Emma Watson has taken umbrage with critics who say her posing braless for Vanity Fair makes her a bad feminist.
"Feminism is about giving women choice," she said in a BBC News interview to promote her upcoming film, Beauty and the Beast. "It's about equality," she stressed. "It's not ... I really don't know what my tits have to do with it. It's very confusing."
In her Vanity Fair cover story, Watson discusses her "metamorphosis" from playing Hermione Grainger — the true hero of the Harry Potter series — to championing gender equality as the U.N. Women Goodwill Ambassador.
The feature also includes a high-fashion photo shoot, and in one image, Watson poses braless in a Burberry shrug.
To her detractors on social media, showing part of her breasts makes Watson a "hypocrite" and undermines her efforts to promote equal rights for women and men.
But as Watson points out, feminism "is not a stick with which to beat other women," she said in the BBC interview. "It's about freedom. It's about liberation."
That freedom, of course, isn't limited to sartorial choices.
Emma Watson: "Feminism, feminism... gender wage gap... why oh why am I not taken seriously... feminism... oh, and here are my tits!" http://pic.twitter.com/gb7OvxzRH9
— Julia Hartley-Brewer (@JuliaHB1) March 1, 2017
More broadly, feminism calls for the political, economic and social equality for women and men. That means ensuring girls and boys have access to the same quality education; that young girls aren't forced to become wives and mothers as children; that workplaces and research labs don't close their doors to women; that all genders are no longer constricted by stereotypes.
Scolding a celebrity for posing braless is missing the point.
"I'm always just kind of quietly stunned," Watson said of her critics.
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