Controversy is brewing over a New York Times review where a film critic implied that Jennifer Lawrence didn’t look “hungry enough” to play Katniss:
Manohla Dargis, New York Times: “A few years ago Ms. Lawrence might have looked hungry enough to play Katniss, but now, at 21, her seductive, womanly figure makes a bad fit for a dystopian fantasy about a people starved into submission.”
This is ridiculous on a few levels:
1) Isn’t the whole point of Katniss Everdeen that she learned how to hunt and forage from her father, and so she was able to survive for years by living off the forest?
2) How come the critic doesn’t mention that Gale Hawthorne (played by Liam Hemsworth) doesn’t look hungry enough? Gale also grew up living off of the forest, but he’s played by someone who is 6’3″ and weighs 190 pounds.
In other words, it appears as if Ms. Dargis of the Times hasn’t read the books, and thinks that everyone in the nation of Panem is starving. Normally that would be case closed… but then a few other critics mentioned in passing that Jennifer was “big-boned” and had ”baby fat”, and a number of websites exploded in indignation. A few examples can be found at Slate and New York Magazine.
But if you look at the full context of the quotes, they don’t seem to focus on Jennifer’s weight-appropriateness:
Jeffrey Wells, Hollywood Elsewhere: “Lawrence seems too big for Hutcherson. She’s a fairly tall, big-boned lady (I’ve been in a hotel room with her) who’s maybe 5′ 8″, and he seems to be something like 5’7″.Todd McCarthy, The Hollywood Reporter: “Lawrence is one of those performers the camera loves; her appearance alters in different scenes and shots — lingering baby fat shows here, she resembles a Cleopatra there — and she can convey a lot by doing little. An ideal screen actress.”
So all in all, this hullabaloo feels a bit manufactured to me. But what’s clear from the reaction is that a lot of people are bringing their own distorted body images to bear on the Hunger Games star.
Jennifer Lawrence looks great and very healthy. Her character is a strong woman who is a self-reliant hunter and survivor. Why is that so hard to understand?
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She seems “Too big” for her love interest? What a weird appeal to sexual dimorphism. Women needing to be a certain size to be an acceptable partner? If it’s so important that women are proportionately smaller than their partner maybe the actor playing Peeta should have been taller? Fuck that dude.
This is really infuriating.
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Without reading the books, and barely paying attention to the movie I’d agree with them that she definitely doesn’t look malnourished as the ‘games’ might have you assuming most citizens are. The movie didn’t really do a good job of portraying how she and gale put their life on the line to go out and hunt every day, and that most people don’t get fresh meat like they do to take home and eat. But I think in the books she even says how she and gale are better off than most citizens because of the hunting, and that Peeta is good because he’s higher class and is a bakers son so he gets more food than most as well.
I do agree with Todd and pretty much everything he wrote there though. She is big boned, has baby fat, and looks different in a lot of different shots, but delivered and was overall pretty great.
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I don’t care what people say. I love her
She’s just totally awesome in that movie, and her personality on some live stuff seems pretty cool too =/
orchid / 110 posts
its has nothing to do with body image, but yes i did expect her to be thinner in the movie, because no matter what the book says IN THE MOVIE she is portrayed as a poor starving young girl…..in fact almost the whole movie i was thinking how much thinner she would be if she were really starving, not to mention during the games she would have lost a lot of weight from lack of food and sleep and the overall stress of it all, on a slightly related topic a girl whose big treat in life is bread would be horribly ill eating all the rich foods they show her eating in the capitol.
i think she did AMAZING…..i’m just one of those people who picks apart movies,
guest
Yeah Jennifer Lawrence is NOT fat at all. But in the Hungers Games, even though Katniss and Gale are slightly better off because of hunting, they are still portrayed as starving. Plus she lost even more weight in the actual Games.
In response to number 1) “Isn’t the whole point of Katniss Everdeen that she learned how to hunt and forage from her father, and so she was able to survive for years by living off the forest?” SURVIVAL does not equal being satisfied and properly nourished. I mean a loaf of bread and some squirrel was considered a good meal. Plus with all of the running around/hunting their metabolism must have been pretty high.
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i totally agree with the critics. when i first read hunger games i imagined her to be extremely tiny and malnourished so i was surprised to see that jennifer Lawrence was playing katniss. don’t get me wrong she was great at playing her and she IS NOT FAT AT ALL but i imagined someone really small and really skinny and malnourished because in the book she rarely eats she is district 12 thats the very last district and shes so small that she can climb up onto small weak tree branches that the boys and girls from district 1-4 couldn’t.
