Amanda Seyfried Calls Hollywood Out For Claiming She Was ‘Overweight’
Amanda Seyfried is calling Hollywood out. The industry has been pressuring actresses to lose weight for decades, but usually those actresses don’t take a stand and “out” the industry. Today, a few outlets are reacting to an old tweet Amanda Seyfried posted about this very thing.
It’s no surprise that Hollywood is image obsessed, but it’s a nice change for an actress who’s very much in demand, like Seyfried, to open up about how these skewed body images of Hollywood affected her. You don’t have to put on glasses to know that Seyfried is very thin — a healthy thin, but still the thin some women dream about being because of our culture. We can all agree Amanda Seyfried is definitely not overweight, but according to the actress the powers that be thought she was.
The Les Misérables star opened up on Twitter about the instances where this backwards perception of her body almost cost her professionally.
Fun fact: I almost lost out on several roles in my career because I was overweight. Wrong, America.
— Amanda Seyfried (@AmandaSeyfried) October 19, 2014
Seyfried isn’t the only star who has spoken out about this. Although it is rare, in recent years some young women have come forward about this issue. Hunger Games star Jennifer Lawrence acknowledged how her own image might affect little girls who look up to her character Katniss.
“I’m never going to starve myself for a part. I don’t want little girls to be like, ‘Oh, I want to be like Katniss so I’m going to skip dinner.’ That’s something that I was really conscious of during training, when you’re trying to get your body to look just right. I want my body to look fit and strong, not thin and underfed.”
Babble suggests Hollywood is weight obsessed with women because male movie stars are typically shorter.
“There are more male actors under 5’9? than over 5’9? and this is why there is so much pressure on female actors to be teeny tiny and unhealthily thin in Hollywood.”
“Think about it, if an actress is 5’7? tall, how on earth is she going to get a role as the leading lady when Tom Cruise is the same exact height?”
A very good point, but this doesn’t excuse Hollywood’s weight manipulation.
As for Amanda Seyfried, years ago she admitted to Esquire magazine that she felt the pressures of the Hollywood system. Back in 2010 she shared, “It’s intense. And sort of awful. Yesterday for lunch? Spinach. Just spinach. Spinach and some seeds.”
One could hope that this is the new Amanda Seyfried and her tweet was only just the beginning of taking a stand against a broken system.
[Image via JStone / Shutterstock.com]
