Cate Blanchett: 'Women Like Looking Sexy, but It Doesn’t Mean We Want to F-ck You'
When Cate Blanchett accepted the Style Icon Award at Monday night’s InStyle Awards, she made sure to thank the fashion titans she’s worked with throughout her career—like Nicolas Ghesquière, Stella McCartney, Sarah Burton, and Giorgio Armani—before praising women who are bold and commanding in their own personal styles.
“For me, the true icons of style, and I think there’s a bit of a theme emerging here tonight, it’s that for me it’s always those women who’ve been utterly themselves without apology—whose physical presence and their aesthetic is really integrated in a non-self-conscious way,” the actress said. “Women who know how they look, it’s not all of who they are but just an extension of that, and it’s about women who feel free to wear what they want when they want and how they want to wear it.”
But beyond commending fashion risk takers, Blanchett had some forceful words for anyone (cough men cough) who feels like they have a place to comment on a woman’s appearance in any sort of sexual way—remarks that seemed especially pertinent considering the onslaught of reports chronicling how pervasive sexual harassment and misconduct is across numerous industries.
“Women like looking sexy, but it doesn’t mean we want to f-ck you,” Blanchett said, before a brief political pivot. “No one says to Steve Bannon, ‘You look like a bag of trash. Do you want me to throw you out?’”
She continued, “But the comments that get said about what women wear on the red carpet—I mean. If you troll through those trolls on the Internet, just don’t.”
Sound advice on all fronts: Everyone should own their style; men, just because women dress sexy doesn’t mean they want to f-ck you; and you should never, ever look at what Internet trolls have to say. If we all took Cate Blanchett’s advice, world the would be a better place? Probably.