It Continues With Us

“It Ends With Us” is a story about a woman surviving abuse, written by Colleen Hoover: a woman who perpetuates abuse and sexual violence. The leading role is played by Blake Lively, who is an obvious advocate for abuse, which is why she rambled on about her dead hair, awful fashion, and florals instead of actually taking the subject seriously.

I can talk extensively about Hoover’s illiterate writing choices, even though I refuse to read any of her appalling books. From the excerpts I’ve seen online, I worry for the fanbase who froths at the mouth over her books. What is the appeal? For example, one of her books, ’Ugly Love,’ included the line: “We laughed at our son’s big balls.” Why did her editor allow that? More importantly, why did she feel the need to write that?

Her books tend to romanticize abuse and violence, something her young audience has trouble grasping the magnitude of. “It Ends With Us” perfectly demonstrated this issue, with the marketing completely missing the mark and undermining the actual message she’s poorly attempting to get across. I mean, a nail polish line? Yeah, when I was suffering from domestic violence, one of the things I thought was, ‘Omg maybe if I put on this cheap nail polish, I’ll be free! Now only my nails will be black and blue.’

Also, the coloring book that almost came out was a smack in the face. Why did ANYONE think that was okay? Why does she have such an intense desire to capitalize on abuse?

Aside from Hoover’s shallow writing and marketing, there is another crucial reason the book and film are problematic.

In 2020, it came out that Hoover’s son, Levi, was sexually harassing a 16-year-old girl. The two were friends on Snapchat, which is where he eventually began asking her for sexually explicit images while knowing she was underage (at the time, he was 20.) The girl had been a fan of Hoover, and upon reaching out via email, Hoover blocked her.

The issue began to boil over on social media, where the young girl was harassed and cyberbullied by Hoover’s fans. According to a friend of the victim in an interview with Wayv, Hoover unblocked and reached out to the victim. In their email conversations, the victim asked Hoover to address the situation on social media. But Hoover refused to do so.

It is so disturbing that Hoover is running around pretending to be an advocate for traumatized women all while silencing a victim because it doesn’t fit her narrative. Hoover’s white feminism perpetuates the toxic narrative that the patriarchy pushes. This behavior is a huge obstacle that prevents victims from coming forward. It’s always ‘believe victims’ until the perpetrator is someone well-liked, or in Hoover’s case, her son.

The rage I feel when I see Hoover act like she’s doing something revolutionary to help abuse victims makes me boil. Hoover, while stating this is about domestic violence, failed to give a proper trigger warning surrounding the graphic nature of sexual violence, which ended up sending numerous audience members into a panic attack.

People on X (Twitter) have talked about how certain scenes caused them to rush out of the theater and to the restroom to break down. Getting triggered like that in public is so overwhelming; every terrible thing is rushing through your mind, and it feels like you’re right back in danger.

There are ways to handle violence, more specifically sexual violence, in film that will educate those who haven’t been impacted while respecting the peace of victims. For example, there is never ANY reason for a rape scene to be graphically shown. You don’t need to physically see every little detail to understand what happened and how bad it was. It seems like directors add these scenes for ‘shock value’ without grasping the gravity of what happens to victims when they see it. All they care about is the money they’ll make, just like Hoover.

If you actually want to learn more about abuse, listen to victim’s stories. Stop entertaining money-hungry hypocrites who’ve never cared about the trauma we’ve endured. To them, it’s just a movie. To us, it’s our life.