What's Blake Lively Really Selling Us?

... because it's not just the promise of good hair or sparkling craft beverages

I’ve seen Blake Lively more in the past week than I’ve seen my own family. Okay not really, but… kinda feels that way? All the clever cross promotion between ‘Deadpool & Wolverine,’ ‘It Ends With Us,’ and ‘Blake Brown Beauty’ have been simply inescapable. And actually, I don’t mind it. Maximum Effort, the Ryan Reynolds co-founded marketing agency, is always fun to watch in their creative virality. That being said, the Vogue profile that came out today (the most coveted September issue no less!) had me rolling my eyes HARD. And before you come at me as a jealous hater, I fully admit I am one. So now that we agree on that, we need to unpack what Blake, through the lens of Vogue, is really selling us right now. But first, some background on why I’ve long found her particular brand of domesticity and femininity so wildly intriguing.

Like many millennials before and after me, I was an avid watcher of Gossip Girl. Yes, Blake Lively is always a fun on-screen watch, and you don’t have to be the most talented to be watchable. While Serera van der Woodsen had enviable outfits and killer hair, it wasn’t Blake I was tuning in for. Rather, it was partly Leighton Meester’s pitch perfect take on good/bad girl ‘Blair Waldorf,’ but mostly it was a look inside the very private world of upper east side wealth and class that I was obsessed with (also why I absolutely loved the miniseries ‘Fleishman is in Trouble’ with Claire Danes and recommend it to everyone). 

What I found most interesting about Blake was the almost aggressive way the people in charge told us she was a fashion darling, it girl, and all around domestic boss babe. Early rumours around ‘Gossip Girl’ painted the cast as super tight, enjoying typical young people activities like partying, drinking, and the use of occasional recreational drugs. But Blake was never part of the cool kids on set. Instead, her and former boyfriend and costar Penn Badgley tended to prefer more G-rated activities, staying in, and playing house. I don’t want to give too much weight to gossip blinds here, but I find an old one about Blake taking now husband Ryan Reynolds (then married to Scarlett Johansson), to a cooking class during the filming of ‘Green Lantern’ to endear herself to him believable, just because that very much seems in line with her brand of ‘let me cook for you!’ love.

If you need me to drive home Blake’s soft femininity and domestic prowess further, we can also cite:

• Her short-lived lifestyle website ‘Preserve’ in which we could find such gems as romanticizing ‘the Allure of Antebellum,’ aka peak slave era

• Featuring her wedding to Reynolds in Martha Stewart’s ‘Weddings’ magazine (can’t miss the mention of Blake’s love of cooking and baking nor the fact they were wed on a plantation)

• Blake’s line of popular non-alcoholic and alcoholic beverages, despite famously being a teetotaller herself. Lots of leaning into the crafty and gourmet type of ingredients here she boasts as being favourites when cooking for loved ones (think butter, Meyer lemon (can’t just be regular lemon okay!), and bourbon

• The many cross collabs she’s done with world-class bakers and social media chefs including the ever-questionable Half Baked Harvest

• Literally any interview in which she references Ryan Reynolds including the one where she leans into the real conventional trope of husband as protector of shadowy figures (sidebar: referencing potential evils as mysterious ‘shadowy figures’ reads very trad wife to me, even though in this case I don’t think that’s how she meant it)

• Following up her recent 2024 cover of Vogue with an instagram post baking a key-lime pie, even though she was visibly annoyed when the writer of the piece brought baking up (several times!)

• The sheer number of times she refers to herself as ‘shy’ and ‘quiet’ in the Vogue profile. Hugh Jackman concurs and even compares this quality to Nicole Kidman

Now about the Vogue cover; this marks Blake’s FIFTH time on the cover of Vogue US. Just want to point out that Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh still doesn’t have a Vogue US cover, phenom GOAT Simone Biles has one cover, Michelle Obama has three and, Beyonce, Lupita N’yongo and Serena Williams all have four. But Blake Lively who is a solid B movie actor gets five? I won’t dwell too much on this since it’s more on US Vogue and Anna Wintour’s very blind spot than on Blake who will of course make the most of every opportunity and privilege, as she should. It’s also fully on Vogue that the first way they chose to introduce Blake in this particular article wasn’t as an actress or entrepreneur, but as the wife of Ryan Reynolds (what the hell, Vogue!)

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There are so many layers to unpack in this article. Let’s start with how many times the writer, Pulitzer Prize winning Andrew Sean Greer and those he interviews including cover co-star Hugh Jackman and director Baz Luhrmann call her a certified MOVIE STAR. 

As she is showing me pictures on her phone, I’m watching her and wondering: What makes a movie star? There are so few left, at least in the old-fashioned sense of Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn, and here I sit before one of the last of these rare creatures.

There are so many ways you can debate this, and for sure if we’re talking about sheer reach and popularity… okay, you can call Blake a movie star. Like I said, the wild press circuit she’s on right now means you can’t miss her. There’s her upcoming film ‘It Ends With Us,’ which she both stars in and produces, her part as [spoiler alert!] Lady Deadpool, her oddly named new hair line ‘Blake Brown,’ (sorry, I know it pays tribute to her late dad’s last name but you can’t tell me Lively just isn’t a better sell), and just the general cultural currency she’s lended due to her bff proximity to current most popular person on Earth Taylor Swift. From my perspective, the true measure of a movie star is whether they, and they alone, can sell movie tickets and make a significant box office impact. Think Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Denzel Washington, Angelina Jolie, Julia Roberts, or Gwyneth Paltrow back when she pretended to care about acting. While I legitimately enjoyed ‘The Shallows,’ ‘Age of Adeline’ and ‘A Simple Favor,’ they’re all more modest box office successes. Her other notable films like ‘The Town,’ and ‘Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants,’ were strong ensembles not carried on her name alone.

