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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.
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 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.
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.
Seriously /.
Stop this crap.
I'm not signing anything
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.
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."
The imbalance is in the human genome.
A woman's suitability for mating is easy to assess visually, mostly. A man's is not, mostly.
This is wired into us, all of us, at a very deep level. Even when mating isn't on the table, so to speak, we still recognize and respond to women visually - and women do it too! Even little babies do it before they've had a chance to be corrupted by evil white heteronormative cismail white evil bad culture. That means that good looking men get very little of the benefits of good looks that attractive women get, but conversely, unattractive men don't lose as much as unattractive women either.
See that "Preview" button?