Kristen Stewart Responds to Rolling Stone Cover Backlash

Kristen Stewart spoke about her queer identity in a new interview with Rolling Stone magazine.

Stewart, who previously called Twilight a “gay film,” is bisexual and currently engaged to screenwriter Dylan Meyer.

In the photoshoot accompanying the interview, Stewart is posed in traditionally “masculine” ways: heavy eye contact with the camera, with her hand sliding into her briefs, lifting weights, and making a finger gun at the camera.

“Now I want to do the gayest fucking thing you’ve ever seen in your life. If I could grow a little mustache, if I could grow a fucking happy trail and unbutton my pants, I would,” Stewart says in the interview.

The photoshoot and Stewart’s words created a frenzy among many members of the LGBTQ+ community on X (formerly known as Twitter), specifically lesbian and transmasculine individuals. 

The quotes on Rolling Stone’s X post about the article garnered thousands of comments from the queer community, making reference to the advent of “low-dose testosterone” and Stewart as a butch.

Still other members of the LGBTQ+ community criticized the assigning of transmasculine traits to Stewart, as it can be seen as an overstepping of boundaries and a form of parasocial relationship to a celebrity. 

But Stewart’s photoshoot particularly got a rise out of conservative commentators, as many voiced their outrage at the shoot.

One right-wing twitter account tweeted a photoset of Stewart looking more feminine in comparison to her Rolling Stone cover shoot with the caption “Wokeness destroys the mind, body, and soul.” This was obviously an attempt to reinforce gender norms about what a woman should or shouldn’t look like.

“I want to make the pictures that I wanted to see when I was little, versus feeling like, ‘I hope they take a good picture of me,’” Stewart said in response to the backlash her shoot received. 

Kristen Stewart can be seen next in the new lesbian thriller-romance Love Lies Bleeding, in theaters March 8, 2024.