AND i think the critic doesn’t mention that gale doesn’t look hungry enough because he’s suppose to be bigger and older than her and since they already picked her and she is the size that she is they have to find someone even bigger so when they act next to each other she looks smaller. that’s the directors own fault. if they found someone smaller to play katniss they probably could’ve found someone smaller to play gale. in the beginning of the book she talks about how little she eats to the point that she almost DIED and that was when peetra’s character was introduced cus he threw her that burnt bread that saved her life, so yeah sure she is a forager and yes she hunts but she hunts to protect her family not solely just for food. she hunts for money so she can trade it for other things to keep her sister safe. i remember there was a part where she talks about how she only ate mint leaves with water for a period of time when her mom went mute after her dad died. MINT LEAVES AND WATER. that means crazy malnourished and sunken cheekbones and small. it seems to me that the critic really read the book and noticed these things just like i did.
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the first thing that I thought of when I read the title is that she has those protruding pouty lips that make her look hungry
or thirsty rather.
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To be fair, she is portrayed in the books as being really skinny – Suzanne Collins describes being able to see her ribs and such, but also to be fair to Jennifer, at least she’s happy with her figure (which is beautiful) and didn’t see the need to destroy her body for a film. Yes, her, Gale and Peeta are slightly better off than the rest of District 12, but they are described as living in poverty and the fact that they can “survive” doesn’t mean they’re healthy or of a decent weight.
Like others have mentioned, I find it interesting that this critic only picks on Jennifer – Josh and Liam are hardly skinny either – they’re both muscular, strong guys – if they’d been living in District 12 there’s no way they’d be that well fed and healthy. But as usual, the media picks on girls, not the guys.
orchid / 217 posts
Wait, I read the books a while ago, but didn’t they fatten them up at the Capitol, so they could actually compete and stuff?
Also, she looks beautiful, on and off screen. She’s not fat nor is she super skinny. This is the type of body that we should be promoting to other girls and women as being beautiful – the healthy body.
I never understood why a lack of sharp cheekbones automatically means baby fat. Some people just don’t have bones that protrude like that!
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Well in the books she is supposed to be starved, especially during the games. It didn’t really bother me, but I did think about it. The reasoning for me was that in the movie the games seemed to be over in a matter of a week or so, while in the book it was longer. You wouldn’t be as terribly malnourished and thin in a week as she was in the books. I agree with above commenters that it’s strange how her body is criticized but not Peetas or Gales.
The point about her being too big for Peeta really pisses me off. She’s the main character. You would have thought they would compare other characters to her, so that they would measure up. And why would anyone assume that their relationship wouldn’t work out simply because she’s taller than him? That’s absurd. Also, if you remember the books properly you would know that on her end, the relationship wasn’t real but a way to survive the games. Does anyone really think someone would go “Well, we can survive the next two days and get out of this slaughter-arena but there’s no way I’m making out with this short guy for that!”.
I originally didn’t like Jennifer for the role after seeing pictures of her. She seemed a bit too “pretty girl” for me but I’ve really grown to like her. She looks lovely in the movie and I caught myself really admiring her body. She’s in great shape and I think she’s beautiful.
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I have a feeling that if Jennifer had dieted/exercised enough to qualify as “malnourished” people would have thrown a fit when she showed up to press events looking “gaunt”. There’s no pleasing the court of public opinion. One minute people are calling a GORGEOUS woman like Jennifer as “big boned”, and the next people are freaking over the latest skin-and-bones celebrity on the red carpet.
I haven’t read the books or seen the movie (not my cup of tea) but Jennifer is B-E-A-UTIFUL AND CONFIDENT.
orchid / 160 posts
If you’re supposed to be starving in a book (didn’t read it), you should at least look it. A la Natalie Portman in Black Swan and Christian Bale in the Machinist. Not saying she should starve, but maybe Hunger Games isn’t supposed to be a serious movie.
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My thing is, it is a movie. Does it really matter that much? She doesn’t looked emaciated or starved to me, but honestly, she may very well have been hungry the whole time they filmed the movie. I haven’t seen the movie, but I want to see it. I may see it tomorrow. I am thinking that the fact the characters don’t look starved doesn’t take away from the story line (or else there would be more people nitpicking about it).
