the perfect victim narrative
recently blake lively accused it ends with us costar justin baldoni of sexual assault. i was surprised to see that people on social media not only denied these allegations, but started defending justin's actions. after reading a bit, i learned that in promoting their movie, blake tended to skim over important themes of domestic violence and abuse in the movie, advertising it as a fun, floral, romantic movie. justin on the other hand, tried advocating for more awareness of these themes in the publicity of the movie. and so the public sided with justin, shaming blake for not bringing to light the important message of the movie.
now, as blake is coming forward with what justin really did to her, the public is finding it hard to take her side. 'oh you didn't want to advocate for domestic abuse victims so we don't believe your sexual harassment accusations'
i found this really interesting, and how it's the perfect example of the perfect victim narrative. if an individual is not a perfect pure, blameless 'damsel in distress', does that make them deserving of sexual harassment?