Actress Rachel Zegler, who won a Golden Globe for “West Side Story” and is starring in the upcoming “Hunger Games” prequel, spoke out against a crude sex tape joke directed at Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce by a Barstool Sports podcast host.
Zegler took to X (formerly Twitter) to call out the misogynistic media personality, who graphically details the sex acts he would need to see on video of Swift and Kelce for him to believe the relationship is real.
it’s not news that the media is particularly (and unwarrantedly) cruel to taylor swift but the way men feel entitled to speak about women, their bodies, and their sex lives needs to be seriously evaluated https://t.co/0KxXEfHIC0
— rachel zegler (she/her/hers) (@rachelzegler) October 3, 2023
“It’s not news that the media is particularly (and unwarrantedly) cruel to Taylor Swift,” Zegler wrote in response to the Barstool video, “but the way men feel entitled to speak about women, their bodies and their sex lives needs to be seriously evaluated.”
In the inflammatory podcast in question, Barstool Sports' Pardon My Take, sad sack of a host Dan Katz expressed his skepticism about the rumored romance, adding “If Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift release a sex video, I’ll consummate this relationship and be like, ‘Fine.'”
Besides Katz' ignorant and puzzling misspeaking about being personally involved in the relationship's consummation somehow, the host also painfully reinforces the stereotypes of Barstool Sports as a haven for alt-right, sexist, hyper-masculine, male oafs — and Zegler wasn't having any of it.
Article Continues Below“You will never see people speaking this way about a man,” she continued in her response to the video. “That goes for a lot of different scenarios. We do not pick apart men’s attitudes and relationships the way we do women’s. And it’s not always just men who speak this way about us. Women can and do, too. It sucks. Leave Taylor Swift alone!”
Zegler didn't stop there — she also clapped back to commenters trying to brush off Katz's comments as a joke.
“Seeing a lot of ‘it’s a joke' but you’ve got to understand that since the beginning of time ‘you can’t take a joke' has been synonymous with ‘let me say a horrible thing about women without suffering the consequences,'” she explained. “We’re sick and tired! It’s never been funny! Get a life!”
Rachel Zegler will be gracing big screens next month, when The Hunger Games introduces its first prequel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes in theaters on November 17. She plays the co-lead Lucy Gray in the film. May the odds be ever in her favor as she battles
misogynistic conservative caricatures on and off the screen.