By Alex Edwards
If there’s one thing we all like to think about Blake Lively, it’s that her life is utterly, blissfully and completely perfect.
Between her insanely hot husband Ryan Reynolds, her adorable little daughters and gorgeous looks, it doesn’t seem like anything could go wrong. She captured every teen boy’s heart in Gossip Girl and has stunned in newer roles like The Shallows. But in Lively’s new interview with Glamour for the September 2017 cover, she insists the notion of perfection is “nonsense.”
“Not all men, but a subsection of men, have a desire to understand and control women,” she said. “To do that, you have to paint them into this thing you can wrap your head around. But women are complex. It also is [a reminder] that what you see in the media is not real life. The night before an interview, I have complete anxiety: ‘How is this person going to spin me?’ So when you read, ‘Oh, she’s got a perfect life,’ or ‘Her life is crumbling’ — they pick narratives for everyone. And the narratives stick.”
Lively married her Green Lantern costar, Reynolds, back in 2012. Since the two were friends first, she explained that they share a strong bond that goes beyond husband and wife. Their relationship is based on communication, treating each other like a “best buddy.” They never work at the same time, switching off movie projects so they can be together as a family. And although she explains Reynolds’ hilarious tweets about their daughters are completely made-up, she still loves them. And when she said she’s in love with him “most of the time,” the idea of perfection again came up.
“I said, ‘Most of the time,’ because if I say, ‘I’m so in love with him all the time,’ then you get that eye-rolling, ‘Oh, her life is so great, she’s so perfect.’ So, it’s, like, my defense mechanism.”
Lively will turn 30 this month, and in the interview she talked a lot about how the past decade has changed her. She’s now more aware and proactive about issues like sexism and discrimination in all areas. She’s making bigger career moves too, starting with her new role as executive producer of The Husband’s Secret. Lively will also star in the film, which is based on the life of the author of Big Little Lies.
Despite what she claims, we’re still pretty envious of Blake Lively, and this interview only made us love her even more. The September 2017 issue of Glamour is out now, with the story written by Alex Morris and the photographs taken by Nathaniel Goldberg.