Blake Lively may look like she has it all — impeccable style, a sweet romance with Ryan Reynolds, and two adorable children — but don't call her perfect. The actress graces the cover of Glamour's September issue, and aside from gushing about her amazing family and friends, she also opened up about being a woman in Hollywood, how the election has made her more aware, and what she's doing to promote a positive space for her daughters. See her best quotes below.
On how the increase of female-produced projects is increasing equality in Hollywood: "I think it helps a lot. Nobody's going to fight for you as much as you fight for yourself. That said, I know a lot of great men — directors, producers, studio heads — looking to tell stories about women, some because they're drawn to those stories, some because they're husbands or fathers and want to see the women in their life represented more accurately, and some just because they look at the numbers. They see, 'Wonder Woman has replaced religion in America. We should probably invest in female summer movies.'"
On playing complicated women: "I think that onscreen — at least in the mainstream — complicated women are black-and-white. They're villains, or they're heroic. And that's just not real life. We all have a lightness, and we all have darkness, and we all have plenty of shades in between."
On how the election changed her: "It made me more aware, more conscious, more sensitive. Not just of sexism but of discrimination in all areas — class, gender, race. I had realized that there were problems [before]. You know, I do a lot of work against sex trafficking: There are hundreds of thousands of missing-children reports in the United States each year; some of those children are sex-trafficked. But that's not reported. You see [stories about] only the wealthy, middle-class white girls who've been kidnapped. There are people missing all the time, and because they're minorities, because they come from impoverished neighborhoods, they don't make the news. That is so devastating."
On using certain words around her daughters: "But with my husband, I'm lucky to have someone who is so conscious. My husband was like, 'Why do I always say he?' And I said, 'That's what we're taught.' So he'll pick up, like a caterpillar, and instead of saying, 'What's his name?' he'll say, 'What's her name?' Or we've joked that my daughter is bossy. But my husband said, 'I don't ever want to use that word again. You've never heard a man called bossy.' There would never be any negative connotation for a man being a boss, so to add a negative connotation on a woman being bossy? It's belittling. And it doesn't encourage them to be a boss. So do I know how to be the best parent for a daughter? No, I have no idea. All I can do is share what I'm thinking — and learn from others."
On being called perfect: "It's nonsense. It simplifies people. Not all men, but a subsection of men have a desire to understand and control women. To do that, you have to paint them into this thing you can wrap your head around. But women are complex. It also is [a reminder] that what you see in the media is not real life. The night before an interview, I have complete anxiety: How is this person going to spin me? So when you read, 'Oh, she's got a perfect life,' or 'Her life is crumbling' — they pick narratives for everyone. And the narratives stick."
On her husband's parenting tweets: "He may as well work for the Enquirer. When he says 'my daughter,' he's never, ever talking about her. Everything is a completely made-up scenario. He'll run them by me sometimes just to make me laugh. But oh, I'm so in love with him when he writes that stuff. I mean, I'm in love with him most of the time, but especially with that."
On saying she loves her husband "most of the time": "I said, 'Most of the time,' because if I say, 'I'm so in love with him all the time,' then you get that eye-rolling, 'Oh, her life is so great, she's so perfect.' So it's, like, my defense mechanism."
On whether she thought she would still be friends with her Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants costars: "Yes, and I'm grateful we are still friends. They're three of my very best friends and role models. They're so artistic, and they're activists. They're wives, and most of us are mothers. They're producers, directors, and writers. They're not limited. They're unlimited."
