Emma Watson is currently promoting her latest film, the highly-anticipated Beauty and the Beast.
However, the actress has come under much scrutiny lately following a Vanity Fair shoot for which she posed for one of the pictures braless.
The photoshoot sparked a massive reaction on Twitter with many arguing she was a hypocrite – among them, Piers Morgan said she “exposed herself to some as a feminist fraud” – while others said she was exercising exactly what feminism is.
Watson herself addressed the backlash in an interview with BBC News saying: “Feminism is about giving women choice… It's about freedom, it's about liberation, it's about equality.”
Many have also pointed to a 2014 interview Watson did for Wonderland Magazine, in which she discussed Beyoncé's self-titled 2013 album. She said she felt “really conflicted” as the singer “is putting herself in a category of a feminist… but then the camera, it felt very male, such a male voyeuristic experience of her.”
This morning, Watson shared the following from the interview, emboldening the passages which show that she goes on to agree that Beyonce’s videos do empower her sexuality as "it is her choice”:
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This is the part of my 2014 interview with Tavi where we talked about Beyoncé. My words are in bold. pic.twitter.com/Y8vumOeyDT
— Emma Watson (@EmmaWatson) March 7, 2017
The second part of the interview Watson has highlighted reads as follows:
"...she does make it clear that she is performing for him. And the fact she wasn't doing it for a label, she was doing it for herself and the control that she has directing it and putting it out there, I agree is making her sexuality empowering because it is her choice.
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"The second is that I would say you do get sense of, 'I can be a feminist, I can be an intellectual, I can be all these other things, but I can also be ok with my femininity and being pretty and with all these things that I thought might negate my message or negate what I am about'. That really is the most interesting thing about the album. It is so inclusive and puts feminism and femininity and female empowerment on such a broad spectrum."