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@atl_luv@xanga - she’s not starving in the book. she’s not well-fed, but she’s not starving. she learns to hunt and does so illegally to keep her and her family going.
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@winterEnds@xanga - THIS.
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Jesus…if 5’8″ and her shape is big-boned, then I’m a fucking Amazon woman. You know, there just isn’t a way to please everybody. I think it’s good that they chose her based on her ACTING and not on how SKINNY she is. I would think that’s what matters overall, but movie critics seem like ginormous dicks so I guess it doesn’t surprise me.
And yes, she is supposed to be skinny from the books, but there are far more important things to pay attention to in a movie (plot, acting, scenery, CG effects, music, etc.). It says a lot about our culture that we’re nitpicking over whether or not she is 10 pounds too heavy to be emaciated. She’s probably one of those people whose body won’t allow her to look emaciated unless she is actually literally starving herself, and no one should have to put their health at risk for a damned movie. If you think she’s “too big” for the role, use your imagination and pretend she’s skinnier, or get the hell over it and pay attention to the rest of the movie.
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@shatteredmoonbeams@xanga - Yes, I completely agree. You just can’t please people; it’s impossible. And I can’t believe they referred to her as big-boned…excuse me but I’m 5’11″ so what the hell does that make me? Everyone’s a critic; I think more people need to either focus on positives or keep their mouths shut (but critics get paid to be negative so I guess they’re just doing their job).
orchid / 248 posts
Maybe with all the hunting, running and training she gained muscle weight! plus some people when they are starving get bloated tummies
daisy / 501 posts
The movie was great, but it failed to show how she and Peeta ate so much during the week leading up to the Hunger Games, that they were frequently bloated and unable to move from being so stuffed. This was important because it showed how they were so starved and not used to being around decent food. Even still, I’ve always pictured her to have muscles, which she did.
To the movie’s credit, she did gasp and stare at the small piece of bread Gale brought when they met up.
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lolwut?
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I actually had a similar reaction when I saw the trailer to the Hunger Games. Both she and and the actor who plays Gale looked a little too healthy to be from a society that’s always on the brink of hunger. In the book, I felt that she was probably better off than ‘gaunt’ but not so well off that she should look like she had any extra on her. Same with Gale – it’s possible to grow tall with lack of proper nourishment, but not heavy. I think the actor who played Gale had the benefit of having a more angular facial bone structure though, which made his weight less of an issue since you couldn’t really tell how big he was under his clothes. I think it would have made a bigger impression if Jennifer’s character was 10 lbs lighter in the first movie than in the second – it would’ve made a big distinction in how much her life had changed. As a regular person, I think Jennifer looks great. In the movie, I thought it would’ve been more realistic if she had lost some more weight for the role. And of course, she could’ve gained the weight back after she lost it – isn’t that what Natalie Portman and Beyonce did?
But all that aside, I loved the movie, and I felt that everyone involved did a great job!
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i think jennifer did a great job in the movie and i think that her weight is perfect for her. however, katniss is not only super thin from lack of nutrition, but she is described several times as being small. that actually saves her life one time in particular when she’s able to climb 80 feet high in a tree where the branches can’t support not-as-small people.
tulip / 18 posts
I didn’t read through ALL the comments so someone else may have already said this, but here’s my two cents.
Jennifer did diet for the movie and worked out A LOT to get in shape. Gale actually crash dieted (while under supervision) in order to actually try and look and feel like he was starving. It’s not that it wasn’t well thought out – it’s that those particular people are large people.
These critiques have absolutely nothing to do with their acting or how well they portrayed the characters. Suzanne Collins said herself that Katniss couldn’t have been played by any other actress. As the casting director put it with Peeta – Josh Hutcherson could have walked in with purple skin and six foot wings and I would’ve said “we’ll work around the wings!”. When someone can play a part, you work with what you’ve got. To me, portraying the feel and message of the book is much more important than portraying the exact aesthetics. They did their best, and I think it was amazing regardless of the little extra fat on Jennifer’s bones.
magnolia / 1066 posts
This is so stupid. If I had my copy of the Hunger Games right now, I would quote to you the exact page and line, but there is a part near the beginning of THG where Katniss herself SAYS that she looks healthier than most of the inhabitants of District 12 because she can hunt and she’s physically active. She’s thin, but she has muscle tone because she’s always moving, hunting, running, etc in the woods. She looked FINE.