By now you know that It ends with us is a film based on a book of the same name written by Gen Z’s most popular TikTok author, Colleen Hoover. The story follows protagonist Lily through her abusive relationship with husband Ryle. Lily eventually leaves her abuser, hence the title: the cycle of domestic violence ends with her. Blake Lively produced and stars Lily, and Justin Baldoni directed and plays Ryle.
The controversy over an alleged “feud” between Lively and Baldoni erupted when eagle-eyed TikTokers (all roads lead back to TikTok in this situation) noticed that Lively, Hoover, and most of the other actors involved in the film unfollowed Baldoni on social media. They then noticed that Baldoni was absent from or did all press appearances and media coverage for the film alone, and that at the red carpet premiere, everyone ignored him and dodged questions about him. Lively is now being criticized for ignoring the film’s domestic violence plot in her promotion, while Baldoni has spoken about nothing else.
Before the premiere of It ends with us and the drama that followed, I had never heard of Justin Baldoni. In fact, I had never heard of Baldoni and Lively’s alleged feud until a Pajiba colleague brought it to my attention that I should perhaps look into it and report on it. In the same conversation, another colleague mentioned Baldoni’s memoir Man Enough: Canceling My Masculinity. I saw the title and cringed, and then I googled it and felt a familiar shiver run down my spine.
As a cisgender heterosexual woman, my experiences with masculinity in general are biased. So are my experiences with the internet-age concept of positive masculinity. I’ve dated men who use the phrase and talk about it openly, as if it’s something they aspire to. And those men have invariably been the ones who expected the most traditional gender-normative behavior from me, who felt threatened by my independence, and who were skeptical of my feminist political beliefs. So when I hear phrases like “positive masculinity,” I hear gender essentialism and I throw a fit. I’ve always been of the opinion that if you dig deep enough into these things, it usually gets scary.
That’s exactly what I found when I delved into Justin Baldoni’s rabbit hole. It all started when he gave a TED talk at the TEDWomen conference in 2017 titled “Why I gave up on being ‘manly enough,'” in which he explained his philosophy on masculinity and essentially challenged men with the question, “Are you brave enough to be vulnerable?” Baldoni rightly believes that traditional notions of masculinity are toxic and suffocating, that men should be allowed to express their feelings and show weakness, and that doing so would only strengthen their relationships with women. It’s a heteronormative interpretation that he expands on in his memoir. In both cases, he tells men that “the glass ceiling exists because we put it there,” but doesn’t call for any real political change. In fact, he assures his readers, “I’m not advocating any partisan belief system or agenda here. As a registered independent, I do not support any political ideology, and although I absolutely vote and participate in elections, I do not speak publicly about who I vote for.”
Positioning yourself philosophically as an advocate for change while ignoring the need for structural change is not activism, but Baldoni clearly sees himself as an activist—he now has a podcast and an internet community based on his beliefs—and I think that activism is where the conflict between him and Lively lies. Baldoni has spoken about how difficult it was to play a character like Ryle, how he expected Lively and the other women on set to direct scenes involving violence, and why he wanted to play Ryle in the first place. I think this clip from May of this year is most telling:
“I think there’s a little bit of Ryle in all of us. I wanted to explore this part of me that maybe had something dark and shadowy about it, and I was afraid to explore it for a long time. I think I wanted to be a good man and a good person for a long time, and I kind of ignored that part,” he said, arm in arm with Hoover.
This film and the story it tells fit Baldoni’s exploration of the boundaries of his own masculinity, but it also fits his business of having a community of men talking about how to be a good man. He promoted—or should I say exploited?—the story of domestic violence so much that I think that’s the only reason anyone noticed Blake Lively. was not. Promoting charities and raising awareness for worthy causes is of course a good thing, but there is no denying that there is some self-promotion involved and that he benefits in some ways from it, beyond the obvious advantages that come with being an actor and director of a Hollywood film.
Aware of my bias on the matter, I asked a few men in my life about the situation and they confirmed my above sentiments—that it felt like a celebrity was trying to sell them something. The husband of a good friend called the whole thing “celebrity mumbo jumbo.” This man works in healthcare and says that such things just don’t interest him in his day-to-day life when he’s dealing with life-and-death scenarios. Besides, he said, no celebrity can “make” him think or believe anything. If some of his close male friends wanted to talk about how to be a good man, then sure, but he’s fundamentally skeptical of anyone who has a platform. This was echoed by another friend, a fellow writer who is also married. “I don’t really care what an actor has to say about masculinity, I really only listen to psychologists on that matter,” he said, adding, “I have too much other crap on my plate to care about positive masculinity.” It’s notable that both men grew up with either absent or distant fathers and were partially raised by single mothers. Both admitted that being a “good person” was more important to them than being a “good man,” something Baldoni also strives for.
These responses are exactly what I suspected: The “good” men I know aren’t yearning for a community of good men or for guidance on how to become one. Then I talked to my brother, a transgender man who has spent years working closely with at-risk youth as a youth librarian and for nonprofits. I assumed he would agree with me and my friends, or, if anything, be even more critical of Baldoni and his brand of positive masculinity. But even though he acknowledged that he has a real job and doesn’t live online like I do, and so doesn’t really know who these people are, he disagreed.
“On the one hand, I am a transmasculine person, but on the other hand, I work with young men of high school age who have clearly internalized some negative male stereotypes and do not necessarily respond positively to feminism in women and girls,” he says.
“So positive male/masculine role models actually have an impact on how young men see themselves and relate to the world and especially to girls and women in their lives. They see me as a ‘man’ with a (to them) strange gender presentation, and then they realize that I’m just another human being. So I don’t think it’s anti-feminist to say that young men need and deserve positive, masculine role models who embody masculinity in healthy ways and can also expand the definition of what masculinity has to mean.”
Very rude of my older sibling, to be honest. Okay, fine: maybe Baldoni is right. But then why the fight with Blake?
The truth, dear reader, can only lie in this age-old story: creative differences. Baldoni uses art (and I use this word for argument, I don’t really believe It ends with us is Art, with a capital A) to promote what he sees as his activism, while Lively uses it to promote herself and her carefully maintained image, as well as her businesses, which are numerous (in this case, hair care). Which you prefer depends on who you are and how you consume entertainment, but either way, consumption is the whole point. Both of these people are capitalists first and artists second. If I’m being generous, Lively probably didn’t take it well when a D-list actor told her how to promote feminist causes. If I’m being honest, neither of these people are the kind of people I want representing feminist causes.
However, since I have no new information, two questions remain for me:
1. Who cares? And
2. What has happened to art for art’s sake?
