Blake Lively Criticized for Using Transphobic Slur

Blake Lively has recently faced criticism online for using a transphobic slur in interviews she gave in her early career.

The 36-year-old actress used the term “t******s” in a 2012 interview with Elle magazine during her time starring in Gossip Girl.

“I hope to have a few girls one day,” she said, according to a post showing a photo of the article. “If not girls,” she added, “they’d better be t******s. Because I have some amazing shoes and bags and stories that need to be appreciated.”

One user on X remarked, “sometimes ill (sic) be quietly going about my day and then ill (sic) remember the time Blake Lively said this to a journalist.”

Lively also used the term in a 2008 Nylon TV interview, a segment of which was shared by an X user, who wrote: “She said it again here too. The early 2000s were a terrible time for language like this, so many people casually used these words.”

While being interviewed with Gossip Girl co-star Leighton Meester, Lively said: “If you read the gossip magazines, everybody is dating everyone, everybody hates everyone, everybody has had like tons of plastic surgery, and they’re actually men and t******s. It’s just like, you don’t listen to the rumors.”

In addition, Lively reportedly told Allure magazine in 2009: “I feel like a t***** a lot of the time. I don’t know, I’m … large? They put me in six-inch heels and I tower over every man. I’ve got this long hair and lots of clothes and makeup on… I just feel really big a lot of the time, and I’m surrounded by a lot of tiny people. I feel like a man sometimes.”

GLAAD’s website describes “t*****” as a “defamatory slur” that dehumanizes transgender people.

Responses to these excerpts were mixed. One social media user responded to the Elle magazine quote with a post that read: “I’m actually not mad at this at all. The word was throw (sic) around a lot back in the day. If it was said today it would be problematic, but nothing is wrong w wishing for a trans child.”

It’s been a challenging week for Lively, who has been under negative publicity due to an alleged feud on the set of her new movie, It Ends With Us, with her co-star and director, Justin Baldoni.

Lively also faced backlash over a sarcastic comment she made to a reporter who interviewed her while she was pregnant in 2016 and congratulated her on her “little bump.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.