If you’ve followed Blake Lively’s efforts to promote her new film, “It Ends With Us,” you’d think the movie is a woman’s bubbly, “Barbie”-like journey of self-discovery as she has to choose between two hot guys, enjoys girl-power bonding and dons great clothes — though florals instead of Barbiecore pink. Lively’s social media posts, morning show interviews and red-carpet appearances in various designer gowns wouldn’t prepare you for the fact that “It Ends With Us” actually tells the story of a a beautiful florist shop owner (Lively), who impulsively marries a dashing neurosurgeon who turns out to be abusive. “It Ends With Us,” based on Colleen Hoover’s best-selling “dark romance,” has soared at the box office, earning $50 million its opening weekend.
But Lively’s Instagram has been inundated with hundreds of angry comments from followers, aghast at her “tone-deaf” choice to essentially airbrush the film’s serous domestic violence themes out of the film’s promotional efforts. People have accused the “Gossip Girl” star — a producer on the film, along with her husband Ryan Reynolds — of misleading audiences and of disrespecting the suffering of domestic violence survivors for the sake of a “Barbie-like” marketing campaign to spur box office. But really, no one should be surprised that the actor, fashion “icon” and internet entrepreneur is being called out for being oblivious to the dark context of one of her romps thr.