How My Thighs Are like Santa Claus
I recently read on Huffington Post that Jennifer Lawrence was saying she wasn’t comfortable showing off her thighs. And for some reason this is supposed to make all women feel better about their own thighs. According to Huff Post “âÂ?¦hearing a gorgeous star speak openly about the same body issues we “normal” gals share is refreshing.” I’m not clear on the reasoning behind this. Like, at all. How is it refreshing to hear a woman with a perfect body complain about their perfect body not being perfect? How is that supposed to make all of us women with imperfect bodies feel good about our imperfect bodies? I’m just not getting it.
Here’s what goes through my head when I hear that Jennifer Lawrence doesn’t like her thighs: But Jennifer Lawrence has perfect thighs, why would she feel uncomfortable showing them off? She probably does like a million squats every day and she has perfect thighs. Her thighs don’t even touch. My thighs touch! There is no gap between my thighs. I don’t wear corduroy pants anymore because I got tired of sounding like a giant cricket when I walked. Not to mention the stretch marks and the cottage cheesing that’s been going on lately. My thighs are a freaking nightmare, especially when compared to Jennifer Lawrence’s thighs. What the hell is she complaining about?! Just wait until she has a baby. Then let’s see what she has to say about her thighs. The only positive adjective I can think of when describing my thighs is “jolly”. As in, my thighs, like Santa Claus, who is jolly as we all know, jiggle when I laugh.
And you know what I’m laughing at? I’m laughing at the fact that Jennifer Lawrence, who has a perfect body, is the unofficial spokesperson for women’s body issues. She walks around looking stunning on red carpets saying shit like, ‘I don’t care what people say about my body’ or ‘I’m not going to starve myself just to look good’. When it fact it’s pretty clear that she does just that. And if she’s not starving herself then she’s spending a ton of time in the gym to make sure she has a perfect body. You don’t have wash board abs without doing a few sit ups and cutting some sweet sweet delicious calories out of your diet. So in fact, while Jennifer Lawrence is supposed to be making me feel better about myself, she’s actually making me feel worse. When Jennifer Lawrence is a size 12, then we can talk about body image issues.
It’s sad to me that someone with a perfect body like Jennifer Lawrence is actually called fat and criticized in Hollywood for not being skinnier. Apparently she was told that she didn’t look hungry enough in “The Hunger Games.” We’re told that Jennifer Lawrence looks “real”. That she has curves. But she doesn’t look “real” at all. Maybe she was blessed with a perfect body or maybe she diets and spends hours in the gym. Either way, her body is pretty unattainable for a majority of women. And that makes it pretty “unreal.” Yeah, in the fucked up world of Hollywood, Jennifer Lawrence is called “real” (read: fat), but in the actual real world, she shouldn’t be someone that regular women are supposed to compare themselves to. She shouldn’t be our body image icon. J-Law is in no way flawed, so to hear her say she is makes the rest of us who are actually flawed (read: not perfect) feel even more flawed.
Hollywood, you really suck at making women feel good about themselves! ‘Nuff said.
