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7 times women in Hollywood pushed back against the pressure to lose weight
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The
INSIDER Summary:
It is definitely not a secret that Hollywood actresses
are sometimes pressured to lose weight for rolls.
Women are now fighting back against the unrealistic
body image they are asked to portray.
Individuals including Jennifer Lawrence, Viola Davis
and Amy Schumer are some of the few who have taken a stand.
It's no secret that actresses are regularly
asked
to lose weight so they can better fit the absurd
body standards that still pervade Hollywood. But they're not the
only women in the entertainment business who feel that
pressure.
Shonda
Rhimes , the creator of long-running shows like
Grey's Anatomy and
Scandal,wrote
a newsletter about her
weight loss , and how she hates that it's
automatically linked to attractiveness.
"Women I barely knew gushed. And I mean GUSHED. Like I
was holding-a-new-baby-gushed. Only there was no new baby. It
was just me. In a dress. With makeup on and my hair all
did , yes. But … still the
same me.
But even more disconcerting was that all these people
suddenly felt completely comfortable talking to me about my
body. Telling me I looked 'pretty' or that they were 'proud of
me' or that 'wow, you are so hot now' or 'you look amazing!'
After I lost weight, I discovered that people found me
valuable. Worthy of conversation. A person one could look at. A
person one could compliment. A person one could admire."
Rhimes hits the problem right on the head -
thinner
and fitter equals better looking in the public
eye, especially in Hollywood where looks seem to matter most.
While no one requested Rhimes lose weight, she's obviously not
immune to the pressures other women in Hollywood - and everywhere
- regularly face.
Even though body image isn't an easy subject to open up
about, that hasn't stopped Rhimes. Regardless of her reason for
doing it, it's inspiring, because it affects everyone, not just
people in entertainment. Projecting an unrealistic body image as
the standard of beautiful can trigger
low self-esteem and eating disorders in children
and adults.
Her candor about the ugly side of weight loss makes her one
of a handful of women who are getting real about Hollywood's
unhealthy obsession with skinniness.
Here are seven other women in entertainment who pushed back
on body expectations.
When Viola Davis won the first
ever #SeeHer Award at the 2017 Critics Choice
Awards, her
speech directly addressed her struggle with body
image and acceptance.
Interestingly, the example she gave had to do with her role
on Shonda Rhimes' " How to Get Away With Murder," but her message is no doubt one with which
Rhimes would agree.
"You
know, when I was handed Annalise Keating,
I said, 'She's sexy, she's mysterious, you know?' I'm used to
playing women who gotta gain 40 pounds and have to wear an
apron. So I said, 'Oh God, I gotta to lose weight, I gotta
learn how to walk like Kerry Washington in heels, you know, I
gotta lose my belly.' And then I asked myself, 'Well, why do I
have to do all that?'
I truly believe that the privilege of a lifetime is
being who you are, and I just recently embraced that at
51."
2. Betty Gilpin
Looking at Betty Gilpin, it's hard to imagine she grapples
with the size and shape of her body. But, thanks to a piece she
wrote
for Glamour ,
she made it clear that even girls who look "perfect" to the
outside world can be screaming on the inside.
Gilpin spent her adolescence and much of her adulthood
wanting to disappear inside her body, which was hard to do when
she "gained 30 pounds of thigh, booty and certified American
jugs ."
When she started acting, her body image was always on her
mind, largely because of the often sexist working
environments.
"Sometimes a TV set can be a shame-and-fear obstacle
course for an actress. Ten points if the sexist-gargoyle
producer tries to flirt with you after you've gone through hair
and makeup, so you don't disgust him. Don't make eye contact
with the Philly cheesesteaks they bring out for the
crew."
Then she got cast on " GLOW" and everything changed.
"I saw power and care together for the first time. Seeing
women possess those two things simultaneously was a huge lesson
for me ... This created the constant sense of: You are loved
and celebrated - and now that you're comfortable, please give
us your goddamn guts and soul so we can make the best thing
possible."
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3. Amy Schumer
Amy
Schumer also struggled with her body image
throughout her life. However, being a comedian, the issue was
front and center on stage in front of a live audience all the
time. Still, she's not afraid to talk bluntly about it, as she
did with host Maria Shriver in an on-camera
interview in 2015.
"It's an emotional thing. It's been a struggle for me my
whole life, and especially just being in the entertainment
industry. Standing on a stage in front of people, I can't
perform my best or be confident if I'm not sure - if I'm
pulling at something [I'm wearing]. Sometimes I would just want
to throw in the towel and be like, 'I'm not gonna go do standup
tonight.'"
As such, she's made it her mission to dispel the myth that
everyone in Hollywood is naturally, or comfortably, skinny. She
might go
a little far sometimes, but hey, that's a
comedian's prerogative.
4. Kirsten Dunst
When Sophia Coppola's film " The Beguiled" started to garner
attention at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, a
story
emerged about how she asked Kirsten Dunst to
lose weight for it. However, the reason it got so much attention
is actually a good one, because of how Dunst handled her director
and friend's request.
"I'm eating fried chicken and McDonald's before work,"
Dunst told Variety
with regards to filming in the South. "So I'm like, 'We have no
options! I'm sorry I can't lose weight for this role.'"
While Dunst wasn't necessarily trying to make a statement
with what she said, her casual decline definitely earned
body
positivity points. That said, the conversation
might not have been so easy if her director hadn't been a friend
and female.
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5. Emma Thompson
Thompson made a point of standing
by Hayley Atwell , her 25-year-old co-star in
" Brideshead Revisited," when
producers told the already tiny young actress she needed to lose
weight.
This came out when Thompson spent an evening with Atwell
during which she refused to eat anything. When Thompson asked
why, Atwell explained the producers told her she had to slim down
for the role. Infuriated by this, Thompson called the movie's
producers and threatened to quit until they took the weight loss
requirement off the table. Miramax clearly didn't want to mess
with the Oscar winner and they immediately backpedaled.
6. Jennifer Lawrence
Not even " Hunger Games" star Jennifer Lawrence
is safe from body shame in Hollywood, but she's refused to let it
mess with her career . In a
2013Harper's
Bazaar UK
interview , she said someone told her she needed
to lose weight or she could be fired from an acting gig.
"They brought in pictures of me where I was basically
naked, and told me to use them as motivation for my diet,"
Lawrence explained. "It was just that."
While she didn't divulge what she said in response to this
unnamed person, she told the Harper Bazaar
UK reporter, "If anybody even tries to whisper
the word 'diet,' I'm like, 'You can go fuck yourself.'"
She's obviously not someone who's ever going to stand for
body shaming.
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7. Jennifer Lopez
J-Lo's curves, along with being a triple-threat performer,
are part of what make her who she is but that still didn't
prevent her manager from telling her she had to trim them down.
She explained
the situation in a feature interview with
Glamour back in 2011, and how
she handled it like a boss.
"That was so mean and closed-minded. I was like: 'No, this
is who I am and this is the type of woman that I grew up with and
it's beautiful. There's no reason to be anybody but
myself.'"
She fired him after that.
More and more women are
speaking out against these ridiculous body
expectations and the sexist
double-standard that makes them more susceptible
to criticism.
If statements likes these continue to be made, it will be
much harder for a "perfect
body" image to exist.
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