Vanity Fair has published a cover story that says the actor Margot Robbie grew up in a place where “a dingo really will eat your baby” and refers to Australians as “throwback people”.

In the August profile, written by Rich Cohen, Australia is described as being America 50 years ago (apparently the Beatles are touring, Australia is at war with Vietnam and Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde has just been released).

“[Australia is] sunny and slow, a throwback, which is why you go there for throwback people,” Cohen writes. “They still live and die with the plot turns of soap operas in Melbourne and Perth, still dwell in a single mass market in Adelaide and Sydney.

“In the morning, they watch Australia’s Today show. In other words, it’s just like America, only different. When everyone here is awake, everyone there is asleep, which makes it a perfect perch from which to study our customs, habits, accents.”

Robbie, who is described as “having a lost kind of purity”, says she does not talk much about her upbringing as she does not like perpetuating Australian stereotypes, after which Cohen writes she grew up in the Gold Coast hinterland where in the “hinterland of the hinterland” there really were “kangaroos and a dingo really will eat your baby”.

Cohen helpfully adds that the Gold Coast – Australia’s sixth largest city – is “seven thousand miles to Los Angeles”.

“When she talks about it, you see the arid country, the horizon on every side, blue sky, yellow fields,” he writes. The Gold Coast has a subtropical climate with beaches on one side of the city and rainforest on the other.

“People always want to know, ‘Did you have kangaroos outside your bedroom window?’ I’m like, ‘Yes, but none of my other friends did.’ Or ‘Did you have snakes running around?’ And again, ‘Yes, in our house, but this isn’t an Australian thing,’” Robbie is quoted as saying in the piece.

Cohen talks at great length about the actor’s looks, repeatedly discussing whether she is like Audrey Hepburn, to whom the The Legend of Tarzan film producer Jerry Weintraub compared her.

“She is 26 and beautiful, not in that otherworldly, catwalk way but in a minor knock-around key, a blue mood, a slow dance,” he writes. “She is blonde but dark at the roots. She is tall but only with the help of certain shoes.

“She can be sexy and composed even while naked but only in character. As I said, she is from Australia. To understand her, you should think about what that means.”

Robbie has previously spoken about how uncomfortable she is at being written about as a sex symbol. “I’ve been very fortunate,” she said at a press conference this year. “I’ve got a really good team around me. I haven’t been exploited, I don’t feel.

“I’m more concerned with being labelled as a sex symbol. That makes me feel more uncomfortable than any day-to-day interactions I have.”

Cohen wrote how difficult it was to “peg” Robbie. “The job of the celebrity journalist: peg ’em so it’s not only as if you know ’em but always have known ’em or someone just like ’em. But Robbie is too fresh to be pegged.”

The piece has drawn criticism from many Australians, as well as Americans, who have posted extracts on social media and tweeted Cohen – who seems to be asleep while Australians are awake.

The US feminist and writer Roxane Gay said Cohen had a “hard-on” for Robbie amid a stream of less publishable criticisms of the piece.

We don't need to cry for them but can you IMAGINE how many gross men hot movie stars have to endure? Goddamn. — roxane gay (@rgay) July 6, 2016

EXCLUSIVE: Photo of Vanity Fair writer doing research on Australia pic.twitter.com/8MO87yB1wx — Petra Starke (@petstarr) July 6, 2016

Australia should never be compared to the gun slinging hillbilly nation of America. @richcohen2003 @VanityFair — Jeff (@chop_sss) July 6, 2016

Tip for Vanity Fair: not all women are either Jacqui, Marilyn or Audrey. — Josephine Tovey (@Jo_Tovey) July 6, 2016

And for fans of the soap Neighbours: