As Emma Watson approaches her 30th birthday, the actress and activist has opened up about the pressures society puts on women to have achieved certain milestones with age and how “stressed and anxious” the “influx of subliminal messaging” started to make her.
Watson, who celebrates her birthday next April, told British Vogue that she never used to understand why people would “make such a big fuss about turning 30,” but as she hit 29 she started to feel pressure surrounding relationships, marriage and children, adding that she found 2019 “tough” as she “had all these ideas” about what her life would look like at this point.
“If you have not built a home, if you do not have a husband, if you do not have a baby, and you are turning 30, and you’re not in some incredibly secure, stable place in your career, or you’re still figuring things out… There’s just this incredible amount of anxiety,” she said.
Shutting down persistent rumours that she’s dating her Harry Potter co-star Tom Felton, Watson went on to say she is happily single, but that she prefers to call herself “self-partnered”.
“It took me a long time, but I’m very happy [being single]. I call it being self-partnered,” she said.
Within hours, the term was popping up all over social media with fans of the UN Ambassador vowing to use it to describe their relationship status going forward. “I’m now referring to myself as self-partnered instead of single, I love my new relationship status, thank u Emma Watson for this [sic],” one person wrote.
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