Kristen Stewart, better known to most of us as Bella Swan or K-Stew, is just your average 20 year-old. She’s quiet and pleasant, likes her privacy and refuses to conform to what the rabid Hollywood beast wants from her.

Yet recently in Elle Magazine, she was quoted as comparing her fame to being raped. At least, that’s what the tabloid headline shrieked at the passer-by to catch the attention and drag them back to read about just what the Dickens the girl is talking about.

I had to do a double-take to make sense of what was all this was about. At a glance, the idea is that anyone would actually say that being famous is the equivalent of being raped will quite rightly ignite fury at a stupid quote from a girl far too young to know the weight of her words. However, upon reading further, the truth becomes clearer.

In the most recent edition of Elle Magazine, she actually said:

The photos are so… I feel like I’m looking at someone being raped. A lot of the time I can’t handle it. It’s fucked. I never expected that this would be my life.

She doesn’t bluntly compare the two acts. She is far from being nonchalant about rape, as the headlines would have you believe. Granted the words that were actually spoken carry much weight in them, but to understand where she’s coming from, one would need to realize that she isn’t merely complaining about a few nosy photographers or journalists. I’m not saying that one should compare such a horrendous act so lightly, and she didn’t. How many ways can a person really feel violated? Your body. Your mind. Your ears. Your eyes. Your moral standing. Your privacy. Your self. The worst possible way is sexually, as rape is violation of all of these things. At worst she over-stated, at best she was misquoted.

We can be assailed in so many ways but all we really note are the physical methods. What if somebody broke into your home, went through each and every area of the place touching your personal items, rifling through your most private papers, books, letters, leaving their intrusive mark upon each item and then simply left without taking anything? You would feel distraught. Regardless of something being missing, the fact that anybody had actually had the audacity to plunge their hungry curious fingers into your belongings and your life is enough to drive you to some form of grief. It’s a feeling of the self being invaded without necessarily being touched

The article that quoted Stewart obviously took the quotes they found most shocking from the Elle interview and created a plausible reason to cast a disgusted look and shake your head and say “What a fool”.

She is a young actress, full of energy and happy to be an actress, not a celebrity. In a recent snippet of an interview with Stewart she is quoted as saying:

I don’t want to be a movie star like Angelina Jolie. Nothing about being a celebrity is desirable. I’m an actor. It’s bizarre to me that everyone’s so obsessive.

Yet constantly throughout a variety of websites of magazines, the articles attempt to paint the actress as ungrateful for her fame and whiny about the calibre of the celebrity-status she has seemed to reach. It’s as though the media resents her for not being thankful for the pedestal they’ve put her on. This kind of negative press surrounding this misstep just adds to the churning pot of bad media she spoke out about.

In the interview, she was described as

Notorious for not smiling in pictures, not chatting in interviews, not being cooperative in photoshoots. In person, Kristen comes across as a young actress who simply isn‘t into being famous.

Can you imagine a worse off-shoot of your job than having to be ‘happy’ all the time? And who better to badger her to the point of non-cooperation than a pushy team at a magazine or newspaper? It’s a vicious cycle if you think about it.

For someone like Stewart just wants to do her job, enjoy it and be a regular girl without being badgered constantly for information on her private life, it must be a nightmare. She has every right to feel violated. But raped? Wrong word Kristen.

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