Emma Watson’s journey from Hermione and Hogwarts to the UN and equal rights
THIS is how Harry Potter’s mate Hermione went from battling trolls and Death Eaters to being the world’s foremost fighter for gender equality.
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THE world should not have been surprised at Emma Watson’s inspiring and impassioned speech at the UN last week, urging men to join in the battle for gender equality.
CRUSADER: Emma Watson’s amazing UN speech
After all, while growing up, Watson had one of the best female role models a girl could hope for: Hermione Grainger.
Cast your mind back toHarry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, when young wizardly wannabes Harry Potter and Ron Weasley met a girl named Hermione aboard the Hogwarts Express.
The boys didn’t warm to Hermione at first, they thought she was a know-it-all and rolled their eyes when she raised her hand to answer question after question in class.
But she saved their backsides from a troll one Halloween night and the trio became firm friends. And she continued to save their bacon for the next 10 years, on cinema screens around the world.
Suffice to say, little Harry Potter would not be known as “The Boy Who Lived” without Hermione Grainger: The girl whose favourite place was the library. (“Why’s she got to go to the library?” Harry once asked. Replied Ron: “Because that’s what Hermione does. When in doubt, go to the library.”)
The girl who could work alongside Harry without any need for “will they or won’t they?” sexual tension.
A girl with political smarts, unafraid to stand for what is right. A girl who always came prepared, packing everything runaway wizards might need into her magic bag when Voldemort was on their tail.
Living up to Hermione’s example — Emma Watson called her “so intelligent and determined and loyal” — can’t have been easy. In fact, said Watson, “when you’re held up against her, it’s scary!”
But, as Hermione worked hard to achieve on screen, Watson — who was cast in the role aged nine — was doing likewise in the real world.
She achieved straight As in the UK’s equivalent to the VCE, began studying at America’s prestigious Brown University in her late teens, then took a break ... to study at Oxford. She graduated from Brown earlier this year with a degree in English Literature.
Quite simply, movie stardom was not enough of an achievement in itself for Watson.
“I always knew I wanted to go to university,” she told News Corp Australia while shooting the final Potter film, 2011’s The Deathly Hallows: Part 2.
“My education is very important to me. It doesn’t really matter what career path I take, I want to know things about the world.”
The films, she added, might have been “incredibly commercially successful ... but I need to succeed in a different way”.
Forget which of the boys Hermione “ended up with”. In J.K. Rowling’s final Potter book, Hermione expressed a greater ambition: “I’m hoping to do some good in the world.”
With Potter now three years in her past, Watson, 24, is making good on that vow.
As the UN’s Women Goodwill Ambassador in July, Watson last weekend launched a campaign dubbed HeForShe, calling for men to join women in advocating for gender equality.
In her speech to the UN in New York, she said: “The more I have spoken about feminism the more I have realised that fighting for women’s rights has too often become synonymous with man-hating.
“If there is one thing I know for certain, it is that this has to stop.”
The actor illustrated her own “uncomplicated” path to feminism and her surprise that to some this automatically cast her as “too strong, too aggressive, isolating, anti-men and unattractive”.
“I started questioning gender-based assumptions when at eight I was confused at being called ‘bossy’ because I wanted to direct the plays we would put on for our parents — but the boys were not,” she said.
“When at 14 I started being sexualised by certain elements of the press. When at 15 my girlfriends started dropping out of their sports teams because they didn’t want to appear ‘muscly’. When at 18 my male friends were unable to express their feelings.”
What was important, she added, was not the word feminism, “but the idea and the ambition behind it”.
She told men “gender equality is your issue too” — that gender stereotypes can also hamper males’ wellbeing, not to mention their sisters, daughters and mothers.
She concluded: “You might be thinking who is this Harry Potter girl? And what is she doing up on stage at the UN? Trust me, I have been asking myself the same thing ... All I know is that I care about this problem. And I want to make it better.”