Then there’s Vogue consistently telling us what amazing style Blake has. It’s often pointed out that she styles herself and well….we can tell! Listen, style is subjective and knowing how to style is a real talent and an art - no question. We may be able to debate Blake’s style, but hopefully we can all agree that Zendaya by way of Law Roach is always fire… and she only has three Vogue US covers! I’m going to give you my least generous interpretation of Blake’s style, not to be unkind, but because my best read on it is that it’s as if Jenna Rink woke up in the body of Blake Lively, and not Jennifer Garner. It’s a lot of sparkles, rainbows, excess of jewellery, and reminds me of wearable bubblegum. I actually think she’d take this as a compliment! Plus, according to the professionals (which the editors at Vogue certainly are), Blake is still a fashion darling. As I sit here wearing the same shorts/tee combo for the third day in a row, I realize maybe her style is just lost on me.

Perhaps even more pointed than the movie and fashion star narrative is the constant reminder that Blake is a Very Good Mother. She arrives to the interview, which takes place while she’s filming ‘A Simple Favor 2’ in Italy, with kids in tow. “Sorry about all the kids!” she’s sure to point out, even though her mom is travelling with her and could have watched the kids, not to mention any invisible nannies that are most certainly in the background, though never mentioned. Again, no shade here as everybody should have access to safe childcare, especially while they work. This should absolutely be normalized. She’s filming a movie and being interviewed for Vogue’s September cover, bringing her kids was a choice, so it’s only fair that we take notice. And if you somehow missed that, there’s also the mention that she carefully crafts her kids Halloween costumes by hand every year, and will drop whatever she’s doing, even if it’s work related, to give them her full attention when they need it. Hugh Jackman, who is featured alongside her and a very close family friend, fondly recalls the many times he’s been at Blake and Ryan’s house where she is both baking and cooking up a storm. The writer of the article even shows up with a bag of ingredients in hopes to bake cookies with Blake! Given how much they’re hitting us over the head with the ‘you can do it all’ sentiment, the most interesting part of the piece was when Blake showed irritation over how interested we collectively are in her domestic pursuits:

I ask if she writes.

Blake tilts her head, suddenly curious. She plays with the big blue ring on her finger. “My husband did an interview where they asked, ‘What’s something surprising that people don’t know about your wife?’ And he said: ‘It’s that she’s a writer. She writes on every movie she works on.’ And the interviewer said: ‘And the baking? And the baking, right? She’s a great baker.’ It was just such an interesting moment. I don’t know if it’s a female thing or not. They want to talk about the baking.”

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Typically I would see her point, but in this case it feels as much a part of her carefully crafted image as her iconic hair does. She even offers to make Greer an oatmeal cappuccino! It also reminds me of the time she blasted a reporter for asking what she was wearing, as one does, at a media event for Variety’s ‘Power of Women’ Luncheon (the question was in fact, what does Blake wear to feel powerful, which feels very in line for both Blake and the event). But perhaps we are more forgiving of hypocrisy when you’re white, gorgeous, rich and one half of Hollywood’s current favourite power couple. The mention of writing was possibly the most notable thing in the whole article. This isn’t the first time I’d heard of Blake’s interest in writing; when Reynold’s movie ‘Free Guy’ came out in 2021, I remember some of the press included Blake making contributions to the script. She explains she prefers not to write or create from scratch, but to layer and add to the original source material. Upon Deadpool & Wolverine’s recent release, much of the film’s millennial inspiration was also chalked up to Blake (and if you’ve seen the movie, you know it’s heavily nostalgic for a time when low slung jeans reigned supreme). And yet, this was the sole mention of her writing in the article. It also fails to note that ‘It Ends With Us,’ is also Blake’s first time with a producer credit, kind of a big deal! But if I took a shot every time baking or motherhood came up, I wouldn’t be sober enough to write this piece.

I’m curious why they still seem to be using the same playbook of femininity and domesticity to promote Blake in 2024 as over a decade earlier. For sure, we can hold multiple things to be true at once. You can be an excellent mother, love to bake and cook, be creative, and have a fulfilling career. But even with help, I think we are smart enough to know, it’s not possible to have this all at once! You simply can’t be all-in in your work life, and all-in in your personal life. Any parent will attest to this. And pushing that narrative is boring at best, and irresponsibly harmful at worst. With a powerhouse team behind her, savvy enough to have Ryan Reynolds, his mom, and Hugh Jackman interview her on-screen love interest Brandon Sklenar in ‘It Ends With Us,’ for a promo while they wear Gigi Hadid’s line of Guest in Residence knits, it’s baffling to me that they continue to position Blake as a cross between the ideals of a pre-Snoop Martha Stewart with acting chops. But then again, perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that someone who thinks Antebellum is cute would lean into the June Cleaver of it all.