Keira Knightley is really getting candid these days!
This week she spoke about her “mental breakdown” from 2008, now she’s talking about a very different life-changing event from 2015 — the birth of her daughter.
Related: Shahs Of Sunset Star Pregnant
In a collection of essays called Feminists Don’t Wear Pink (And Other Lies) published this week, the Colette star gets more real about having a child than most readers people will be able to handle.
In fact we must put up a [GRAPHIC CONTENT WARNING] before these excerpts (via Refinery29) from Keira’s essay, titled The Weaker Sex, which begins with a horrifying opening:
“My vagina split.”
She goes on, writing “To my girl”:
“You came out with your eyes open. Arms up in the air. Screaming. They put you on to me, covered in blood, vernix, your head misshapen from the birth canal. Pulsating, gasping, screaming.”
She speaks about learning to breastfeed:
“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.”
Keira comes to her point with even more graphic imagery:
“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?”
She also gives a bit of a jab at Kate Middleton for representing “the face the world wants to see” of motherhood, “out of hospital seven hours later with her face made up and high heels on.”
“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.”
Ouch.
We were absolutely with her on the strength of women, but calling out how another woman did it? Hmm.
What do YOU think of Keira’s essay?
[Image via Adriana M. Barraza/David Sims/WENN.]
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