Voices
beach.”— HuffPost
“I eat like a caveman. I’ll be
the only actress that doesn’t
have anorexia rumors.”
— Entertainment Weekly
“I’m never going to starve myself for a part. I don’t want little
girls to be like, ‘Oh, I want to
look like Katniss, so I’m going
to skip dinner!’ [...]I was trying to get my body to look fit and
strong, not thin and underfed.”
— Entertainment Weekly
“If anybody even tries to whisper
the word ‘diet,’ I’m like, ‘You can go
f- yourself.” — The Guardian
“What are you gonna do? Be
hungry every single day to make
other people happy? That’s just
dumb.”— The Daily Mail
Tumblr celebrates her in .gif as
a paragon of quirk and body acceptance, but one thing that may
have escaped your notice in the
orgiastic celebration of JLaw realness that is the Internet, is that
Jennifer Lawrence is a fit, attractive, 20-something woman.
Let’s concede the point here
that she is, perhaps, a size or two
above the accepted Hollywood
norm. It’s admirable, being the
star of a movie franchise aimed at
teens, that she is concerned about
the effect a too-svelte appear-
JENNY
TROUT
HUFFINGTON
01.19.14
ance might have on her audience,
who are already bombarded with
negative body messages every day.
But how her statements are being delivered — and how zealous
and adoring fans have interpreted
her words — only reinforce our
cultural standards, and perpetuate the myth that only one type of
body is acceptable.
I’m not going to cover the fact
that it’s messed up that a girl like
I want to know,
Internet: At what percentage
of body fat does a woman
earn the right to be a person?”
Jennifer Lawrence has to justify
her perfectly gorgeous body to every single media consumer in the
world. We all know that’s messed
up. Let’s focus instead on the fact
that in order to appease our own
self-doubt about our weight, we,
the Internet, have decided to ignore how body-shaming the entire
image of JLaw, “Spirit Animal” to
fat girls everywhere, really is.
First of all, consider her quotes.
She would rather look chubby on
screen, but like a person in real
life? This is a message of positiv-