Chris Pratt will always be Andy Dwyer from Parks and Recreation in many peoples’ (including my own) eyes. After I saw Guardians of the Galaxy and Jurassic World, I realized that he shot up from Silly Cute Guy into a Beefcake Extraordinaire. I was impressed as were many women, men, and media outlets at the time.
There were headlines everywhere congratulating him and his new rock-solid bod.
Jake Gyllenhaal is also apparently a fan of altering his body for a role. In Nightcrawler people were fascinated over his dramatic weight loss for his sociopath character. Now, he has put on 15 pounds of muscle for his latest film Southpaw. The media remains fascinated at his dedication to the roles.
StyleBlazer.com
Aside from the above examples, Christian Bale, Jared Leto, and many other actors have changed their physical health for a role in a movie or television show. The entertainment world seems to be thrilled when they see a man’s dedication to his work. However when a woman changes her physical appearance for a role, she is often shamed and looked down upon on both sides of the coin.
Take Anne Hathaway for example. When she slimmed down to play the impoverished Fantine for Les Miserables, she was hammered by the media for looking emaciated and “anorexic.” She lost around 25 pounds and the media was worried that she didn’t know how to properly take care of herself for the role. She was put down by many sites that condemned her weight loss.
Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis faced similar media attention when they both lost a dramatic amount of weight for Black Swan. Kunis spoke out during that time about how rapidly she lost the weight.
While, method actors and actresses tend to alter their form all the time for their roles, the media has always treated men and women differently. When we look at the words and phrases magazines use we can notice some underlying sexism.
For example, in the women’s headlines, these media outlets are almost scoffing at the fact these women went this far for a role:
Although these women were conventionally thin to begin with, the popular media tends to spin stories to make women seem like they don’t know what they’re doing. Do we really think these women would put their bodies through this if they didn’t think they could handle it? The diet rumors swirled around them even though the actresses consulted dietitians and nutritionists before taking on these film ventures.
On the male side of things, we see praise, congratulations and “how did they do it,” headlines galore. As if the actors were not already Hollywood hunk-worthy, the media is proud of the dedication these men contributed to their starring roles.
Here we can see the disparity between the words used in the actresses headlines verses the actors’:
Despite the weight loss was just as and even more dramatic than some the actresses previously addressed, the headlines and passages are in awe and wonder of how these men did it. Although Jared Leto stated that he straight up did not eat to lose about 40 pounds, the news outlets were still calling him “beautiful in the role [as Rayon in Dallas Buyers Club.]”
