In Defense of Jonah Hill

By Madeleine Kearns

Sunday, July 16, 2023

 

Ordinarily, the romantic lives of celebrities are of limited interest. But the recent attacks against Jonah Hill, the actor from Don’t Look Up, Superbad, and Hail, Caesar!, give some insight into how deranged modern dating standards have become.

 

Hill was in an unhappy romantic relationship with an obscure surfer and model, Sarah Brady, between summer 2021 and early 2022. The relationship ended and Hill moved on, fathering a child with his new girlfriend, Olivia Millar, in June. But last week, Brady took to Instagram to accuse Hill of having been “emotionally abusive.”

 

Was he? Brady shared screenshots of text messages allegedly from Hill. In one, Hill appears to have written:

 

Pain and simple:

 

If you need:

 

·        Surfing with men

·        Boundaryless inappropriate friendships with men

·        to model

·        to post pictures of yourself in a bathing suit

·        to post sexual pictures

·        friendships with women who are in unstable places and from your wild recent past beyond getting a lunch or coffee or something respectful

 

I am not the right partner for you. If these things bring you to a place of happiness I support it and there will be no hard feelings. These are my boundaries for romantic partnership.

 

This doesn’t seem like abuse so much as standards conducive to a healthy relationship. Brady’s surfing lifestyle pre-dated her relationship with Hill. Still, being overly friendly, mingling half-naked with members of the opposite sex, or posting sexual pictures would make most romantic partners uneasy. As for hanging around with unstable people, that also would be off-putting to most people — regardless of whether they’re male or female.

 

Nevertheless, Brady captioned the screenshots, “this is a warning to all girls. If your partner is talking to you like this, make an exit plan.” Never mind that Hill makes it clear that Brady is free to choose to ignore Hill’s boundaries, just as Hill is free to break up with Brady for doing so. He even assures that “there will be no hard feelings.”

 

A writer for CNN concluded that Hill’s comments were a “misappropriation of popular therapy-speak [that] created a veneer of respectability that disguised a perverse shift in the power dynamic between himself and Brady.” A writer for TMZ  concluded that the “bottom line” was that the messages were incriminating to Hill. A Vogue writer described Hill’s behavior as “toxic, coercive, manipulative misogyny,” and concluded that “these debates are never really about bathing suits or boundaries, . . . they are about a woman relinquishing who she is for her man.” It’s difficult to imagine that, had this been the other way round, these messages would have caused quite the same fuss.

 

Victim feminism has become a veil for all behaviors, including sheer spitefulness. Why, for instance, is Brady sharing these messages now? She is no longer in a relationship with Hill. Brady said that she had to share the messages for her own “mental health,” and that she waited until after Hill’s child was born so as not to stress out his pregnant girlfriend. She wrote, “It may seem as if I am sharing a lot, you all have no idea how much more there is which I am choosing not to share out of consideration for him and his family.”

 

This thinly veiled “there’s more where this came from” threat recalls the similar antics of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry when they made their infamous accusation that someone in the royal family had expressed “concerns” about the skin color of their future child, while refusing to say who said it or what exactly what was said. In these situations, vague allusions are even more damaging. At least a specific comment can be explained or refuted.

 

I’m not claiming Jonah Hill is an upstanding gentleman. I really have no idea. But so far, the only evidence brought against him are texts expressing sentiments that aren’t necessarily abnormal. My main criticism is that this was probably a conversation that should have happened, if not in person, then over the phone.

 

Brady has said that she hopes Hill has a daughter so that “maybe she’ll turn him into a real feminist.” But what is a real feminist? Someone who suppresses their standards and beliefs to appease someone else? Again, Hill made clear that he did not expect Brady to do this. If posting half-naked pictures of herself was important to her or she felt it was necessary for her job, then maybe they weren’t a great fit as a couple. Of course, Hill probably could have detected these red flags sooner, but poor judgment doesn’t make him a monster.

 

This is not the first time people have been scandalized by normal trust-protecting behaviors. In 2022, the Sun ran a story about a couple whose “marriage rules” were severely trolled after they shared them online. The wife shared that she and her husband agree not to text members of the opposite sex without the other knowing. While they have mutual friends of the opposite sex, generally her husband texts the guys and she texts the girls. She also shared that they’ve vowed not to watch pornography or lust after others.

 

That all sounds perfectly sensible. When building and protecting trust are deemed “toxic,” it’s time to opt out of modern dating standards.