Blake Lively is having quite the week. Ever since her tabloid-laden lawsuit against Justin Baldoni, the actress has been making headlines for controversies and year-long hypocrisy in the industry. Recently, after calling out The Hollywood Reporter for an “offensive” magazine cover featuring her and Justin Baldoni, Lively faced the internet’s wrath, as people gladly dug up her own problematic past.
Remember how the internet has a lasting memory? Well, that’s what came in handy, when people traced back to 2018 to pull out an old video of Blake Lively casually resting her feet on a kneeling man of color, like he’s a human footstool. But this isn’t the only messed up act that people dug out—there’s also her plantation wedding and those blackface jokes that are returning to haunt Lively.
Blake Lively recently called out THR’s magazine cover offensive
Amid Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni‘s lawsuit, THR released a magazine cover showing the actress loading a phone with a slingshot aimed at Baldoni while he is trying to flee while holding onto a copy of It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover. The outlet seemingly dropped this cover inspired by vintage sci-fi movie posters.
Now, while Justin Baldoni refrained from making any comments, Blake Lively’s spokesperson shared the actress’ opinion of the cover in a statement via DailyMail. The statement suggested how Lively found the whole image offensive and outrageously insulting. According to the spokesperson, Lively is saddened by how the industry retaliates against women who dare to file complaints.
The Hollywood Reporter should be ashamed of itself. The framing in this picture is outrageously insulting as it plays into every sexist trope about women who dare file a workplace complaint, turning them into the aggressor, and suggesting they deserve the retaliation that comes their way.
Instead of taking it lightly, as Blake Lively rushed to address the cover picture and make headlines surrounding it, the actress seemingly dug her own grave. These comments not only sparked a new wave of backlash against her but also led people to pull out old receipts on her.
Internet dug up a video of Blake Lively resting her feet on an ethnic man’s back
Right after Blake Lively made headlines for the statement shared by her spokesperson, people quickly turned the microscope on her, in true Internet fashion. As she spoke about THR’s offensive imagery, netizens pulled out Lively’s very own archives of questionable decisions. And boy, is the internet thriving on chaos!
Just as Blake Lively was busy screaming about her feelings being hurt over the THR cover, the internet pulled out a 2018 video of her treating a man of color like a human ottoman. No, seriously. The clip shared from Meta’s BehindTheTweet segment, showed the actress sitting in front of a fireplace, with an ethnic man kneeling in front of her.
The man appeared almost naked, whose only purpose at that moment was to act as a human ottoman for Blake Lively’s feet as if she was auditioning for Queen of Colonialism. Now, although she explained in the video, the meaning and justification behind the video, Lively’s 2018 clip, just became the cherry on the cake for netizens.
If you zoom in on the image, you can see a naked man there. The idea of this came from a twitter account called Headless Hollywood, which talks about how women’s heads are chopped off in movie posters all the time, and how they’re completely objectified.
So we thought it would be fun to turn that trope on itself… Come on, it’s fun. So yeah, we’ve a man that we’re objectifying. Nothing like a warm fire and your favorite ottoman.
Now, we don’t know if she thought this was peak girlboss humor, but people aren’t laughing. Instead, they’re asking how someone who gets so offended by a magazine cover had zero issue with using an actual human being as furniture. The hypocrisy is almost too much to process.
Netizens are calling out Blake Lively for her cultural offenses through the years
Well, if you thought the internet would just stop at the human footstool moment, then you’re wrong. Because people went full investigator mode and pulled up all of Blake Lively’s past problematic moments, and the list is not looking great for her. From her plantation wedding to offensive jokes, netizens are just pulling out receipts.
Back in 2012, when Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively tied the knot, they wanted their wedding to have a romantic theme with the backdrop appearing similar to that of The Notebook. But sadly, that’s not what people noted. Instead, it was the crumbling brick slave quarters, fields of cotton, and the decades of violence and abuse against Africans that emerged in the photos (via E! Online).
Further, people went as far back as 2006, where she opened up about a quirky teenage moment when she admitted to tricking her crush by putting bronzer all over herself and wearing a Scary Spice ‘fro, “so I think they’d think I was a Black girl” (via AOL). Not just that, people also dug up her Instagram post from 2016, where she flaunted her early-pregnancy baby body with the caption “L.A. face with an Oakland booty” (via ABC News).
People were soon to call her out for being ‘white and privileged’ after her controversial caption. So, while Blake Lively wanted sympathy following the THR cover, she instead got a brutal reminder that the internet never forgets.
This post belongs to FandomWire and first appeared on FandomWire
