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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!
And this is what I wore flying on it. Is that so bad? Seriously, has anyone on here who has flown more than 10 flights ever not had their luggage lost?
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.
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.
Having spent 25 years working on movie and TV sets, I would argue that it's what people want to see. They want to see good looking (often young), fit, thin people. Generally anyway. And it's certainly more the case for actresses. Even women want to see that I think. These viewers -customers- vote with their dollars. It's subtle. Subliminal. But actors who are overweight, much like those in regular life, can face the same societal prejudicial issues: you're lazy, stupid, and ineffective. A producer doesn't want that unless it serves the character in the story. Many that do have successful careers, do so in comedy. There are so many examples of that, I'm sure you can think of dozens on your own. The whole thing is even more prominent in advertising. It's slowly starting to change. Slowly. I believe for human psychology it's a simple subconscious thing....fat = not healthy. A producer doesn't want an action hero who is supposed to kick ass but they can't run a block's distance. I'm not saying it's right. I'm not saying it's good. I'm saying that it's want the people want instinctively. And Hollywood will oblige.
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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Come on Bill, this article is not worth your comment.
Actually, for reasons I prefer not to disclose, I am very interested in how short near-sighted bald guys with beer bellies can become sex symbols.
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.
Uh, "Average-Sized" is very different in a lot of places in the world. At one extreme is a place like where I live, in Vietnam. Most woman, while not rail thin, are not very fat. On the other hand, a place like the American Samoas, I understand people there are very overweight. Even in the U.S. whereas people in the big cities pay a bit more attention to their waistlines (and in some places like Colorado really go out of their way to stay in shape), a quick trip to the mid-west will make you realize that humans come in some pretty big sizes.
Hollywood, being a den of actors/actresses/people working in coffee shops waiting to be discovered, has an unusually high proportion of young attractive people. So if the casting director walks down the street maybe they have a skewed sense of "Average-Sized". (Or maybe they're just trying to sell tickets)
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...
Seriously /.
Stop this crap.
I'm not signing anything
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.
I mean, I get it that we eat too many twinkies sometimes, but we also don't work for Hollywood. Except on render farms. Jezz! What's wrong with you guys? You are not Huffington Post, you are fucking slashdot! How about a discussion on the best programming languages to naturally incorporate machine learning along with traditional computation constructs?
>Have an average-sized body? Call us when you've starved yourself. Eating a TDEE of a 20 bmi person is not starving, its called being a responsible adult. It's also more attractive as selection pressure is biased on successfully carrying a life sucking parasite, or baby to term, requiring a healthy form.
Just because the average is now overweight or obese does not absolve your continued gluttony.
. The definition is conceptual, and comes from Socrates.
Rather amusing given that social justice killed Socrates.
Women will overlook a lot of physical shortcomings if you're a decent guy.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Short, funny little Mickey Rooney scored some of the hottest babage in the world, and it wasn't because of his wallet, since the women he banged were all much more successful than him. Elizabeth Taylor, Lana Turner, even Ava fucking Gardner, who on a scale of 1 to 10 was like an 18.
Here is a photo of Ava Gardner while she was married to Mickey Rooney:
https://www.oldtimeradiodownlo...
and Lana Turner:
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ssV...
And this is what Elizabeth Taylor looked like when Mickey Rooney was tapping that ass:
https://vickielester.files.wor...
Mickey Rooney was 5' 2" tall. For all the AAA poontang he had, his dick should be enshrined in the Smithsonian.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
It's noisy fringe vs noisy fringe. I'd be fine with the KKK and the Reds mutually wiping each other out. Hell, I'd throw the firecracker between the armed lines myself.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
This is NOT "news for nerds," and it sure as fuck isn't "stuff that matters".
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Women will overlook a lot of physical shortcomings if you're a decent guy.
Sure, but what if I'm not?
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.)
Then you have to take matters into your own hands.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Call me crazy, but perhaps people don't want to pay to watch fat people? Hollywood knows its audience wants escapism more than any other form of entertainment. If we wanted to watch a bunch of fat people, we wouldn't need Hollywood. We have an abundance of those in our everyday lives.
We are Hollywood customers in part because non-fat people are the exception to the norm. Look at a show like Jessica Jones. If the lead actress (and the supporting actresses) weren't body-hot, I wouldn't have even given the show a chance (and neither would have enough people to keep the show in production). If the Jessica Jones character were played by a fat woman, the whole premise of the show would have been too unbelievable to entertain.
And the notion that men are less affected by body image than women is laughable at best. By and large, physically attractive women go for physically attractive men, with only an occasional diversion from the standard; meaning that men have to either be genetically lucky, or spend a lot of time and effort in maintaining an attractive physique -- just like women. Imagine that.
So will men. But that can only compensate for so much. If you're a morbidly obese person, chances are you've passed that line a long time ago.
TV and film used to have characters that smoked tobacco in every episode or scene.Now they don't, because it is well known that smoking is bad for you. But the "body positive" movement is the flip side- much like big tobacco and nicotine addicts than ran around denying that their product and habit is not good for you. Being overweight is not good for your health. Just like tobacco, there is no parsing or denying this. Facts are facts. Remember when you used to walk down the street and see a lot of smokers? Now you don't see nearly that many. But you do see a lot of fat people. So what's the difference? None. Except overweight people want to see themselves on TV and in film, to make their condition acceptable. That is the bottom line for the Body Positive movement.
Republican leadership = Idiocracy
BMI is the measure of BODY fat! A 28 BMI means that you are more than 25% body fat regardless of how much muscle you have. These calculations are certainly estimates for which you can use water displacement and other methods for more precise numbers but the estimate is about the percentage of mass you have which is FAT.
Healthy numbers are different for men and women, but since we have entered the SJW territory of asking "gender" we now have a number for both sexes even on Government sites which is horrifying. A healthy woman should have more body fat than a healthy man and a different BMI. Why? BIOLOGY! Breast tissue is needed for feeding infants and women are the only sex that can perform that vital function. (biological males who grow breasts through medical issues or hormone therapy can not feed infants.) Testosterone impacts muscle density and mass.
If you don't know something either ask or figure it out before spewing dangerous statements.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.