Soon after her speech, Watson became the target of an apparent retaliatory threat — the same website responsible for hacking and making public nude photos of famous females (including Jennifer Lawrence and Australian actor Yvonne Strahovski) trying to shame Watson into silence by threatening: “Emma You’re Next”.
While the threat turned out to be some kind of hoax — possibly by a marketing company, though the waters remain murky — it succeeded in giving voice to a backlash.
But, as astronomer Phil Plait wrote for online magazine Slate, that the threat was a hoax does not “change the importance or the meaning of HeForShe — certainly not, given the tenor and scope of online misogyny”.
Thankfully, in the days that followed, support for Watson’s message grew louder than the attacks. Prominent males lined up to hold a #heforshe placard and tweet their support to her Twitter handle, @EmWatson.
“Husband to a wife, father to a daughter, son to a mother,” tweeted English actor and funnyman Simon Pegg. You bet I’m on board, @EmWatson!”
Husband to a wife, father to a daughter, son to a mother. You bet I'm on board, @EmWatson! #heforshe pic.twitter.com/5SyIKIbCZo
— Simon Pegg (@simonpegg) September 23, 2014Watson’s Noah co-star Russell Crowe, his glasses dropped to a thoughtful angle, let his #heforshe selfie do the talking.
The Avengers’ Tom Hiddleston told his 1.73 million Twitter followers that Watson was “impeccable and extraordinary”.
“I stand with you,” he tweeted. “I believe in gender equality.”
Glee’s Chris Colfer, another Noah co-star Logan Lerman, cult author Neil Gaiman, James Van Der Beek, Emile Hirsch and Joseph Gordon-Levitt joined in the chorus.
But one show of support, in particular, said a lot about how far that nine-year-old girl, who had never acted professionally before Harry Potter, has come.
Another of Hermione’s old Hogwarts schoolmates, Neville Longbottom — known in real life as Matt Lewis — tweeted:
“So proud of @EmWatson. From the girl I grew up with to the inspirational woman she is today. I’m with you. #heforshe.”
OTHER FAMOUS WOMEN TAKING A STAND FOR GENDER EQUALITY:
AMY POEHLER
US funny lady Poehler doesn’t just play a feminist on TV (her Parks & Recreation character Leslie Knope has a “wall of inspirational women” and refuses to us “the B word”), she’s also created an online community called Smart Girls, which also holds summer camps and school workshops in the US. Its mission: to teach “one’s own ability to create change for good” and to serve as “a fun and insightful resource that champions young women, letting them know that their best option is to be themselves”.
HELEN MIRREN
Veteran actor has spoken out against levels of violence and the high “bodycount” on British TV dramas, pointing out: “Most of those bodies are young women.” Mirren says she has “never understood why women should accept not having the same rights and opportunities as men. We’re half the population; we deserve to be able to participate in society and enjoy the same freedoms that men do”.
CAITLIN STASEY
Aussie actor (Tomorrow, When the War Began, Neighbours) is causing a buzz on Twitter with her outspoken attitude on everything from politics to the selfishness of having too many children. Recently, she posted a link to a story about US pop singer Meghan Trainor, who doesn’t “consider herself a feminist” despite her hit single purportedly rallying behind accepting one’s body. Stasey’s response: “Gross and disappointing.” Stasey has also declared: “Death to (beauty) pageants. Your capacity to learn does not equate to the capacity of your bra.”
TAYLOR SWIFT & LENA DUNHAM
Pop star Swift credits Dunham — the creator, writer and star of HBO TV show Girls — with educating her about feminism. “As a teenager, I didn’t understand that saying you’re a feminist is just saying that you hope women and men will have equal rights and equal opportunities. What it seemed to me, the way it was phrased in culture, society, was that you hate men,” Swift told UK newspaper The Guardian last month.
Dunham applauded Swift’s statements via Twitter: “Taylor recognises that at its core (feminism is) not about radicalism or rage, but equality. Her willingness to own the term means much to many.”
Originally published as Emma Watson’s journey from Hermione and Hogwarts to the UN and equal rights
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