Tag: Hudson

PHOTO: Jared Siskin/Getty Images

As both a woman in Hollywood and an entrepreneur who runs her own athleisure line, Kate Hudson has seen firsthand how often women face harassment at work.

Cohosting the launch of Bumble Bizz—a networking app brought to by the makers of the female-first dating app—on Thursday night, the actress spoke to Glamour about the myriad challenges women face in their professional lives. When she was growing up, Hudson watched as her mother, Goldie Hawn, fought to navigate the film industry but didn’t comprehend how many challenges Hawn faced until Hudson herself made the leap into acting.

“As a woman in Hollywood, you are a woman in a man’s world,” she said. “The people in powerful positions are predominantly men. It’s changing rapidly, which is amazing, but it’s definitely [mostly] men.”

She’s experienced a similarly male-dominated world in launching Fabletics and has seen a shift in her own behavior—one where she may feel less comfortable, or less confident—upon entering a meeting that has eight men for every woman seated at a table.

But beyond these boys’ club, Hudson spoke critically of the extensive harassment women in acting are subjected to almost as soon as they enter the public eye.

“Women are constantly harassed,” she said. “There are men with telephoto lenses trying to get up your skirt. That’s absolutely harassment. I walk out of my house, and I’m scared the wind will blow [my skirt] up because then [photos] would be everywhere, my children would see it, and I’d be embarrassed and humiliated. That to me is a form of harassment.

For Hudson, fear of these types of invasive photographs is a constant source of anxiety for her—one that consistently impacts her day to day life. She recalled filming a movie recently, one that required her to stick her head into a trash can—while wearing a skirt, of course—for one particular scene. She told the crew that she was concerned a photographer would snap a photo from underneath skirt. Sure enough, the next day a tabloid published a photo of Hudson filming the scene complete with a callout saying she “bares too much.”

As Hudson noted, there’s little protection for women in Hollywood when it comes to this kind of invasive treatment, but that needs to change, and women need to keep speaking out, openly and honestly, about their experiences.

“These are things that do need to be talked about. You do need to be really blunt about them,” Hudson said. “All women are tired of eyes being rolled as if we’re being sensitive. We’re not being sensitive. You just might not understand that this is what it is. It feels horrible. It’s degrading. It’s dismissive. So much needs to change.”

Lauren Chan contributed to this report.