BRB, getting “Gender is whatever” tattooed across my chest because Ava Phillippe just nailed it. That’s exactly what she said in an Instagram story when asked about her attractions. And honestly, we couldn’t agree more with her perspective on gender and sexuality.
For some context, Ava, the 22-year-old daughter of actors Ryan Phillippe and Reese Witherspoon (who’s basically a carbon copy of her mom, no lie), was doing a Q\&A on Instagram on January 12, 2022. When someone asked, “Do you like boys or girls?” she responded with a selfie featuring bold blue eyeshadow (which, by the way, *totally* made her eyes pop). Her caption? “I’m attracted to… people! \[Gender is whatever].”
Couldn’t have said it better ourselves.
The following day, Phillippe posted again, saying, “I can \[and] will block profiles commenting bigoted/hateful messages under my posts. My Instagram profile is not a place for cruelty/hate speech \[and] I intend to keep it that way.” Yass, girl, double amen for setting those boundaries.
Despite growing up in the public eye and being pretty active on social media, Ava’s love life has been relatively private. In June 2021, she shared a rare Instagram post with her boyfriend Owen Mahoney, whom she’s been dating since 2019. However, the photo has since been deleted, so it’s unclear whether they’re still together. But hey, both Ava and Reese still follow Owen on Instagram, so… TBD.
As for Reese, she hasn’t made any public statements about Ava’s sexuality or relationship status. She has, however, expressed immense pride in her daughter’s journey to find herself.
“Ava is so down-to-earth,” Reese told InStyle in November 2021. “She wants to do great things in the world. She’s studying and learning and trying to find herself. It’s a big thing in life to try different things and figure out what is really your path.”
And in a 2020 interview with Variety, Reese reflected on her own teenage years, saying, “No one spoke to me about sexuality when I was a teenager. I didn’t understand what homosexuality was. My grandparents didn’t explain it; my parents didn’t explain it. I had to learn from somebody I met on an audition in Los Angeles
