I have to give this cover a gigantic YIKES. I think Blake Lively is pretty, in that way that most mediocre blonde actresses are pretty, but it feels like someone at Glamour really wanted Blake to look like death, right? Blake covers the September issue of Glamour to promote her new film, All I See Is You, about a blind woman who regains her sight and with her new “vision,” she reassesses her marriage. Blake goes on and on in this interview, just FYI, and I’m not going to pull the quotes from Blake where she’s talking about her work with Child Rescue Coalition. You can read the full piece here. Some highlights:

She & Ryan don’t work at the same time: “My husband’s shooting Deadpool, and I’m here for the full shoot. We don’t work at the same time. We’re here as a fami­ly, then we’ll pack up, and I’ll go do a couple movies….I admire people who find that what fulfills them is their art or their work, but what fulfills both me and my husband is our family. Knowing that, everything else comes second. We’ve each given up stuff we loved in order to not work at the same time.”

Complicated women: “I think that onscreen—at least in the mainstream—complicated women are black-and-white. They’re villains, or they’re heroic. And that’s just not real life…. We all have a lightness, and we all have darkness, and we all have plenty of shades in between.”

How the election has changed her mindset: “It made me more aware, more conscious, more sensitive. Not just of sexism but of discrimination in all areas—class, gender, race. I had realized that there were problems [before]. You know, I do a lot of work against sex trafficking: There are hundreds of thousands of missing-children reports in the United States each year; some of those children are sex-trafficked. But that’s not reported. You see [stories about] only the wealthy, middle-class white girls who’ve been kidnapped. There are people missing all the time, and because they’re minorities, because they come from impoverished neighborhoods, they don’t make the news. That is so devastating.

What it’s like raising two daughters in 2017: “Sarah Silverman does a great bit that I’m going to butcher: “Stop telling little girls that they can do anything. They already believe they can do anything. It opens the door for questions….” We’re all born feeling perfect until somebody tells us we’re not. So there’s nothing I can teach my daughter [James]. She already has all of it. The only thing I can do is protect what she already feels.”

She doesn’t want to project insecurities on her kids: “I do know that I have to watch her and listen to her and not project any of my own insecurities or struggles on her…. I’m more conscious of language too: I was reading a script, and this woman, who’s very tough, did something where she took control of her life. And so she’s sitting, gripping the wheel, “a look of empowerment on her face.” And I thought, Hmm, they don’t point that out about men: “Look how empowered he is.” It’s just innate. But with my husband, I’m lucky to have someone who is so conscious. My husband was like, “Why do I always say he?” And I said, “That’s what we’re taught.” So he’ll pick up, like a caterpillar, and instead of saying, “What’s his name?” he’ll say, “What’s her name?” Or we’ve joked that my daughter is bossy. But my husband said, “I don’t ever want to use that word again. You’ve never heard a man called bossy.” There would never be any negative connotation for a man being a boss, so to add a negative connotation on a woman being bossy? It’s belittling. And it doesn’t encourage them to be a boss. So do I know how to be the best parent for a daughter? No, I have no idea. All I can do is share what I’m thinking—and learn from others.”

When she hears stories about her perfect life: “It’s nonsense. It simplifies people. Not all men, but a subsection of men, have a desire to understand and control women. 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.”

[From Glamour]

I love that Blake is talking about internalized sexism and the gender “norms” of language like these are brand new things that people have only recently started talking about. That’s not a slam, per se – Blake is a mom with two young children, it’s likely that she didn’t pay attention to these things until she became a mom. But people have been talking about that stuff for a long time. I remember when Beyonce came out against the word “bossy,” years ago. Is Blake saying she didn’t pay any attention to that conversation when Beyonce talked about it?!? Taken with her comments about how she’s more aware/sensitive post-election, it really feels like white ladies have been going through a major journey since Trump was elected, right? Like, 53% of those women voted for Trump. They had to acknowledge as a group that they were and are part of the problem. It’s a brave new world for them! So I give Blake some credit for at least trying, I guess. Meh.

Photos courtesy of Glamour.