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Why Does Hollywood Remain Out of Step With the Body-Positive Movement? (nytimes.com)
According to a report from The New York Times, Hollywood continues to praise plus-sized actresses in knockout roles and then reduce them to bit parts about physical weight. Slashdot reader cdreimer shares an excerpt from the report: The first thing Danielle Macdonald did at the Cannes Film Festival in May was break into a cold sweat: The airline had lost her luggage. She was already nervous enough. Ms. Macdonald, 26, had been plucked from obscurity to play the lead role in "Patti Cake$," a drama about a rapper that was about to face the Cannes critics. Now she had to find something glamorous to wear -- pronto -- to the premiere. "As a bigger girl," Ms. Macdonald told me recently, "where was I meant to find something that would fit?" Her story then veered in an unexpected direction -- revealing her approach to Hollywood, which expects its lead actresses to be scarily skinny. "I gave myself a pep talk," she said. "This situation is what it is. Find a way to work around it." The red carpet crisis was resolved (another "Patti Cake$" star, Cathy Moriarty, lent her a black dress), but if the experiences of countless actresses before Ms. Macdonald are any indication, it will not be as easy to overcome the career obstacles that await her post-"Patti Cake$."
For women -- less so for men -- weight is perhaps the most stubborn of the entertainment industry's many biases. Have an average-sized body? Call us when you've starved yourself. In particular, Ms. Macdonald must avoid a cycle that plays out over and over in moviedom, one that some film agents coarsely call the fat flavor of the moment. A plus-size actress, almost always an unknown, lands the central role in a film and delivers a knockout performance. She is held up by producers and the entertainment news media as refreshing, long overdue evidence that Hollywood's insistence on microscopic waistlines is ending. And then she is slowly but surely pushed into bit parts, many of which are defined by weight.
For women -- less so for men -- weight is perhaps the most stubborn of the entertainment industry's many biases. Have an average-sized body? Call us when you've starved yourself. In particular, Ms. Macdonald must avoid a cycle that plays out over and over in moviedom, one that some film agents coarsely call the fat flavor of the moment. A plus-size actress, almost always an unknown, lands the central role in a film and delivers a knockout performance. She is held up by producers and the entertainment news media as refreshing, long overdue evidence that Hollywood's insistence on microscopic waistlines is ending. And then she is slowly but surely pushed into bit parts, many of which are defined by weight.
... ney.
Next question, please.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Hollywood is interested in making money. As long as people prefer to see a certain type of person movies will have more of those people because people will then buy more movie tickets. Most movie stars of both genders are people who are considered to be very good looking for the same reason. Unless you can change the culture, you need to threaten the bottom line. And the Fat Positive movement is still small enough that they are unlikely to be successful in that regard.
I'm a pro-social-justice person, and I defend a lot of /. stories that stretch the "News for nerds, stuff that matters" line. But no, this one really doesn't belong here. I get why it's here though: Touch on a social justice theme and the clicks and angry comments go on for hours.
What the fuck am I doing at the TMZ website?! I thought I was visiting Slashdot!
Fuck this horseshit. I can't even go to a tech site without seeing this crap.
Customers spend more money on what they're attracted to. Stop trying to do "conversion therapy" on them like a 20th century Puritan who can't stand the thought of a gay man.
I don't know what to think unless someone in corporate tells me. Please tell me what to think next.
2) Because movies are fantasy and nobody fantasizes about being an unattractive slob.
Why is nobody advocating for more smelly, greasey, fat men in movies? Because you can't frame it as a poor innocent child-women argument.
There is literally nothing positive about being fat. You feel worse, your cloths don't fit well, you smell bad, oh and it will FREAKING KILL YOU.
I'm sorry, if that's so much of a hard reality then you really need to readdress your priority that you're personality is so fragile that you have to try to make everyone else feel as bad as you just to get by. But you're kill yourself, and encourage people to NOT try and address extreme weight issues is doing way more damage to other people that your own hurt feelings. Hey, I used to weight 370 pounds. Worked my literally ass off to get down to about 290. It's hard, it sucks, but it's what you have to do if you intend to make it past about 40.
I looked at 5 seconds of the trailer for that movie. I hope that lady is not average sized, or else this country is worse than I thought.
Look, I'm all for being comfortable in your own skin. As a fellow fatass, I can support that position.
That, however, is not what's going on here.
I am not supportive of forcing that comfort on to others in the name of "acceptance". Healthy is sexy, and carrying around more fat that necessary isn't healthy. I'm not about to whine and cry about how women don't find me attractive because of my weight; I understand my beer gut isn't bringing all the girls to the yard, and that's OK. That's part of accepting my body as it is; not trying to force others to change their perspectives.
And can we lay off the whole "men aren't as impacted by body image issues as women are" please? Look at most of the leading men in hollywood; well muscled. It's a common misconception that men don't suffer from this issue, same as women.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
and nobody wants to look at regular people when fantasy is on parade. Folks either have to be really attractive (Brad Pitt/Megan Fox) or really not (Danny Davito/John Goodman). I don't need to see my coworkers in a bloody film.
