14 DAY TRIAL // Last week, we talked about the kind of pressure actors are under to always look good on camera and how, in recent years, there’s been special stress on bulking up for a role, which hardly ever happened back in the ‘80s or the ‘90s. Unsurprisingly, women too must comply to the same rules.
We won’t get here into the larger discussion of how cinematography (or media) objectifies women, saving it for another time. We’ll touch instead on the forces that are constantly at work when it comes to an actress’ career and which can, depending on what she does, make or break said career.
It’s crystal clear that, in order to be an actress, talent alone doesn’t cut it. We might want to lie to ourselves that, with a good set of skills, you can set out to conquer the world if you want, but if we’re being completely honest, we know – albeit deep down inside – that this isn’t true.
No woman will become a successful movie star if she has crooked teeth or a few pounds on the extra or doesn’t present the most polished exterior on red carpets, TV appearances, and whenever she’s out on the town on personal business. Image, my dears, is everything.
Celebrities all over, not just movie stars, have been telling horrifying stories about their start in the industry and how they were told they should get a nose job in their teen years, or talk differently because their voice didn’t please some executive or didn’t fit with their idea of how they wanted to market said celebrity.
They were told to dress differently, to learn answers to all possible questions, to get surgery to fix their “flaws,” to go on a diet, to leave everything about their old self behind. Older celebrities aren’t safe either; on the contrary, so they talk about pressure of getting Botox and facelifts, to stay on diets to lose weight or maintain their current figure, to lie about their age.
More than anywhere else, this holds water in the movie industry because, more than anywhere else, this is an industry driven by image, to the point where an actress, no matter how talented, will be rejected or not even offered a role because she doesn’t fit a certain mold. Sexism and ageism are very popular in Hollywood still.
In turn, this means that women who do make it on screen are what could best be described as a man’s wildest fantasy come to life because, even when the actresses aren’t that “perfect” in real life, studio trickery comes into play to make them so.
They all have perfect teeth, an ample cleavage, and a pert backside, they’re sassy and bold but fashionable and girlie at the same time, they have gorgeous hair and even more gorgeous eyes. In today’s cinema (with exceptions, of course), women are mostly placed there to have moviegoers look at them, so they can’t but be gorgeous.
This explains why a woman as kooky as Jennifer Lawrence or an unconventional beauty like Tilda Swinton are embraced by the larger public and elevated to the status of icons. Unlike most women onscreen, who must have made huge sacrifices to get there, they are relatable and that’s only because they are real.
That is not to say that they’re not under the same kind of pressure as the others but, at least to a certain extent, they resist it. Lawrence, for instance, often talks about how frequently she’s told to go on a diet to look less “chubby” on camera. Swinton has spoken in the past about how producers tried to get her to be less… alien, more like a “typical” female movie star.
Luckily for us, for the audience, both have resisted and refused to change. At the end of the day, those perfect women Hollywood keeps throwing at us, as flawless as they are, are not real. And we need real women in film, just like we need real men too.