Just yesterday, the internet was left speechless after claims emerged that Adam Levine had cheated on his Victoria’s Secret model wife Behati Prinsloo with Instagram model Sumner Stroh, who he later asked if he could name his soon-to-be-born son after. Yup, you read that right.
‘We don't feel sorry for you,’ claimed actress Sara Foster as she weighed in on the now public drama. ‘You knew this man was married, okay, and you participated. You could have easily ignored the messages. You knew he was married. We do not feel sorry for you…
‘As women, we need to do better,’ she continued, placing the responsibility for change on her own gender. ‘If a married man is being a pig and like reaching out to you, you hopefully have been raised well enough to be like, "No sorry, you're married. I can't engage”…This chick is giving women a very bad name…
‘Men are gross, we know that. They're always gonna be dogs,’ she doubled down. ‘But like as women, we need to do better and not get wrapped up in this bulls**t. If a man is married, okay? If a man is married, as a woman, it's gotta be a no go for you.'
For many, this viewpoint seemed problematic. Among the critics was supermodel Emily Ratajkowski, who recently split from her husband of four years and ‘serial cheater’ Sebastian Bear-McClard.
‘I'm going to try not to go the f**k off right now,’ she said in her own video. ‘I just couldn't disagree more. I don't understand why we continue to blame women for men's mistakes, especially when you're talking about 20-something year old women dealing with men in positions of power who are twice their age.
‘The power dynamic is so skewed, it's ridiculous. Like, it's predatory, it's manipulative, I can't imagine, I do not agree. Also, if you're the one in the relationship, you're the one who's obligated to be loyal. So, the whole “other woman”, “they're to blame”, that's bad. And it's literally designed to keep women apart.’
‘This is basically a part two,’ Emily added in another video. ‘But I think a huge problem in our culture right now is that we just say, "Oh men are monsters, they're terrible, they're horrible. We don't hold them accountable and then we blame other women, we ask women to adjust their behaviour instead of just saying men need to change their behaviour. It's sexism, it's classic misogyny. Period.’
Levine has since denied he cheated, writing in a statement: 'I did not have an affair, nevertheless, I crossed the line during a regrettable period of my life. In certain instances, it became inappropriate. I have addressed that and taken proactive steps to remedy this with my family.'
But regardless of the grey areas — fundamentally, we shouldn’t be holding women to higher standards because they ‘should know better’, because men will always be ‘dogs’ or because our gender is bound in moral expectancy by a predetermined, elusive, and unspecified ‘sisterhood’. Everybody in this scenario is accountable - and, arguably, the man who took an oath more than others.