Today’s dumbest internet beef is between Natalie Portman and Jessica Simpson, and it’s about whether you can wear a bikini and yet not be having the sex.
“I remember being a teenager, and there was Jessica Simpson on the cover of a magazine saying ‘I’m a virgin’ while wearing a bikini, and I was confused,” Portman said in an interview. “Like, I don’t know what this is trying to tell me as a woman, as a girl.”
Simpson like, totally clapped back, and said she was “disappointed” to read Portman’s comments.
“I was taught to be myself and honor the different ways all women express themselves, which is why I believed then — and I believe now — that being sexy in a bikini and being proud of my body are not synonymous with having sex. … I have made it my practice to not shame other women for their choices.”
Portman’s already apologised, clarifying that she meant she was confused by the media messages that sexualised Simpson while emphasising her virginity, and never meant to “shame” her.
Their messages aren’t actually conflicting with each other.
If you ACTUALLY READ the Natalie Portman quote, she's clearly not criticizing Jessica Simpson for wearing a bikini so much as pointing out the confusing double standards of early 2000s pop stars, who were expected to present as both virginal and hypersexual.
I'm very tired.
— Louis Peitzman (@LouisPeitzman) December 5, 2018
Portman’s talking about the way the media frames women’s sexuality as something to be consumed and defined by men’s desire, even when women are saying they’re in control of their own sexuality, and Simpson read the bikini comments as shaming because, well, that’s a really common attitude: don’t show your body off unless you’re DTF.
Things that are bad: misogyny, how society fetishises virginity, the concept of virginity itself and the weirdness of how it’s hinged specifically on penis-in-vagina sex, making judgements about other people’s private life choices, endless clarifying of awkwardly phrased accidental insults in Instagram comments.
Things that are good: wearing, doing and boning whoever you want, and minding your own damn business. Good day.