Blake Lively was just celebrating women’s bodies when she posted her “Baby Got Back”-referencing Instagram post last month that sparked outrage online.
After the actress quoted the Sir Mix-a-Lot hit in the caption of a photo of herself wearing a curve-hugging dress on the red carpet in Cannes in May, social media erupted calling her racially insensitive and being disrespectful to women of color.
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On Wednesday (June 22), Lively appeared on SiriusXM’s Sway in the Morning and addressed the backlash for the first time publicly.
“It’s something I was proud of. I never meant to offend anyone,” said The Shallows star, citing the support she received from Sir Mix-A-Lot through it all. “It’s just about celebrating women’s bodies and that’s what I was doing. I would never want to hurt anyone’s feelings or upset anyone. I was celebrating my body.”
Lively went on, “It’s nice to have a nice curve and not look like you’re starving to death.”
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She also noted how the images of celebrities such as herself that are used in the media are often an exception to how they look regularly.
“It’s also unfair what you see in the media so much,” she said. “What I look like on the red carpet is not what I look like in real life. Even in that dress, I’m wearing a great tiny corset that somebody has cinched me in within an inch of my life. It’s the most favorable version, so that when you look at yourself in the mirror at home and you don’t look like that, you think well why do those people look like that? But when I go home and take off that dress and look in the mirror, I don’t look like that either. It’s fun to dress up and look good on the red carpet, but it’s not representative.”
Listen to the interview segment here: