Kristen Stewart did not literally declare that the finished Rolling Stone cover was “the gayest thing.” In the February 2024 profile published for the magazine’s March issue, she said she wanted to create “the gayest fucking thing you’ve ever seen in your life.”
The resulting image—Stewart in a mullet, an open black leather vest and a white jockstrap, with one hand placed inside or down the front of the garment—was designed as a sexually charged, queer and gender-nonconforming fashion statement. It became a talking point while Stewart promoted Love Lies Bleeding, drew criticism from some conservative commentators online, and prompted separate responses from Stewart in Berlin, on Extra and on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
The important distinction: what Stewart wanted versus what the cover was called
The phrase “the gayest thing” came from Stewart’s description of her creative intention, not from a formal assessment of the completed cover. Speaking to Rolling Stone, she said: “Now, I want to do the gayest fucking thing you’ve ever seen in your life.”
She was describing a visual concept that she wanted to make “hyper-sexualized, left of andro, and flipping the gender script.” In other words, “gayest” was expressive shorthand for a deliberately queer aesthetic combining masculine-coded clothing, androgyny, sexual agency and a rejection of the idea that a female celebrity’s body must be presented primarily for straight male spectators.
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What the March 2024 cover showed
Photographed by Collier Schorr, the cover showed Stewart in a mullet, an open black leather vest and a white jockstrap. One hand was placed inside or down the front of the garment, and the shoot used gym and weight-room imagery. The cover also carried the magazine’s “Uncensored” branding.
The image was sexually suggestive without being presented as explicit nudity. Its impact came from the combination of exposure, body language and styling: Stewart’s pose was masculine-coded and intentionally confrontational, rather than conventional fashion glamour arranged around a passive female subject. The Los Angeles Times described the gender-bending cover, while The Advocate reported on the cover and its rollout.
“Uncensored” was magazine branding, not evidence that the image contained explicit nudity. Stewart later pointed out that she had seen more revealing magazine covers and considered the level of outrage disproportionate.
Why Stewart used the word “gayest”
Stewart’s explanation was tied partly to her experience during the Twilight era. She said she had never received a Rolling Stone cover during that period because “the boys were the sex symbols.” Her idea was to reverse that familiar arrangement: instead of presenting a woman as an object within a predominantly heterosexual visual system, she wanted an image shaped by queer desire, masculine styling and a female subject who visibly possesses her own sexuality.
That does not make “gayest” a measurable category, and it does not establish a new identity or gender label for Stewart. In the same Rolling Stone interview, she described herself as “very fluid.” Her public comments over the years have used different language, including discussions of bisexuality and queerness, so the most accurate approach is to attribute those descriptions rather than impose one definitive label. The Guardian has also reported on Stewart’s earlier public comments about her fluid sexuality.
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Similarly, masculine or androgynous styling is not proof that someone identifies as transgender, nonbinary or masculine. The cover expressed a particular gender presentation and aesthetic; it did not announce a new gender identity.
The connection to Love Lies Bleeding
The shoot was closely connected to Stewart’s film promotion. Rose Glass’s Love Lies Bleeding follows Lou, a butch gym manager played by Stewart, who falls for Jackie, an ambitious bodybuilder played by Katy O’Brian. The queer thriller combines romance, physical strength, violence and ambition, and its central relationship is not structured primarily as a conventional coming-out story.
The film premiered in the Midnight section at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival on January 20. Sundance’s coverage emphasized the film’s mixture of romance, violence and bodily intensity, while A24’s official synopsis identifies Glass as director and Stewart and O’Brian as the leads.
Stewart said that playing Lou felt like a return to an earlier, less socially managed version of herself—before, in her words, people were “pummeled by male expectation.” That comment helps explain why the Rolling Stone image resonated with the film’s subject matter, but it should not be read as saying Stewart and Lou are identical. The cover was both a promotional image for the film and a personal, playful statement about how Stewart wanted to be seen.
A precise timeline of the controversy
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| January 20, 2024 | Love Lies Bleeding premiered at Sundance in the Midnight section. |
| January 22, 2024 | Stewart was photographed in Los Angeles for the Rolling Stone profile. |
| February 14, 2024 | The U.S. rollout of the March cover story and related social posts began. Coverage from The Advocate reproduces the rollout details. |
| February 15, 2024 | A licensed Rolling Stone Australia/New Zealand version displayed the profile date as February 15 at 11:07 a.m. The one-day difference is best understood as an edition or timezone variation, not a separate event. |
| February 18, 2024 | At the Berlin International Film Festival, Stewart defended the shoot while appearing at a press event for Love Lies Bleeding. |
| March 5, 2024 | In an interview with Extra, Stewart called the “gayest thing ever” wording “a silly thing to say” that she had made “in passing.” |
| March 8, 2024 | Love Lies Bleeding opened in select U.S. theaters. |
| March 11, 2024 | Stewart appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. |
| March 12, 2024 | The official Late Show clip of the exchange was posted on YouTube. |
| March 15, 2024 | Love Lies Bleeding expanded to a wide U.S. release. |
What the backlash was—and what it was not
The cover drew criticism from some conservative commentators and social-media accounts, including Christopher Rufo and Libs of TikTok. The documented reaction consisted primarily of public posts, entertainment coverage of those posts and Stewart’s subsequent answers. Jezebel reported on the named critics and the reaction.
