Why we hate Blake Lively

She's far from perfect. But why do we hate her so much?

One summer day in 2022 after the Amber Heard-Johnny Depp trial, I had a Zoom conversation with Amber Heard, facilitated by her then-publicist. I believe it was one of Amber’s last external conversations before she went off-the-grid to Spain.

I was surprised that she would even be willing to take a conversation, given she was receding from the public eye. But with the blessing of her publicist—and given that I sit in a nebulous world of my own making that could not be defined as “on-record” journalism—she agreed to the call.

Had I recorded this video call with Amber Heard, you would think she were one of the more beautiful, lovely, effervescent people that you had ever met. And maybe, a part of her is.

As the commoditization and analysis of the self becomes the way of media, we are grappling with how we define or do not define a person through a snapshot of a moment. Through the flicker of a conversation or an argument or text exchange—which are oftentimes recalled through muddy and subjective memories and without any prior context—we make snap decisions about people’s entire characters.

Journalism seeks to establish patterns that make those snapshots a fuller and truer mosaic. Psychiatrists find personality buckets and scientific diagnoses to define people. And the law, using some of the evidence unearthed by journalism and psychiatry, tries to find conclusive evidence to make a final ruling.

Sometimes, these rubrics are incredibly valuable guardrails to establishing the reality. And other times they fall short.

One thing that the Amber Heard trial taught me is that there is nothing we love more than tearing down an exceptionally beautiful woman who shows herself to be fallible.

A couple of weeks ago, Blake Lively went public in the New York Times with a story of how her co-star in the film It Ends With Us, Justin Baldoni, orchestrated a smear campaign against her. Over the summer, she was portrayed as tone deaf as it related to the subject of domestic violence—and as a “mean girl” after a passive-aggressive comment to a journalist about her pregnancy surfaced.

Lively has sued Baldoni for sexual harassment and retaliation, after filing a complaint in California that coincided with the Times story. Baldoni has since sued the New York Times for libel, arguing that they cherry-picked data and did not properly represent his side of the story.

I don’t really care to analyze the texts and evidence brought forth by Blake Lively or Justin Baldoni, as there are plenty of TikTokers and YouTubers out there on the case.

In general, it’s clear he wants the world to know that Blake Lively was difficult to work with, perhaps why he hired a public relations firm to reveal this in the first place. It is evident that Baldoni did hire a firm to drum up negativity about Blake…and probably that Blake as an A-list actress has all sorts of demands that could be seen as “high maintenance.”

But it’s fascinating to me how excited people are, chomping at the bit, to absolutely destroy Blake Lively.

Baldoni has the right to share is side of things, obviously. But so does she. And we seem to hate her a lot more than we hate him.

But who among us hasn’t come across an entitled person who was a bit rude to others beneath her or him? How many difficult people have we had to work with, who we would rather not work with? Do we carry long-standing hatred for them?

I imagine that it is very dependent on the situation—whether you were dealing with an insufferable person or an outright abuser.

But this brings me back to Amber Heard. I don’t know her personally (nor do I know Blake Lively). But the culture’s hatred for her and Blake—people who we as the public do not know—seem to be about something else entirely. Perhaps a sort of glee or reckoning against the girl in high school who rejected us, and is now being “revealed” for who she truly is.

Or maybe we want to see someone who “has it all” torn down—to see the beautiful, talented, rich woman with a wealthy, hot husband get taken down a notch.

Maybe the haters were in an abusive relationship with a woman before, and are projecting those feelings onto Blake and Amber. These are all deeply human things to feel, but they do not mean that either of these women are evil, monstrous witches.

I can’t help but think about all the situations where men are outed for all kinds of transgressions—for being far more than “difficult”—who have a secret whisper network of men supporting them: “hey man, I got you, so sorry this is happening.” Many of these guys return to gainful work: they assume public office, raise money for their future companies, or remain wealthy and popular in their social circles.

Women don’t necessarily have that equivalent of “hey man, I got you.” I believe many of us are still far too jealous of each other, grasping for resources we believe to be scarce, to help one another out in that way when we are revealed to be imperfect. This is why men like Ryan Reynolds and Dave Portnoy (who backed one of his podcast hosts to break an NDA about her ex-boyfriend) are still, unfortunately, the ways in which women can survive in this climate.

This is not a defense of Blake Lively. I personally am incredibly turned off by any sort of mean girl energy, and I think that just because you have a beautiful outer shell doesn’t mean you have the right to be flippant or rude to others. Blake is a very powerful person, and she is married to Ryan Reynolds, who is a billionaire.

At the same time, I don’t hate her. If I were filmed at my worst or most emotional moment while pregnant, or if any of us were, we probably would not be well-liked.

Further, Blake advertising her hair care brand doesn’t mean she cares less about women who have experienced domestic violence—in fact, maybe in addition to selling products, she wants women who experienced domestic violence to be more than their victimhood, and to focus on light and fluffy things like their hair and floral arrangements. Some of my bad days have been made a lot better by getting my hair done ;)

Anyway. I took a slight break from this newsletter over the holidays, but I’ll be back at it this week. Thanks for your support!

xx,

Ari