Calling her out. Keira Knightley didn’t hold back in a new essay titled “The Weaker Sex,” in which she criticized Duchess Kate’s public appearances which came hours after giving birth to her three children with Prince William.
“We stand and watch the TV screen. [Kate] was out of hospital seven hours later with her face made up and high heels on,” Knightley writes in the piece for Feminists Don’t Wear Pink (and Other Lies), according to Refinery29. “The face the world wants to see.”
The 33-year-old Pirates of the Caribbean star goes on in graphic detail: “Hide. Hide our pain, our bodies splitting, our breasts leaking, our hormones raging. Look beautiful. Look stylish, don’t show your battleground, Kate. Seven hours after your fight with life and death, seven hours after your body breaks open, and bloody, screaming life comes out. Don’t show. Don’t tell. Stand there with your girl and be shot by a pack of male photographers.”
The book, published on Tuesday, October 2, is a collection curated by The Pink Protest cofounder Scarlett Curtis and also features essays from Emma Watson, Saoirse Ronan, Jameela Jamil and others.
Kate, 36, has followed the same routine each time she gave birth: The royal debuted all three of her children — Prince George, 5, Princess Charlotte, 3, and Prince Louis, 5 months — just hours after welcoming the littlest royals. Each time, she looked picture perfect in chic dresses accompanied by her flawless brunette locks while standing on the steps of the Lindo Wing at St. Mary’s Hospital alongside her 36-year-old husband and their newest addition.
The Atonement actress also details her own birthing experience in the piece. She and husband James Righton welcomed their now 3-year-old daughter, Edie, in May 2015, one day before the Duchess of Cambridge delivered Charlotte.
“My vagina split. You came out with your eyes open. Arms up in the air. Screaming,” the Oscar nominee recalls. “They put you on to me, covered in blood, vernix, your head misshapen from the birth canal. Pulsating, gasping, screaming.”
Knightley, who also points out a double standard for men and women as parents in Hollywood, circles back to the essay’s title as she continues: “You latched on to my breast immediately, hungrily, I remember the pain. The mouth clenched tight around my nipple, light sucking on and sucking out. I remember the s–t, the vomit, the blood, the stitches. I remember my battleground. Your battleground and life pulsating. Surviving. And I am the weaker sex? You are?”
