Blake Lively has faced criticism online for using a transphobic slur in interviews she gave as a young actress.
The 36-year-old actress used the word “t******s” in a 2012 interview with Elle magazine when she was starring in Gossip Girl.
“I hope to have a few girls one day,” she said, according to a post showing a photo of the article. “If not girls,” she added, “they’d better be t******s. Because I have some amazing shoes and bags and stories that need to be appreciated.”
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“sometimes ill (sic) be quietly going about my day and then ill (sic) remember the time blake lively said this to a journalist,” said one user on X.
Lively used the same word in an 2008 Nylon TV interview, a section of which was also posted by an X user, who wrote: “She said it again here too. The early 2000s were a terrible time for language like this, so many people casually used these words.”
Interviewed with Gossip Girl co-star Leighton Meester, Lively says: “If you read the gossip magazines, everybody is dating everyone, everybody hates everyone, everybody has had like tons of plastic surgery and they’re actually men and t******s. It’s just like, you don’t listen to the rumors.”
Lively, who is married to Deadpool star Ryan Reynolds and has three daughters and a son, also reportedly told Allure magazine in 2009: “I feel like a t***** a lot of the time. I don’t know, I’m ... large? They put me in six-inch heels and I tower over every man. I’ve got this long hair and lots of clothes and makeup on... I just feel really big a lot of the time, and I’m surrounded by a lot of tiny people. I feel like a man sometimes.”
GLAAD’s website describes “t*****” as a “defamatory slur” that dehumanizes transgender people.
Responses to the excerpts were not all bad, with one social media user responding to the Elle magazine quote with a post that read: “I’m actually not mad at this at all. The word was throw (sic) 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’s been a tough week for the actress, who has been the subject of negative publicity after an alleged feud on the set of her new movie, It Ends With Us, with her co-star and director, Justin Baldoni.
She also faced a backlash over her sarcastic comment to a reporter who interviewed her while she was pregnant in 2016 and congratulated her on her “little bump.”
