Daisy Ridley covers the latest issue of British GQ. While she is pantless in at least one of the photos, GQ kept it mostly wholesome, which I appreciate. I like Daisy a lot and I wouldn’t buy it if she was suddenly looking like a sexpot vixen in a men’s magazine. She was able to stay-on brand, in the editorial and in the interview. She spoke a lot about what happened to her a few years back, which basically amounted to a nervous breakdown. She was barely eating, she was deeply paranoid, she felt unsafe for good reason, because people (mostly men) were following her around and stalking her and making her feel uncomfortable constantly. The bulk of the interview is about that, but she also talks about her feelings on royalty and more. You can read the full piece here. Some highlights:
Being vegan but not macrobiotic: “If I’m completely honest, I don’t know exactly what macrobiotic means. I know that means things are living in it, right? Don’t say it has to do with midi-chlorians. Please.”
How she dressed up for Halloween: “I’m going as Mrs Rochester from Jane Eyre. My friend said, ‘That is so obscure.’ But I got some grey make-up and I have a hilarious pink gown, so I’m like, ‘F–k it. I’ll be the crazy lady in the attic.’”
Being stalked: “I kept thinking, ‘Am I being a drama queen? Am I paranoid?’ I wasn’t. It was real. It was fucking real and scary. The world is a cyclone. See? Everything out there… is the cyclone. And then there’s the solid thing at the centre of it all. That solid star is my family.”
She no longer calls herself a tomboy: “I now have an issue with the word ‘tomboy’. Why has there got to be a ‘boy’ in it? I was like, ‘Hold on: you’re saying a little girl is actually like a boy because she likes to be active?’ In terms of energy, I would say I do have a strong masculine energy as well as a feminine. But I was a girl. I am one.”
She’s not a royalist: “Here’s the thing. I’m going to tell you something so shocking for Americans but not Brits: I don’t massively care about the royal family. I am not a royalist. Buckingham Palace is great, but it’s an unused building, isn’t it? The other day, there was a story that the Queen uses six rooms in the palace. Six. How is that a good thing? It’s prime real estate.” That said, Ridley is deeply sympathetic to the Duke and Duchess Of Sussex, calling the way they, and Meghan in particular, have been treated by the British press “truly shameful”.
Her six-month sabbatical after The Last Jedi: “Just being in London, it was so nice, not having to rush everything through. Like, I love washing my clothes – I love doing the wash – but when you’re working tons, you’ve got to smash it all in one day. This was ‘Oh, my God. I’m going to do a load today’ every day. It was lovely. I started going on the Tube again. And I was like, ‘You know what? The world didn’t stop turning. It’s really fine.’ It was everybody else making me feel like this was terrifying that made it so terrifying. For so long, I was so scared to say to anyone, ‘It’s not all good all the time.’ Because you know what? It’s not all good all the time. I can say that now. Say no. Now I think I’m very nicely balanced.”
BERTHA. She went as Bertha Rochester for Halloween! But how does one dress up as Bertha? It’s not really a set, go-to costume. And I would have gotten it wrong, absolutely. I would have seen Daisy dressed up as Bertha and I would have said that she was Sexy Nurse Amelia Earhart. Anyway, Daisy brings up an interesting point about “tomboy,” although I still use that term. I’m old though, and for some reason, I always thought “tomboy” was a pretty neutral, inoffensive term. But that’s probably because I was never a tomboy, even though I also have a very masculine energy. Daisy does NOT have a masculine energy, but I would describe her as a tomboy. It’s weird and subjective, I know.
A cute video from British GQ:
Photos courtesy of WENN, cover courtesy of British GQ.
I was a tomboy, still am and proud of it! I was never what is/was called a “girly” girl. See nothing offensive about it.
That’s the point exactly. It’s perfectly normal for girls to be wild and rambunctious. Gendering it as boyish or “not girly” is ridiculous.
Maybe I should say I wasn’t offended by it.
I get it. I feel like the term was a badge of honor when I was a kid, but I guess that’s why it bugs me now. I loved high top sneakers, playing outdoors, and dolls. The gender binary isn’t fair to kids.