The available evidence does not establish that the entire conservative movement, the wider public or all Twilight fans objected to the photograph. There is no reliable public survey establishing the scale of the response. The accurate description is therefore that the cover attracted online criticism from identifiable conservative commentators—not that “America was outraged” or that the country experienced a unified backlash.
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Critics objected to the image’s sexual suggestiveness and its queer, gender-bending presentation. Stewart interpreted the criticism as discomfort with a woman’s sexuality when it is not arranged for, or desired by, exclusively straight men. That was Stewart’s characterization of the reaction; it should not automatically be treated as a proven motive for every individual who criticized the cover.
Stewart’s defense in Berlin
At the Berlin International Film Festival on February 18, Stewart said she was happy with the images and defended the shoot’s approach to female sexuality. Her argument was that audiences are accustomed to seeing female bodies sexualized for straight men, but may be less accustomed to seeing female sexuality presented as autonomous, queer or directed toward an audience other than straight men.
She also argued that it was acceptable to combine visual elements in ways people were not used to seeing and that there should be more images like the shoot. The Independent reported her Berlin comments.
Berlin was therefore not an apology or a retreat. Stewart’s position was that the image was successful precisely because it disrupted familiar expectations. Still, her explanation remains her interpretation of why people reacted negatively; it does not independently prove the intention of every critic.
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When Stewart appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on March 11, Colbert said CBS had asked the program not to show the cover. He then displayed it for the audience anyway and joked that Stewart looked better in a jockstrap than he had.
Stewart responded that magazine covers had long shown men with visible pubic hair, hands inside their pants or unbuttoned clothing. Her point was that female sexuality is often expected to be passive—something to be looked at or possessed—rather than something that expresses its own desire.
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- Rolling Stone Magazine April 7 2005 The Children of Rock
The distinction over CBS matters. The available record supports the statement that CBS asked the show not to display the image. It does not establish that the network formally banned the cover, censored Rolling Stone, prohibited the image across its programming or issued a standards ruling specifically because of its queer content. Calling the incident “CBS censorship” goes beyond the evidence.
The official Late Show clip was posted on March 12, 2024. The Independent also reported on the CBS request and Stewart’s response.
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Only partly. In the March 5 interview with Extra, Stewart said that calling the image “the gayest thing ever” was “a silly thing to say” and something she had said “in passing.” That was a clarification of the wording, not a rejection of the cover or its underlying idea.
She added that she wanted to create a picture she would have taped to her bedroom ceiling as a teenager—an image she had not seen while growing up. That explanation adds a personal and aspirational dimension to the shoot: Stewart was not simply trying to provoke viewers, but imagining the kind of image that might have spoken to her younger self.
Extra’s interview also placed the comments within the film’s release campaign. Love Lies Bleeding opened in select U.S. theaters on March 8 and expanded on March 15.
How to understand the cover
- It was a film-promotion image: The shoot arrived while Stewart was promoting a queer thriller centered on a gym manager and a bodybuilder.
- It was a queer visual statement: Stewart wanted the styling to be hypersexualized, androgynous and outside conventional straight-male expectations.
- It challenged passive sexualization: The image presented a woman as visibly desiring and physically assertive, rather than merely available to be viewed.
- It was also playful language: “The gayest thing” was Stewart’s colloquial description of the concept, not an objective category and not necessarily the name she would give the finished photograph.
- It did not define her gender identity: Her styling and the cover’s gender presentation should not be used to assign her a transgender, nonbinary or masculine identity.
The most accurate account is therefore more specific than the original sensational headline. Stewart wanted to make an intensely queer, sexually autonomous and gender-bending image; Rolling Stone published that image; some conservative commentators criticized it; and Stewart defended the visual idea while later acknowledging that her “gayest” wording had been an offhand, silly formulation.
The Bottom Line
Kristen Stewart did not literally label the finished Rolling Stone cover “the gayest thing.” She said she wanted to create that kind of image, and the resulting photograph used a mullet, leather vest, jockstrap and gym imagery to express queer desire, androgyny and sexual agency. She defended it in Berlin and on The Late Show, while later clarifying that the phrase itself was something she had said casually—not that the shoot was a mistake.
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