Kristen Stewart has a lot to say about love and dating in 2016 — and how we all really need to stop trying to define each other's relationships. The actress is inspired by the increasingly pervasive millennial attitude toward dating that you could describe as Free Love 2.0. "There’s acceptance that’s become really rampant and cool. You don’t have to immediately know how to define yourself,” she tells Variety in a new interview. “Things have really shifted in this wonderful way. I’m reaping the benefits.”
The actress, who rose to fame during Twilight mania while dating co-star Robert Pattinson, only wishes the movement toward radical acceptance had begun sooner. As you might imagine, growing up under the watch of nosy tabloids — with a propensity for slapping sensational labels on stars — while you're still figuring out your own identity and sexuality wasn't easy for her. “I had to have some answer about who I was. I felt this weird responsibility, because I didn’t want to seem fearful. But nothing seemed appropriate. So I was like, Fuck, how do I define that?" she explains.
But Stewart's resistance to being labelled in the press was as much about other people as herself. She wanted to let young people know that it's okay to be grappling with your sexuality. "I didn’t want to fuck with other people... I didn’t want to be this example: It’s so easy. I don’t want it to seem like it was stupid for them to have a hard time." Today, she's happy to have photographers snap shots of her with reported girlfriend SoKo because she wants her young fans to see them. "That’s really important to me," she says. “I’m not hiding shit."