6 Famous Women Who Say They’re Not Feminists

A number of famous women have shied away from identifying as feminists, but they’re not anti-lady.

1. Melissa Leo

The actress told Salon recently:

“I don’t think of myself as a feminist at all. As soon as we start labeling and categorizing ourselves and others, that’s going to shut down the world. I would never say that.”

Leo said she felt feminists might be judgmental about doing certain kinds of sex scenes:

“I have to go at things without judgment, and that is part of my upbringing, and who I am and the time I was brought up in the world.”

Image by Chris Pizzello / AP

2. Lady Gaga

Video available at: http://youtube.com/watch?v=habpdmFSTOo.

When an interviewer asked Gaga if she thought her overt sexuality might distract fans from her music, she said no, pointing out it’s unlikely a male rockstar would be asked that same question. But then, when asked if she was a feminist, she said she wasn’t, seeming conflate feminism with a distaste for stereotypically male pastimes:

“I’m not a feminist — I hail men, I love men. I celebrate American male culture and beer and bars and muscle cars.”

Source: youtube.com

3. Gwyneth Paltrow

In a February 2012 interview with Harper’s Bazaar Paltrow reasoned that “compromise” and “being a wife” meant feminist activist Gloria Steinem wouldn’t approve:

“I gave advice to a girl friend who is an actress and in a new relationship with someone else with a big career, and I said this may not be feminist, but you have to compromise. It’s been all about you and you’re a big deal. And if you want what you’re saying you want — a family — you have to be a wife, and that is part of the equation. Gloria Steinem may string me up by my toes, but all I can do is my best, and I can do only what works for me and my family.”

Image by MARIO ANZUONI / Reuters

4. Marissa Mayer

In an interview the AOL/PBS series “Makers,” which profiles powerful women, the new Yahoo CEO said:

“I don’t think that I would consider myself a feminist. I think that I certainly believe in equal rights, I believe that women are just as capable, if not more so in a lot of different dimensions, but I don’t, I think have, sort of, the militant drive and the sort of, the chip on the shoulder that sometimes comes with that. And I think it’s too bad, but I do think that feminism has become in many ways a more negative word.”

5. Björk

In a 2005 interview with Bust magazine, Icelandic singer Björk said she didn’t identify as a feminist, “Because I think it would isolate me. I think it’s important to do positive stuff. It’s more important to be asking than complaining.”

She added: “You could probably call my mother a feminist, and I watched her isolate herself all her life from men, and therefore from society.”

Image by Paul Zimmerman / Getty Images

6. Demi Moore

Moore played a female executive struggling to break through a glass ceiling in the 2007 film Flawless, but when speaking about the role she said:

“I am a great supporter of women, but I have never really thought of myself as a feminist, probably more of a humanist because I feel like that’s really where we need to be.”

Image by Jason Kempin / Getty Images