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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.
As much as this topic interests me, I'm not sure it's "news for nerds".
Hollywood is more tolerant of chubby or fat guys in dramatic roles than women: John Goodman, Alec Baldwin, Bryan Cox, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Brendan Gleeson, Tom Hanks, etc.... even Jonah Hill and Jack Black have been cast in serious roles as fat guys. For fat women, typically if they're in the film or television they are the comic relief and the humor revolves partly around their size.
As you said, Hollywood is interested in making money and even among men the great majority of primary characters in film and television roles are slim, attractive, and athletic. But I still think an imbalance exists.
And I say this as a fat man. While I don't believe in fat "shaming", I also don't think it should be considered a positive. The only positive I can think of being fat is that I can more easily float in water. All that means is if I'm on a plane and it crashes in the ocean, I can last 10% longer than a thin person before dying of exposure.
Basically, we should encourage people to be in a healthy weight range, and not beat themselves up if they're not perfect.
The real reason though is our brains are wired to be attracted to healthy people. In our evolved brains, healthy people will give us healthy offspring. Hollywood might consider women like Scarlett Johansen or Jennifer Lawrence to be fat, but most guys see them as fat in all the right places. ;-)
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Right letter 'M' wrong word, although one does lead to the other, especially when lies are being sold. 'M'arketing, PR=B$, selling lies for profit. In this case you must spend in a certain way to be desirable to the opposite sex and once together you must continue to spend or break up and try again. The biggest poseurs are the best people and you must spend big to achieve prominent poseur status. Not only that but you must spend much of it on PR=B$, paying people to tell other people how great you are, the core of US elections and hence mirrored in main stream media, especially Hollywood where the play left wingers in order to be rich and greedy right wingers who pretend to be Democrats for the people when they just Corporate Democrats, Democrats for corporations the other side Republicans, ohh, look they use the same people as well.
The current big role of main stream media continuing the divide and conquer strategy, colour against colour, culture against culture, religion against religion and even sex against sex. This being sold by the fake arse SJWs backed by main stream media to break up workers = left and bosses = right (no need to explain why).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
It's noisy fringe vs noisy fringe.
I disagree. The SJWs are not merely a "noisy fringe". They have taken control of the news media, the tech industry, and the universities. Now they're making a play to take control of society. In contrast, the white nationalists are a noisy fringe--they don't really have any political power. They can't even find a host for their website, The Daily Stormer, for example.
(Although the SJWs portray Trump as a white nationalist, this is disingenuous. Instead, my feeling is that he's just a selfish, egotistical businessman. The SJWs are portraying Trump as a white nationalist so that they have an excuse to seize power.)
it's not hard to just not shove food down your gullet in quantities that force your body to store fat and balloon to excessive sizes
Reality disagrees with you.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
And besides...who wants to spend their hard earned money to watch ugly fat people sweat on the big screen?
Movies are supposed to be about escapism to a large extent, so, why would one want to pay good $$$ when they already stare and deal with fat, average/ugly people on a daily basis.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........