Kirsten Dunst's Surprising Gender Role Commentary

Kirsten Dunst has shared her thoughts on gender roles in a relationship — and we're kind of wishing she hadn't. Turns out Dunst, who has played every version of doomed femininity on screen, is quite a traditionalist when it comes to male and female gender norms. She tells Harper's Bazaar U.K.: "I feel like the feminine has been a little undervalued...we all have to get our own jobs and make our own money, but staying at home, nurturing, being the mother, cooking — it's a valuable thing my mom created." She then added the potentially regrettable corollary: "Sometimes, you need your knight in shining armor. I'm sorry, you need a man to be a man and a woman to be a woman. That's why relationships work."

As you might imagine, on the Internet, this made some heads explode.

Jezebel was among those first to react. "Kirsten Dunst is not paid to write gender theory so it shouldn't surprise anyone that she's kind of dumb about it, just as I wouldn't be surprised if Gloria Steinem sucked at convincingly and heartbreakingly playing a mysterious oversexed teen who kills herself in a Sofia Coppola movie," Erin Gloria Ryan writes. She's absolutely correct: Not everyone is a scholar on gender theory. There's no real reason to expect groundbreaking sociopolitical thought from most actors (or people, for that matter). Still, whenever someone's so unabashed in their conservative-leaning belief vocalizes it to a largely liberal and feminist-positive industry, people are going to snipe. Sure, it's Dunst's right to speak her mind — as it is ours to object or agree as we see fit. How do you feel about Dunst's remarks? (Daily News)