Keira Knightley has been more outspoken about her views on entertainment industry sexism in recent months, posing topless for Interview magazine in November under the strict condition that her image not be photoshopped, to highlight the manipulation of women's bodies in the media. Now, in the latest issue of Violet, the star takes it one step further, outlines some of the biggest issues she sees facing women in Hollywood.
In an interview with Violet's Amanda de Cadenet, Knightley decries the absence of women's stories in film, which she says she finds more disconcerting than other problems plaguing the industry:
Where are the female stories? Where are they? Where are the directors, where are the writers? It’s imbalanced, so given that we are half the cinema-going public, we are half the people [who] watch drama or watch anything else, where is that? So yes, I think the pay is a huge thing, but I’m actually more concerned over the lack of our voices being heard.
Knightley also describes her understanding of feminism, and explains why it's still so very necessary:
I don’t know what happened through the ’80s,’90s, and ’00s that took feminism off the table, that made it something that women weren’t supposed to identify with and were supposed to be ashamed of. Feminism is about the fight for equality between the sexes, with equal respect, equal pay, and equal opportunity. At the moment we are still a long way off that.
The star's concerns about representation echo those raised by a number of other Hollywood actresses, including Mindy Kaling and Cate Blanchett, who recently noted (astutely, I might add) that "omen don’t stop consuming cultural product once they stop menstruating."
(h/t Huffington Post)
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