After Emma Watson posed in a see-through top for the cover of this month’s Vanity Fair magazine, she was accused by some of being anti-feminist. In this interview about her new movie, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, Emma responds and explains that, “Feminism is about giving women choice.”
She hits back at critics who claimed her recent photoshoot for Vanity Fair betrayed her feminist ideals. In one image from the shoot, photographed by Tim Walker, Watson poses in a crochet white top that reveals part of her cleavage.
While promoting her new movie “Beauty and the Beast” in Los Angeles Saturday (4 MARCH 2017), Watson said the controversy represented “a fundamental and complete misunderstanding of what feminism is.” “Feminism is about equality and it’s about choice,” said the star, who is also a UN Women Goodwill Ambassador and the public face of feminist solidarity foundation, HeForShe. “It’s about a woman being able to say, ‘I’m going to wear a dress,’ or, ‘I don’t want to wear a dress,’ or, ‘I want this kind of future,’ or ‘I don’t want that kind of future.’ It’s about the ability to choose. It really boils down to choice and I think there’s so many misconceptions and misunderstandings about what that is.” The actress added that “feminism is not a stick with which to beat other women. It’s just not.”
“Beauty and the Beast” hits U.S. theaters on 17 March.
