JLaw Strikes Back at Being Called 'Fat'

Shock of all shocks, somebody in the entertainment industry told Jennifer Lawrence she was fat. Because of course! Because she's a woman in a position of high visibility and in turn power, and if somebody doesn't control her and put her in her place and remind her that her real value within society rests solely on her hip bones then who KNOWS what could happen. The world could end! Women might actually start to like themselves and consider the merits of existence beyond perceived desirability and if that happens, then we're really fucked. Right?

In an interview with Harper's Bazaar UK, Lawrence discusses at length her first experience with her weight's perceived place in her career, and the mental effects it had on her:

I was young. It was just the kind of shit that actresses have to go through. Somebody told me I was fat, that I was going to get fired if I didn't lose a certain amount of weight. They brought in pictures of me where I was basically naked, and told me to use them as motivation for my diet. It was just that. [Someone brought it up recently] They thought that because of the way my career had gone, it wouldn't still hurt me. That somehow, after I won an Oscar, I'm above it all. 'You really still care about that?' Yeah. I was a little girl. I was hurt. It doesn’t matter what accolades you get. I know it’ll never happen to me again. If anybody even tries to whisper the word 'diet', I'm like, 'You can go fuck yourself.'

Let me repeat that all for you not paying attention at home. "Just the kind of shit that actresses have to go through ... They brought in pictures of me where I was basically naked, and told me to use them as motivation for my diet."

If you'll excuse me for a second I have to go turn into the Incredible Hulk and pound my fists in the air, howling and screaming "HULK CANNOT DEAL! HULK WONDERS OH GOD WHY?!" while throwing society's body obsession into my feminist firepit. Ughh, urrrgh, raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh! So angry. I'M JUST SO ANGRY.

Honestly, how many more stories do we have to read about women in Hollywood's bodies being policed for optimal "aesthetic" pleasantness that some old white dudes 50 years ago somewhere in a back room at the secret Hollywood DreamMakers Club cooked up as the ideal that every other woman in the world should be a slave to? Why do these people have The Bottom Line Say? Why did we give them such power? Can we have it back now? Ugh.

Listen, dudes have to deal with this sort of stuff, too. I get that. I really do: there is nothing fair about how obsessed everyone is with physical perfection. But I mean, COME ON now, kids. C'MON. No one can fight the fact that women have been down this fucked up road for far longer than their be-dicked counterparts. But there's a way to put this into terms we can all relate to, and use that related understanding to stop the hypocrisy of it all.

You know how we all have things that were said or done to us as wee ones that seemed harmless to the adults (ugh) or kids that were saying them? And how those things — like it or not — have forced themselves insidiously into our subconscious and shaped how we operate or exist in certain scenarios? Yeah, that's not a unique experience, but rather just a THING that we all understand, and it doesn't get fixed by throwing a couple fancy statues at someone or telling them they're beautiful or successful "in spite of it all" or whatever bullshit excuse du jour is sitting on the oh-so-well-intentioned lips of those who wield it. We all know it, we all have experienced it.

So why, then, do we not take that into consideration as society continues to insist that beauty is the original (and sometimes only) way to "round out" (oh yes I did that on purpose) a female's perceived success levels? It's as if everyone wants to play the victim of this standard idea of beauty rather than just try and get over the hold it has on pretty much everything.

When shit like this rears its very ugly head, it sometimes feels as though the only way men can seem to try and understand a woman is by trying to control or "guide" (for all you care-trolls) her appetites — for food, for sex, for family, for "having it all" — as a means to hold them in an unending tango prison of what they want versus what they need versus what everyone else thinks. It's just such fucking bullshit.