Emma Watson Talks About Her Week Of Silence In The Rockies, Sexism In The Fashion Industry
If you want some girl-power and feminist inspiration, look no further than Emma Watson. The actress and U.N. Goodwill Ambassador revealed in a recent interview with British Vogue that she spent a week in absolute silence after a particularly bad breakup in order to be “be at home with myself.”
Watson revealed only a little about the end of her romance with Oxford rugby star Matt Janney, calling it “horrendous,” but didn’t elaborate; the couple broke up at the end of last year, People added.
But she didn’t trash talk. Instead, she focused on the positive — that her boyfriends have all been wonderful and supportive, and rejected any claim that being the squeeze of an internationally famous actress, fashion, and feminist icon is intimidating.
Like a true feminist, she stood up for the guys.
“I certainly haven’t found that with doing all that I do or being all that I am, that I’ve struggled in my love life. I just think it’s very patronizing towards men. It undermines them.”
Watson said past boyfriends have made her feel “really cherished. They’ve built me up.” Though she’s maintaining her silence on the details, Watson did reveal that just before her breakup, she took off to a retreat in the Canadian Rocky Mountains that requires its guests to take a vow of silence for a whole week, The Daily Mirror added.
And apparently, the vow of silence worked like a charm. Because this has been a banner year for Emma, whose speech in front of the U.N. about gender equality and the HeForShe campaign last year went viral and led Vogue to dub her the “Voice of a Generation.”
That’s a tall order, but so far, Emma is filling a role she considers her calling very well, Glamour added.
“Everything clicked in to place, in a way that it hadn’t before. I understood what I’m here to do and knew where to channel all this energy that has been coming at me. I now feel this sense of peace. People say that I’m different since I did it.”
As part of her interview with Vogue, Emma participated in a video in which she discusses a pervasive problem in the fashion industry that she hopes to change: racism and sexism.
In the video, Watson and designers Bella Freud, Stella McCartney, Erdem Moralioglu, and Jonathan Saunders break their silence on the issue of gender equality, which the fashion world may be perfectly situated to influence.
Emma and the others discuss how to achieve gender equality, black-and-white issues like the gap in pay and parental leave, as well as how the industry could actually effect change. Check it out.
[Photo Courtesy Larry Busacca/Getty Images]
