I’m not naïve. I know that when a fairytale Hollywood relationship is broken, fans think they know those people. They want – need - an explanation. Remember Justin’s moves, singing about Britney’s infidelity in song? Remember Julia Roberts leaving Kiefer Sutherland at the altar? For that matter, remember “A Low Vera”? We watched with bated breath. I did too.
This is not that.
This… feels scripted to me. And I don’t mean that they meant to get caught, or that her overwrought apology which reads like a diary entry was written by someone else. When I say scripted, I mean this was scripted to happen because this is the script we’ve written for Kristen Stewart for years.
Isn’t it funny how a woman who has one bad trait has all of them? Mean, ungrateful, bratty, sulky, dirty-smelling Kristen Stewart is now being labeled a “slut”, a dirty whore, a homewrecker. Those last few are words used only for women, to condemn their sexuality. The words we use for men are both milder and more vague. If I call a man a pig or an asshole or a dirtbag, the sentiment is there but he could have commited any number of crimes. “Slut”? The intent is very, very clear. So now that she is a slut, it is therefore time for her to be slut-shamed.
Stewart has always been an impediment to the fantasy of millions of women thinking they could be with “Rob”. As long as she was around, the fantasy didn’t work. But she stayed so they constructed a new fantasy around them: Prince and Princess, the anointed couple. What other way could the relationship possibly end? Even if they’d been married, even if he’d been the one to cheat, Kristen Stewart would have been the scapegoat. The easiest, quickest way to cut a woman down is to criticize her sexual desires. Why she had them. Why she didn’t love him enough. Why she acted on them. Why she’s such a slut.
The reason she’s being labeled this way isn’t just because she was with another man. Even a married man. It’s not even because she cheated on the world’s most beloved sexualized Fraggle. She is labeled this way because she’s a bitch. Long before this scandal erupted, Stewart wasn’t “nice”. She wasn’t sweet. She didn’t go out of her way to be liked. Maybe this is because, as I’m told, she’s very shy. Maybe it’s because she’s fundamentally unpleasant. Who cares? All we need to know is that “bitch” is a gateway for “slut”.
Don’t believe me? As we sift through “old Hollywood” scandals, the one that stood out for me was Claire Danes. Slept with a man who was expecting a baby! Stayed with him! No apologies were issued. No statements to the press. I don’t believe it was a smart move on Danes’ part; I don’t believe she thinks so either. But she didn’t wear it. Because prior to that, she was everyone’s sweetheart. She was Juliet. She was a blonde innocent. And she went back to being a blonde innocent pretty quickly after the fact. That hasn’t stuck to her, and I think most people have forgotten about it.
This is what I mean when I say the script was already written. The script for “Claire Danes: Life”, written by we the public and the media, called for her to be sensitive, talented, delicate, confused. So she remained. When she made a mistake in her personal life, it was clucked at, then forgotten. She resumed her role.
Kristen Stewart’s role was Resentful Sarcastic Eyeliner Enfant Terrible. It was born, she fed into it, there were discussions of hairwashing and weed and how oppressive she found her life. She has always walked this line of being ungrateful for her fame, for the adulation of the fans, for the systematic engineering of turning her boyfriend into Jesus. You know what they say about Jesus’s woman, right?
She was a whore.
Cheating on anyone, married or not, is deplorable. Getting caught, and how you respond, gives you control of the situation or not.
And so Stewart apologizes in a rambling, weepy apology that had nothing to do with Pattinson, and everything to do with apologizing to her fans, for confirming that she was as bad as they secretly thought she was:
“I did that to him. How could I? You would never have done that to Rob, would you? You are, in fact, better than me. Now will you please still come to our movie in a few months? I’m a bad person, it’s true – but Rob isn’t. I love him, I love him. I know you love him too. Maybe you’re not perfect either, but I’m worse than you are. I may be thin and rich and famous, but I’m a slut*. So we know that wipes out everything else about me. It’s the only judgment on my person that matters. Right?”
No matter what had actually happened between Stewart and Pattinson, she would have been the villain. This would have been the script. Because when women with barely-controlled seething jealousy hold the decision-making dollars, there can only be one script. And she’s playing her role.
*This is a word designed to hurt, and it does an excellent job. We don’t use it here at LaineyGossip. To read a truly awesome discussion of why not, click here – a Tomato Nation essay that continues to school me every time I read it. We should be able to do better.
