Coinciding with the premiere of It Ends With Us, Blake Lively posted a statement about domestic violence statistics to her Instagram Stories.
Photo: Instagram.com/blakelively
Domestic violence is central to the plot of It Ends With Us. Lively’s character, Lily Bloom, has her world turned upside down when her boyfriend Ryle (Justin Baldoni) begins abusing her. Blake Lively has drawn criticism for some of her red carpet responses to the question of real-life domestic violence victims.
In her latest Instagram update, Blake Lively writes, “1 in 4 women aged 18 and older in the US alone have been the victim of severe physical violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime.” Her statement continues, “Intimate partner violence affects all genders, including more than 12 million people every year in the United States.”
Photo: Instagram.com/blakelively
Lively ended her message with a link to resources for victims. “Everyone deserves a relationship free from domestic violence,” she wrote. “The National Domestic Violence Hotline provides confidential support 24/7/365.”
Because domestic violence is such a delicate, and often painful, subject, it can be extremely difficult to talk about. Baldoni, who directed as well as starred in It Ends With Us, responded to criticisms that the film glorifies DV. “Look, we live in a culture where, unfortunately, too many things are glorified. And we are fighting for attention, we’re in an attention economy…and so it makes perfect sense that people would feel that way,” he told the Associated Press. “Also, if anybody has had that real-life [domestic violence] experience, I can imagine how hard it would be to imagine their experience being in a romance novel. To them I would just offer that we were very intentional in the making of this movie.”
Originally published in Glamour.com
