Emma Watson wants boys to start accepting women heroes in movies, and her logic is flawless
As if we needed anymore proof that she was the voice of reason, Emma Watson’s argument as to why boys should accept female heroes in movies goes and adds one more thing to the long list of incredible things that she’s said, convincing us she should *totally* run for office one day.
Currently, Watson is on the promo-trail for her upcoming movie, the live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast in which she plays Belle, and she’s bee absolutely SLAYING it. The actor and activist started a new Instagram account to charter the sustainable outfits she’s wearing on the press tour, and has been sharing cute AF snaps of the gorgeous and ethical looks she’s been rocking.
A post shared by The Press Tour (@the_press_tour) on Feb 20, 2017 at 2:16pm PST
Slay a little?!
Of course we expected Emma Watson to sprout some poignant truths during the press tour, and she’s already off to a great start.
Sitting down with Entertainment Weekly, Watson was asked about why certain men were so resistant to women being the hero in movies.
“It’s something that they are not used to and they don’t like that,” Watson responded. “Anything that deviates from the norm is difficult to accept. I think if you’ve been used to watching characters that look like, sound like, think like you and then you see someone up on the screen and you go, ‘Well, that’s a girl, she doesn’t look like me. I want it to look like me so that I can project myself onto the character.’”
A post shared by Emma Watson (@emmawatson) on Sep 29, 2016 at 11:34am PDT
Watson went on to argue that this idea of identity transference was something that came much easier to women, saying that “[we] see whoever is on screen and we recognize the human qualities in the man that we relate to and there’s not such a gap, but for some reason there’s some kind of barrier there where [men] are like, ‘I don’t want to relate to a girl. I don’t want to, I don’t want that,’ which I think is inherently part of the problem.”
A post shared by Emma Watson (@emmawatson) on Sep 29, 2016 at 4:45pm PDT
Watson herself has experience of playing a female hero in a movie, the formidable Hermione Granger, but said that boys were still unwilling to say that they relate to a female character which, she said, was part of the problem.
“I feel like we need to live in a culture that values and respects and looks up to and idolizes women as much as men,” she said. “I hope that — I think — that’s starting to slowly change, but it is something that does actively need to be addressed.”
We love what Emma Watson is saying here, and it just makes so much sense. The systematic problem of toxic masculinity is what prevents boys and men from relating to their female counterparts, and we need a deeper level of change to address this. As she says, we need to live in a society that treats women with the same respect as men.
Keep up the good fight Emma!
