Charlize Theron is facing an inevitable backlash after saying that the media intrusion into her personal life is comparable to rape. After an interviewer read out stuff that comes up when you Google her – mainly stuff about how she looks in a dress, or headlines about her son – she responded: ‘I don’t do that… I think it’s when you start living in that world and doing that, you start doing that, it gets, feeling like… Raped?’
The interviewer pointed out that her comments were ‘quite strong’, but she responded: ‘Well, you know, when it comes to your son and your private life, maybe that’s just me. Some people might relish in all of that stuff, but there are certain things in my life that I think of as very sacred and I’m very protective over them.’
It's hardly surprising that she’s made a comment like this. Not because it make sense, but it's the sort of stupid thing that we've sadly come to expect of celebrities. The irony is, if Charlize* read* the gossip pages and Googled around a bit more, she would have known that in 2010 Kristen Stewart apologisedafter saying that looking at paparazzi photos of herself was like ‘watching someone being raped’ and, in 2011, Johnny Depp got into trouble for saying that having his photo taken was ‘like you're being raped somehow… Raped... It feels like a kind of weird... Just weird, man'.
So, all in all, a really terrible use of language – but it’s really important to note that the worst part of this controversy is that now, when we now Google ‘Charlize Theron’ and ‘rape’, this latest story will come up, instead of her previous work for rape charities or her work with the UN in helping victims of domestic abuse. Check out this advert she did in 1999, the first of its kind. Filmed for the Real Men Don’t Rape campaign in Charlize's native South Africa, it was so controversial that it was banned for a bit.
With regards to her latest comments, we're expecting an apology from Charlize, but instead of showing you the video of her making them to Sky News, we thought it was more valuable to show you this video.
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.