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Someone's asleep at the wheel.
No, James Damore awoke the sleeping liberal dragon with his Google Diversity Memo. That was 11 days ago, and every day since has been a day of liberal rage--not just on Slashdot, but in all news media.
Personally, I think they're just getting warmed-up. The real show will start in 2 weeks, when classes begin at the universities...
Exactly this. "Body Positive" is euphemism, it is code for "fat is OK". Fat is not OK. Normalizing fatness leads to more fatness. I read a study that determined that the best predictor of obesity was not genetics, it was your social circle. If you hang out with and associate with fat people, you are more likely to be fat. Obesity is a self perpetuating epidemic that has no upside.
It's not just liberal rage; this whole country is turning into a steaming pot of rage, threatening to boil over. It's not a good sign that there's so much clear division in this society now.
Unfortunately, I really can't think of any really good historical parallels. 1930s Germany has some similarities, but unlike them our economy is pretty good (except for some people in it) and we didn't lose some big war we're paying reparations for and we don't have hyperinflation. The fall of Rome has some similarities, but I've never read about them having huge divisions in their society between certain groups of citizens becoming violently opposed to each other. The US before the Civil War has some similarities, but there the division was mainly between different regions (encompassing entire states), whereas here it's not so much, it's more urban vs. rural.
Look here, I'm all for equality and better representation, but listen, particularly for Hollywood, this isn't a problem of being out of step with some movement, this is a problem of consumption and culture.
I can understand when people talk about whitewashing, as testimonials given by minority actor and actresses communities really do indicate that directors, studios and people involved in the recruiting process really do not even consider hiring them for main roles... the pervasiveness of the whole thing goes so far as to give preference to white actors and actresses even to non-white roles because studios don't even consider it's possible for actors and actresses in minorities to become big stars. This is a point where they are particularly out of pace, because there are several actors and actresses in minorities that are as beloved if not even more than white actors and actresses.
But if we're talking about body types, then you are not going against a specific industry bias, you are going against deep rooted cultural ideals. This dates back as far as greek mythology and history of other cultures, and it's far from being a Hollywood, or even a western thing. Beauty standards goes into an entire other category that cannot be changed as if it was some sort of injustice.
Furthermore, it's not exclusive to female actresses, though yes, there are differences of expectations between sexes.
You can just see how fashion industry reacted so far. Magazines with token issues, a few brands and producers hiring a few models for token events, and a bunch of reaction going towards "see, we too love regular/ugly people". But in the end, those that fits the beauty standards are the ones that sells. The industry has enough money to sustain a few token diverse ideals of beauty as it should, but much like Hollywood is sustained by mainstream movies, it cannot survive treating everyone equally.
If we're talking about the mainstream, then it's obvious - it's thin and fit sexy women and roided up hunks, which btw, usually have to have extremely defined muscles which also indicate an unhealthy body fat percentage which also means they haven't been eating much.
Then again, we have progressed much in recent years. Mainstream is mostly an option these days, people have the alternative to watch movies that don't necessarily have actors and actresses looking like fashion models or beauty ideals.
Thing is, if movies were supposed to put stuff up front that is realistic, something you can see on your daily life, or that reflects people you see everyday... why bother? If you tie fiction to reality, then what purpose does fiction have? And quite frankly, I've been seeing too many people hitching a ride on stuff like body positive movement to take a dump on their own health, thinking that just because someone said "it's ok to be fat" that they should conform to their horribly unhealthy lifestyles.
And I understand that there are plenty of people who lead very healthy lifestyles but don't have a supermodel body, because that's mostly genetics.
Also understand that girls from early ages suffer pressure for achieving an unrealistic beauty standard, as they and others probably also do regarding money, social status, romantic lifestyles, personality traits, and all sorts of other things.
But if people think they will be able to convince Hollywood studios, particularly those that produce mainstream movies, to hire and produce content acording to some creed of the body positive movement when it goes directly against what actual sales data tells them.... you are up for an extreme uphill battle for sure.
And it's also not a matter of changing society, culture and whatnot to make your kids feel less pressured or something. It's a matter of knowing how to teach kids to deal with those pressures.
It's really unhealthy to think that everything can be solved by changing society in general.
I shudder at the thought of letting society be changed to attend the demands on some 3rd wave feminists that are alm
Your self-esteem should be intrinsic for you to be a balanced person. Demanding that society accept you and telling yourself how great you are is a defensive behavior associated with low self-esteem. Try actually focusing on solving problems in a tangible and lasting way instead of covering them up.
Obesity causes depression, low self-esteem, poor memory and focus. The obesity epidemic should not be acceptable, and you're living in a fantasy world if you think life is just as great for a fat person, as it is for a healthy one. We must fight the food industry, not the cosmetic industry or the Hollywood studios, for the right to a healthy diet where unnecessary amounts of sugar and fat are added on to everything, and portions large enough for 4 people are sold as individual portions.