Actress Blake Lively is drawing the ire of critics for having repeatedly used the word “trannies” as an abbreviation for “transsexuals” in recently unearthed past videos.
An old interview with Elle Magazine is used as one of the examples where she reveals she wants to have daughters or “trannies” because she wants to be able to hand down her shoe and handbag collection.
An extract from the interview, which has gone viral on X, prompted a series of replies highlighting other occasions when Lively used the term in the 2000s.
The 36-year-old actress – who is married to Deadpool star Ryan Reynolds – was labelled “awful” by commenters online for daring to use a word they classify as demeaning and hurtful to transsexuals.
The Daily Mail reports the star, who went onto have three daughters and one son, used the term another time in a 2009 interview with Allure magazine.
“I feel like a tranny a lot of the time. I don’t know, I’m … large? They put me in six-inch heels and I tower over every man. I’ve got this long hair and lots of clothes and makeup on … I just feel really big a lot of the time, and I’m surrounded by a lot of tiny people. I feel like a man sometimes.”
Blake Lively attends the UK Gala Screening of “It Ends With Us” at the Odeon Luxe Leicester Square on August 08, 2024 in London, England. (Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)
And in a third example, she repeats the term in an on-screen interview with her then-Gossip Girl castmate Leighton Meester.
Off-screen an interviewer can be heard asking the pair about rumors they “didn’t get on.”
Lively replied: “If you read the gossip magazines, everybody is dating everyone, everybody hates everyone, everybody has had like tons of plastic surgery and they’re actually men and trannies. It’s just like: you don’t listen to the rumors.”
Many social media users pointed out the word did not have the same derogatory connotations in the past and was used widely in popular culture.
Lively is yet to respond to the criticism.