Kristen Stewart has a four-letter word for anyone who has a problem with her recent Rolling Stone cover, and we’ll give you a hint: it’s not “love.”
Our most beloved gay ghost hunter appeared on CBS’s Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Monday night to promote her new film Love Lies Bleeding, in which Stewart plays a “little dykey sister” drawn into the criminal world of a gorgeous female bodybuilder played by Katy O’Brian. But it’s not the film itself — or its promise of shocking sex scenes — that has provoked a reactionary backlash; rather, it’s Stewart’s recent cover profile in Rolling Stone, in which the star wore an unbuttoned shirt and jockstrap.
During the segment, Colbert told Stewart and the studio audience that his CBS bosses didn’t even want him to show the cover itself on the air — right before showing it anyway. “I just want you to know and the audience to know that I think it’s a perfectly lovely cover,” Colbert explained. “We were asked by CBS not to show it. They thought that would be not a good idea for us to show this and I don’t understand why [...] I want to say that you look better in a jockstrap than I ever did.”
Conservative influencers have been frothing with rage over Stewart’s cover since it debuted last month, accusing the star and magazine alike of promoting “gender ideology.” Stewart dismissed the haters, telling Colbert she feels the cover shoot was tame in comparison to other photo shoots featuring cis men.
“I think it’s a little ironic because I feel like I’ve seen a lot of male pubic hair on the cover of things; I’ve seen a lot of hands in pants,” Stewart reflected. “I think there’s a certain overt acknowledgment of female sexuality that has its own volition that is annoying for people that are sexist and homophobic [...] Female sexuality isn’t supposed to actually want anything but to be had, and that [cover] feels like it’s protruding in a way that might be annoying, but fuck you.”
This perspective shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, since Stewart even spent some time in that very Rolling Stone interview talking about the exact same double standard, right down to the pubes. “If I could grow a little mustache, if I could grow a fucking happy trail and unbutton my pants, I would. Guys — I’m sorry — but their fucking pubes are shoved in my face constantly, and I’m like, ‘Ummmm, bring it in,’” Stewart told the magazine last month.
In Stewart’s second segment on the show, she told Colbert about getting advice from Jodie Foster, teased a potential future project with her fiancée, writer-actor Dylan Meyer, and opened up about The Chronology of Water, her forthcoming feature-length directorial debut.
“We’re gonna go shoot it in Latvia,” Stewart revealed, adding, “We’re casting and scouting and it just has its own body and will and blood. The movie has kind of taken over my life.”
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