What should happen, as a result of this, is that reporters should just freeze him out on this promotional tour. Simply refuse to interview him and let him promote his film. Make real and meaningful consequences happen because he did this.
The people that think this is OK blow me away. Look, it’s not always awful to tell someone they are beautiful but this is BADGERING her about it. She clearly doesn’t know what to do with this and is trying to just laugh it off. She’s being as professional as possible and this guy is just NOT giving up. Are there worse forms of sexual harassment, SURE, that doesn’t make this ok. This makes me cringe. “How am I supposed to do an interview with this woman?” Because you’re a fucking grown man and she is a human being trying to do her job, treat her with respect.
So I’m reblogging what Kitty Pryde said, because I saw an alarming number of replies last night, that were essentially questions about whether or not this is sexual harassment.
Two illustrative examples:
I’m not posting these to dogpile on those folks, but to illustrate a big reason behavior like Vin Diesel’s above is allowed to happen. One person sees her smiling and uses that as evidence to ignore his body language, his repeated unprofessional and inappropriate comments, and her subsequent comments about how uncomfortable it made her. He is clearly taking advantage of his power in this situation and acting like a drunk frat guy who won’t leave a woman alone, because he knows he can get away with it. Using your position of power to repeatedly tell someone they’re beautiful when they can’t walk away for any reason at all is harassment.
Listen, because I don’t think you’re being a shit when you make that observation. I think you just don’t realize what’s happening: any woman will tell you that what she did is a default, learned behavior to try and deescalate a situation just like this, especially for a PR Professional whose job depends on keeping the celebrities she’s interviewing happy). Just because she’s smiling doesn’t mean it’s okay and that she’s okay with what’s happening to her.
Now to the second comment: this makes me mad. Clearly this is not just someone saying “hey, I think you’re beautiful. Now, let’s get back to the interview.” This is quite clearly not that, and people who look at what Vin Diesel did, and then excuse it with that sort of comment are a big part of the problem.
Look, people, this isn’t complicated: treat everyone with kindness and respect. You are not entitled to anyone’s attention or approval. Vin Diesel’s behavior here is abhorrent, inappropriate, and inexcusable. I repeat what I said last night: he should be frozen out by all PR professionals on this press tour, and denied the opportunity to promote his movie, unless and until he publicly apologizes to Carol Moreira for this.
