Emma Watson Says the Word 'Naked' to a Reporter, People Go Nuts

Former statutory difficulty Emma Watson ("Harry Potter and the Krumpnarch of Blotzflotz") recently told Camilla Long in The Times Online that under the right circumstances she'd be willing to go naked, or "get her kit off," as the English like to say. In the article, called "What Next for Emma Watson," she also told Long a bucketful of non-naked factoids about herself, her family, her hopes and dreams and probably the price of tritium of Mars, but absolutely nobody cares about that stuff. Because she said the word naked, out loud, and now that she's eighteen, all the creepazoids who masturbated to her preteen face and figure may now fondle themselves with impunity. Until they notice Elle Fanning or something.

A careful scan of Long's article reveals that Watson doesn't actually say the word 'naked,' at least not in any useful context. Having done my fair share of interviews, it tells me that that the reporter, for all her interviewing skills, was unable to coax a properly salacious soundbite from her subject. Instead, Watson delivers this guarded, provisional response:

“Yes,” she says. “For Bernardo Bertolucci. It . . . depends. I’m not getting my kit off any time soon, but it is part of my job.”

And that's all. A clipped clip from 1,300 words. But it was enough for the Huffington post to repurpose the piece as the much more titillating 'Emma Watson: I'd Go Naked'. Like any bit of flash displayed on the sidewalk, the headline far outshines the meagre goods displayed inside, although the Huff Post writers do a good job of making much out of very little. The comments section is the usual array of what you'd expect: half-jokey expressions of lust, calls of paedophilia and perversion, and the inevitable cyber-libertarian point of view, which deftly slices off all real-world considerations from the matter and declares that Emma Watson can do what Emma Watson wants (get naked) and we can do what we want (drool over a teenage girl), with the net result tending to happiness.

Although Watson may not be on the level of a Miley Cyrus or Hayden Panieterre or the Britney Spears of old, her trajectory as a teen celebrity is so far predictable. The interest consolidating around her developing body grew more palpable with each passing Potter installment, each time seeking a level just below pure offensiveness (but managing to hit that mark nonetheless). Now that she's hit eighteen, the floodgates are open and people may now discuss her sexuality without fear of sounding creepy. What is so rarely brought up in the discussion is our culture's enduring obsession with teenage girls, of the tacit understanding - which is really permission - that a grown man may spark his libido against the tinder of an adolescent body. Male sexuality blooms and dies in high school, and our desires are still a mass of resentments and unresolved lusts. Not for nothing did Nabokov pry apart American consciousness with a story about a man's love for an underage girl.

Seen in that light, the Times Online article can almost be seen as a gesture of sympathy for Watson as she makes difficult choices about her career at a young age. Too bad the only trace of that sympathy is the prospect of skin.

MamaPop™