Natalie Portman Had a Radio Station Count Down to Her 18th Birthday: ‘I Felt the Need to Cover My Body’
A staple of the entertainment industry for decades, Natalie Portman is well on her way to national treasure status. Her talent has brought countless characters to life.
Portman started acting at a young age. Many challenges come with being a child star, but being constantly sexualized shouldn’t be one of them. Unfortunately, it is. And Portman knows that all too well.
Natalie Portman was sexualized from an early age
Portman’s first role was a big one. She played a little girl who teams up with a hitman in Leon: The Professional. Portman’s performance was impressive, especially considering she was just 11 when she landed the part. She turned 12 on the movie set. By age 13, she was experiencing sexualization at the hands of the public and the media.
According to CNN, her first fan letter was a “rape fantasy.” She was just 13. Being a young teenager is hard enough without the entire world commenting on your changing body. That’s actually what happened to Portman. She spoke about it at the Women’s March in 2018.
She told the audience, “Movie reviewers talked about my budding breasts in reviews. I understood very quickly, even as a 13-year-old, that if I were to express myself sexually, I would feel unsafe and that men would feel entitled to discuss and objectify my body to my great discomfort.”
According to Natalie Portman, she felt the need to ‘cover’ her body
Things didn’t improve for Portman as she got older. She continued acting but didn’t feel comfortable being herself. She told the Women’s March crowd, “I felt the need to cover my body and to inhibit my expression and my work in order to send my own message to the world that I’m someone worthy of safety and respect.”
Portman claims a radio station even began counting down to her 18th birthday when she would be “legal.” By doing so, they essentially admitted they were sexualizing a child. Portman calls this behavior “sexual terrorism.”
At the Women’s March, she said, “The response to my expression, from small comments about my body to more threatening deliberate statements, served to control my behavior through an environment of sexual terrorism.”
This type of sexualization is not unusual for children in Hollywood, as unfortunate as that may be. Calling out this type of behavior could help put an end to it. Portman isn’t the only actor calling it out.
Natalie Portman isn’t the only young star who had an 18th-birthday countdown
According to BuzzFeed, many former child actors have spoken out about being sexualized at a young age. The 18th birthday thing seems to be rather common. On Emma Watson’s birthday, paparazzi took photos up her skirt as she left her own party. Those photos would have been considered child pornography just the day before. However, since Watson had turned 18, they published them.
According to Jezebel, these 18th birthday countdowns are not a thing of the past, even post-#MeToo. Millie Bobby Brown turned 18 this year. Multiple forums were dedicated to posting sexual pictures of her when it would finally be legal. Billie Eilish went through a similar situation in 2019 when she turned 18.
According to BuzzFeed, Ariel Winter said the hardest thing about being sexualized as a young actor was that the world wasn’t focused on her talent and hard work. The Modern Family star was just 15 when E! News ran a headline about her breasts at a red carpet event.
