Dear Gossips,
Blake Lively’s The Shallows performed well at the box office this weekend after the studio smartly moved it up as counterprogramming. Reviews of The Shallows were pretty solid too, as critics judged it by B movie standards, appreciating it for the camp and schlock and overlooking it for the “only white lives matter” undertone.
After all, it’s summer. Summer is about fun at the beach and hot blondes in bikinis. When that hot blonde is so good at eating burgers and looks, basically, like a Disney princess come to life, nobody wants to think so hard about it. Is that the key to the success of Blake Lively? Last week, MTV posted an article called The Unbearable Blakeness of Lively, a hilarious read, calling her the “perfect woman” because she’s “all blonde and no edges, so smooth it’s like she’s not even there”.
Do you feel bad for her? It’s going to be OK, don’t fret. Because, as the writer notes, “Blake Lively is indestructible and she will be famous forever”. Vox takes it even further, declaring in a new post yesterday that Blake is “the greatest success story the movie industry has ever seen”. Blake Lively is a survivor. As Vox notes, she’s “not a great actress”, and that hasn’t stopped her. She’s “openly dull”, and that hasn’t stopped her. Her business went down, that didn’t stop her. She was critised for idealising style in the time of slavery, and it didn’t stop her.
So, again, you needn’t come defiantly in defence of Blake Lively. She doesn’t need your support. Blake Lively will always win. And so will Maria Sharapova who got caught doping and is suspended from tennis for two years and is now – guess what?! OMG such exciting news! – going to Harvard Business School and still has the support of her sponsors Nike, Evian, and Head. I told you not to worry about Maria.
Yours in gossip,
Lainey
