Marco Bond/FlickrEmma Watson put out a strong message to her critics this week – their attempts to silence her campaigning for gender equality are futile.
In the in the same interview with Esquire the former Harry Potter star also argued that social status does nothing to protect women from discrimination, and that point is perfectly demonstrated by the latest story Watson has shared.
Speaking in New York, to launch HeForShe Arts Week, the 25-year-old recalled how the British tabloid press literally counted down the days until she was 18.
On the day the actor did reach adulthood she was suddenly confronted by the perverse attempts of the paparazzi to snap ‘up-skirt’ photos.
Watson said:
I remember on my 18th birthday I came out of my 18th birthday party and photographers laid down on the pavement and took photographs up my skirt, which were then published on the front of the English tabloids the next morning.
If they published the photographs 24 hours earlier they would have been illegal, but because I had just turned 18 they were legal.
Obviously Dan [Radcliffe] and Rupert [Grint], who were my male co-stars, don’t wear skirts but I think that’s just one example of how my transition to womanhood was dealt very differently by the tabloid press than it was for my male colleagues
Hopefully with the likes of Emma Watson sharing such disturbing anecdotes social evolution will be pushed further in the right direction.
