Blake Lively is being called out yet again for an old interview she gave more than a decade ago in which she used a now-problematic term to describe transgender people!
Amid the ongoing It Ends With Us controversy and the back-and-forth PR battle with her co-star-slash-director Justin Baldoni, Blake is catching heat for a 2012 quote she gave to Elle Magazine. And fans are debating wildly on X (Twitter) right now about whether or not what Blake said back then was truly problematic no matter the time period, or just an unfortunate sign of the troubling social culture of that earlier era!
Related: ‘It Ends With Us’ Author & Cast SCARED Of Blake Lively, Says Insider!
So, here’s the context: way back in 2012, Elle asked Blake about whether she wanted to raise boys or girls as a mother. Her response was snarky and strange, with her saying she’d either want to have girls or “trannies,” as she termed it:
“I hope to have a few girls one day. If not girls, they better be trannies. Because I have some amazing shoes and bags and stories that need to be appreciated.”
YIKES!!!
Not exactly the kind of word you want to be throwing around, ya know? Or the flippant attitude one should deliver about somebody’s gender identity! And on Sunday on X, one user re-posted a screenshot of that quote and conveyed their shock that Blake had ever said it in the first place:
“sometimes ill be quietly going about my day and then ill remember the time blake lively said this to a journalist”
And that wasn’t all! He also came through with receipts from ANOTHER interview Lively did in that very same month which he says proves that she should have known that “trannies” wasn’t an acceptable term to use even back then!!
And even THAT wasn’t all! Another old resurfaced interview clip showed Blake flippantly and casually using that word yet again while promoting Gossip Girl back in the day, too:
Yikes, yikes, yikes!! Sure, it was 12 years ago. But still, even back then the use of that word in that way was so cutting and disrespectful!
Except… other X users didn’t necessarily see it that way! Interestingly, a debate raged in the replies to the original tweet, with many people actually coming to the star’s defense and trying to put her problematic phrasing into context:
“Trust me back then ppl said a lot worse. Not saying that this was right but it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary.”
“Is the internet just going through a trend of hating on Blake Lively?”
“It was wasn’t right, kind or acceptable but it was widely accepted. Things didn’t change overnight and that conversation was only just reaching many.”
“I’m actually not mad at this at all. The word was thrown around a lot back in the day. If it was said today it would be problematic, but nothing is wrong w wishing for a trans child.”
“It was a different time, they used that word all the time on SATC even in scenes starring actual trans people”
“You just blew up the whole smear campaign with this one”
“This isn’t really a problem. That’s how everyone referred to the trans community back then. If you’re gonna fault her, you gotta fault the entire world because that’s just what it was back then”
Wow!
As we’ve said, this is not the first time this troubling old interview from Blake has resurfaced on social media. But considering the ongoing IEWU brouhaha, it’s definitely getting a lot of new eyeballs and thrusting a lot more people into the debate about her usage of that troubling word than ever before!
What do U think, Perezcious readers?? Are you with them about having to contextualized Blake’s commentary in the social milieu of the time in which it was made?! Or is it just totally unacceptable no matter the era?? Sound OFF with your thoughts down in the comments (below)…
[Image via Late Night With Seth Meyers/YouTube/CBS Mornings/YouTube]