In the wake of the sexual harassment allegations made against Harvey Weinstein, thousands of women have opened up about their experiences with harassment. Numerous high-profile women in Hollywood have spoken of an industry riddled with serious issues, model Cameron Russell has started an Instagram featuring similar tales from the fashion industry, and the hashtag #MeToo is trending on Twitter attached to endless stories of harassment, exposing the sheer magnitude of this problem.
Björk is the latest to share her own experiences. In a Facebook post she says that she was “inspired by the women everywhere who are speaking up online to tell about [her] experience with a danish director”. When she started working as an actress, she continues, she realised that her “role as a lesser sexually harassed being was the norm and set in stone with the director and a staff of dozens who enabled it and encouraged it”.
Her post notes the systemisation of such harassment, with her explaining, “I became aware of that it is a universal thing that a director can touch and harass his actresses at will and the institution of film allows it.” Björk also talks about the unfair blame typically placed on women in these situations: “when I turned the director down repeatedly he sulked and punished me and created for his team an impressive net of illusion where I was framed as the difficult one.”
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