I love the idea of a Bertha Rochester costume!
And I have an issue with you not understanding white privilege. So?
Thank you.
This.
Haha! Exactly.
I was always called a tomboy who ‘cleaned up nicely.’ just because I hardly wore dresses, cursed and didn’t let boys push me around. I also never got in fights. I’m tough without throwing punches so I don’t know what that means but tomboy doesn’t make me angry. It’s just an old-fashioned notion. White privilege, on the other hand…. I was minority white growing up (one of four white chicas in a graduating class of 4000). My white privilege was thrown in my face every day. I knew it. Everyone knew it. But thank God I went through it because it taught me many things. Don’t speak for anyone. In fact, as a white person, if you need to speak about privilege and racial inequality, speak directly to white people and tell them to shut up and listen.
Anyone else think she looks like a long lost Sprouse triplet? https://scontent-yyz1-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/e35/78718711_561733934616814_3605506280763853380_n.jpg?_nc_ht=scontent-yyz1-1.cdninstagram.com&_nc_cat=110&oh=a70162a006964b40b862c2379ee939a6&oe=5E85AE68
And I see where she is coming from about tomboy. So many traits are considered boy-like and when a girl likes those things she’s somehow more of a boy. I hate how we gender toys and hobbies for children. Also, being called a tomboy always felt like a compliment whereas a boy would be insulted if we had a term like “sally girl” I’d even compare it to Cool Girl syndrome.
Her comments about Buckingham Palace are a bit ignorant as it’s a working office not just for TQ to swan around the 6 rooms she lives in. There is at least 200+ staff who work and live there. It’s not lying empty as she is implying. She really is rather clueless.
What’s clueless about it? They’re spending half a billion pounds to upgrade this useless building for a useless family. Oh, no, wait the royals bring tourism and cultural value to the UK! WOW! Let me say this: give me 10% of their wealth to allocate into marketing and other cultural promotional activities and I’ll give you solid results in tourism and cultural value for the UK, all quantifiable, plus transparent financial records. And will the Queen be disclosing the exact extent of her ownership in Rio Tinto and other mining and petroleum/hydrocarbon companies, as well as general shareholdings in other businesses, period? There’s a conflict interest there, and not just because of this: Will she be disclosing how much potentially insider trading information she gets with her weekly top-secret briefings from British intelligence? And so on?
Isn’t Bertha (Mason) Rochester mixed race? (Caribbean Creole) What does grey face makeup have to do with her? A fancy pink dress, that’s what she thinks a woman confined to the attic and held against her will due to mental instability would wear? Has Daisy ever actually read the book?
Isn’t there a part where Jane sees her and think she’s a ghost? Maybe that’s why the grey makeup?
The word “tomboy” has been rendered meaningless. Every model and starlet claims to have been one growing up, and then you see photos of them as kids and there’s nothing “tomboyish” about them at all.
I love her comments about the Monarchy. It is a complete waste of property and taxpayer monies. It should be DISSOLVED.
Hear! Hear!
I with you guys.
Feminine and masculine are only made up constructs. They don’t really exist. A person is simply who they truly are or they are not. I have always found the term tomboy offensive. It is insulting to be relegated to another gender because you are not the stereotypical image of your biological gender. Male = superior, strong, admirable Female = weak, inferior, a degradation, to be freely used as an insult Even the anatomy of females can be used as an insult while the anatomy of males are a compliment. Everyone needs to let go of their idiotic and archaic understandings of gender. People need to be free to be who they are without being labelled as boyish or girlish.
Preach!
Don’t know about where you live, but here in the UK d!ckhead and kn*bhead are used as very common insults, among many others based on male anatomy.
I like Daisy (think her privileged comments were taken a little out of content as she was being asked about whether she was better equipped to deal with fame than John Boyega) and she was great in The Rise of Skywalker. It was a fun, light, breezy SW movie that was so much better than The Last Jedi. Doesn’t deserve the crappy reviews, but then I didn’t go in expecting too much. She’s probably right about the tomboy thing.
She could just state, “I have issues.” That would be sufficient.