger woman because she never would have been able to win such accolades had she been “forced” to become a mother before she planned on it. Naturally she got a standing ovation. All I heard was yet another Hollywood victim proudly stating she has agreed to conform her body to a man’s image of what a working woman’s body should be. Her pregnant body, her changing body, her voluptuous body would be considered repulsive and unnatural to her male bosses. The realities of motherhood and taking some time to actually give birth - well, that’s not something men have to make considerations for so you shouldn’t either, Michelle! Be more like a man!

Stewart has the same mentality and I’m sure she didn’t even realize it when it crept to the tip of her tongue, but it’s there - she said it out loud. Being more like a man is better to her than being more like a woman.

We call that misogyny and it breaks my heart to see such talented young people like Stewart falling for it.

But I understand. It is easy for us to be flip about her cover story and her experience. We don’t see inside her world, but as a mother I see the pain in her eyes. It exudes from her entire body. She is screaming for peace, she is screaming for acceptance. The industry shills all around her just keep cheering on her emptiness. She is trapped in an abusive cycle of painful rewards for painful behavior.

The article is well-written, descriptive and clearly the author went to great pains to get to know her subject. There is no doubt this writer is at the top of her field for a reason. But it didn’t present Stewart as a well-rounded figure. These days sexuality is the least interesting thing about any given person, and the easiest, most surface-level subject to address. It requires no bravery at this point in our cultural journey. The entire piece was dedicated to Stewart’s views on her own body, something she has complained about other doing - focusing on her body.

In one moment of moving sincerity, Stewart addressed the media circus surrounding her chaotic, very public romance with Twilight co-star Robert Pattinson.

Stewart bought the house about 12 years ago, as a place to “go hide in” during a breakup with Robert Pattinson, back when they were both having to ride around in the trunks of cars to try to thwart the prying paparazzi. In a theoretical way, she understands the interest people still have in that relationship — she really does — but as she’ll later tell me: “Rob and I can’t just keep talking about that shit, because it’s fucking weird. It’s like if someone kept asking you — I mean for literally decades — ‘But senior year in high school?’ You’re like, ‘Fucking A, man! I don’t know!’”

“Fucking A, man!”…I laughed at this. I feel you girl! I would hate to have to continually answer for the stupid things I did when I was a kid.

It was the first and only moment in the article that piqued my interest, not because of the topic, but because for one, fleeting second I felt I had a peek into something that is well and truly a struggle for her and others in the industry. It was a sudden burst of insight into life under the microscope, and the unfairness of such a life. I wish I could have seen a more vulnerable portrait of a clearly accomplished woman.

Stewart sounded and looked deeply unhappy, and that made me deeply unhappy for her. I hope one day she will see be able to see herself as her Creator sees her. I hope one day she will see her inherent value and see how the industry and culture she has been steeped in has perverted her own perception of that value.

I hope.