In a scathing open letter this week, Mila Kunis condemned a Hollywood producer who threatened her when she refused to pose semi-nude — and joined a rapidly growing list of actresses who have vocally rebuked the sexism they regularly face.
“And guess what? The world didn’t end,” she wrote in her essay for A Plus magazine. “The film made a lot of money and I did work in this town again, and again, and again. What this producer may never realize is that he spoke aloud the exact fear every woman feels when confronted with gender bias in the workplace.”
And gender bias is undeniably rampant in Hollywood. Recent studies, including research conducted by Geena Davis’s advocacy organization, the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, consistently reveal discouraging trends: Actresses get paid less. They are three times as likely to appear in nude scenes as their male counterparts. They get fewer roles, especially as they age, and the parts they do get have fewer speaking lines.
“Throughout my career, there have been moments when I have been insulted, sidelined, paid less, creatively ignored, and otherwise diminished based on my gender,” Kunis wrote. “And always, I tried to give people the benefit of the doubt; maybe they knew more, maybe they had more experience, maybe there was something I was missing. I taught myself that to succeed as a woman in this industry I had to play by the rules of the boy’s club. But the older I got and the longer I worked in this industry, the more I realized that it’s bull—-! And, worse, that I was complicit in allowing it to happen.”
Davis, one of the industry’s most vocal women’s rights activists, has often said that the treatment of women in Hollywood — and the way they are portrayed onscreen — has become so standardized that the problem is all but invisible. But more and more women in Hollywood — Melissa McCarthy, Patricia Arquette, and Jennifer Aniston, among many others — are aiming to change that by speaking up about their experiences.
Last year, Cate Blanchett told the New York Times that she’s learned to push back when asked to do nude scenes: “When the director says you really need to be topless in this scene, I go, ‘Do I?’” she said. “Women need to empower themselves and claim even a character that’s written in a clichéd way.”
At Elle Magazine’s 2014 Women in Hollywood event, Jennifer Garner talked about attending a press event with her then-husband, Ben Affleck, and what she learned when they compared notes afterward: “I told him every single person who interviewed me, I mean every single one … asked me, ‘How do you balance work and family?’ ” she said in a speech. “And he said the only thing that people asked him repeatedly was about the t–s on the ‘Blurred Lines’ girl.”
Maggie Gyllenhaal has spoken about how she was made to feel too old for a part — at age 37: “I was told recently I was too old to play the lover of a man who was 55. It was astonishing to me,” she told the Wrap last year. “It made me feel bad, and then it made me feel angry, and then it made me laugh.”
Kunis added her voice to the chorus this week, making it clear that she would no longer give sexist comments — intentional or otherwise — a pass.
“I’m done compromising; even more so, I’m done with being compromised,” she wrote. “So from this point forward, when I am confronted with one of these comments, subtle or overt, I will address them head on; I will stop in the moment and do my best to educate. I cannot guarantee that my objections will be taken to heart, but at least now I am part of creating an environment where there is the opportunity for growth. And if my comments fall on deaf ears, I will choose to walk away.”
Kunis also acknowledged her privilege in being able to safely speak about her experience; her hope, she said, was that her words might make things better for other women, too.
“If this is happening to me, it is happening more aggressively to women everywhere,” she wrote. “I am fortunate that I have reached a place that I can stop compromising and stand my ground, without fearing how I will put food on my table. I am also fortunate that I have the platform to talk about this experience in the hope of bringing one more voice to the conversation so that women in the workplace feel a little less alone and more able to push back for themselves.”
