Hollywood's Sexualization Crisis: 7 Celebs Speak Out

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4 days ago

Scarlett Johansson
During the 500th episode of the Armchair Expert podcast with cohosts Dax Shepard and Monica Padman, Scarlett opened up about being hypersexualized and feeling "pigeonholed" early on in her career.Growing up in New York and working as a child actor, Scarlett said she "definitely was in different situations that were not age-appropriate," but her mother was always "really good at protecting" her from a lot of that stuff. But, like with any parent, she couldn't shield her from everything. She noted that her perceived maturity led her to be hypersexualized, despite that being the opposite of her actual personality.
"Because I think everybody thought I was older and I'd been [acting] for a long time and then I got kind of pigeonholed into this weird hyper-sexualized thing," she added. "It was like, that's the kind of career you have. These are the roles you've played, and I was like, 'This is it, I guess.'"
She thought it was "scary at the time" because she knew the shelf life for typecast roles like that for women in Hollywood didn't last long, and she also didn't want it to limit her as an actor.Scarlett noted that her trajectory in Hollywood looked really different compared to her The Other Boleyn Girl co-star, Natalie Portman, when the two were discussing working together on the popular 2008 film: "[Portman] also was saying it kind of fucked her up because she wasn't that person. She wasn't a prude, buttoned-up girl next door," but based on her looks, that's the narrative Hollywood ran with for her.The Jurassic World Rebirth star also reflected on young female actors today, and how she's proud that the climate in Hollywood has shifted slightly for female actors. Citing actors like Zendaya and Florence Pugh, who played her sister in Black Widow, Scarlett said, "I see younger actors that are in their 20s, it feels like they're allowed to be all these different things," she said. "We're not even allowed to really pigeonhole actors anymore."
Kit Harington
Although appreciative of the opportunities he's been given since starring in the hit HBO series Game of Thrones, Kit wasn't fond of the sexual attention he was receiving. He spoke candidly about inappropriate interactions that came from his newly sexualized image, and why he feels being a "hunk" is "demeaning."
'To always be put on a pedestal as a hunk is slightly demeaning,' Kit said. 'It really is, and it's in the same way as it is for women. When an actor is seen only for her physical beauty, it can be quite offensive.'
'Well, it's not just men that can be inappropriate sexually; women can be as well," he added. "I'm in a successful TV show in a kind of leading man way, and it can sometimes feel like your art is being put to one side for your sex appeal. And I don't like that.''In this position, you get asked a lot, 'Do you like being a heartthrob? Do you like being a hunk?' Well, my answer is, 'That's not what I got into it for.''
Jennifer Love Hewitt
Jennifer was deemed a "sex symbol" when she was just a teenager after she skyrocketed to stardom as Sarah Reeves-Merrin in Party of Five, and later as Julie James in I Know What You Did Last Summer. Jennifer was a mere 16 years old at the time she landed on Party of Five.
The now-46-year-old actor remembered looking back on her career, and the uncomfortable situations she was put in because of the "image" Hollywood created for her, including men talking about her body right in front of her.
'There were grown men talking to me at 16 about my breasts just openly on a talk show, and people were laughing about it," Jennifer said on Mayim Bialik's Breakdown podcast (via Variety). "I don't even remember that. I really didn't take that part in, but in hindsight it was really strange I think to become a sex symbol sort of for people before I even knew what that was.''I was on the cover of Maxim magazine, and people would openly walk up and be like, 'I took your magazine with me on a trip last week.' I didn't know what that meant, you know what I mean? It's kind of gross. I think later it sort of hit me more, the kind of things that I probably went through somewhere. But at the time, it felt very innocent and exciting and fun.'
Jacob Elordi
After all three movies in The Kissing Booth trilogy were released, Jacob didn't hold back his feelings about what it was like to film them or how he viewed the rom-coms overall. Jacob called the movies "ridiculous." In fact, he admitted he didn't even want to make those movies.
But the premise of the films wasn't the only thing that rubbed Jacob the wrong way. He was also "bothered" that he had to constantly remove his clothing on-screen. Below, you can see him talking about constantly being naked during an interview on the Ellen DeGeneres Show.
In a 2020 interview with Men's Health, Jacob said, "At the time, I was super young and got thrown into a world where everyone wanted to talk about my body…It really fucking bothered me. I don't identify with that whatsoever. I was trying to prove myself and be known as an actor. It was so much working out and I hated every second of it.'Later, when speaking of Euphoria, 'You learn quickly that what people take away from those movies is your stature and your figure,' Jacob said of the attention his body was receiving, which only continued when he began starring in Euphoria. 'You have all sorts of aged people around the world only talking about what you look like.' He called it "frustrating" and worried that it would affect his own self-perception.
Danielle Fishel
Danielle became a child star when she landed the role of Topanga Lawrence in Boy Meets World at just 12 years old. While chatting on her rewatch podcast, Pod Meets World, with Will Friedle and Rider Strong, the actor opened up about becoming an "object of desire" at such a young age. She recalled having a "creepy" conversation with a show executive while on set.
Despite being 16 at the time of their conversation, the executive told her that he had a picture of her in his bedroom.
"I had people tell me they had my 18th birthday on their calendar. I had a male executive — I did a calendar [shoot] at 16, and he specifically told me he had a certain calendar month in his bedroom," Danielle said on the podcast.Although she was initially shocked by his comment, she ultimately took it as "validation" that she had matured as a soon-to-be adult. But when she looked back at the moment as an adult, Danielle realized it was "absolutely wrong."
Richard Madden
After noticing it became more and more common for him to see nude scenes listed in his scripts, Richard began to question the reasoning behind it and eventually told himself he'd be doing fewer scenes that made him show his skin unnecessarily.
'I read scripts where, within the first 15 pages, it says, 'He gets into the shower…'" he told Vogue in a 2019 interview. "And I think, I know exactly what this is, it's just a scene to get me to take my clothes off. And then I'm like, 'Right, if you can fucking explain to me why it's important that I have my shirt off, then I will absolutely do it. But if you can't, which they often can't, then I won't.''
He then spoke of the unrealistic body standards and images that are pushed onto men.'We're projecting a very unrealistic body image. I find myself with actor friends — after we've done a kind of barely eating, working-out-twice-a-day, no-carbing thing for these scenes — looking at each other going: 'We're just feeding this same shit that we're against.''
Lastly, Mara Wilson
The Matilda star was forced to deal with puberty in the public eye, but with the internet, it became a really uncomfortable experience for Mara. She shared that by age 12, she discovered online comments anticipating her puberty with sexual overtones, fake nude photo ads of her, foot fetish sites, and more. Reading those triggered shame and confusion for her.
"One day, age 12, I made the mistake of looking myself up on the internet," Mara wrote in an essay to the Guardian. "A website called Mr Cranky wrote that I was popping up in every movie these days because I would soon be entering 'the awkward years, when she'll be old enough to have breasts, but not old enough to show them legally.' I folded my arms over my chest just reading that, and even as an adult it makes me shudder. Who did they think they were, talking about a preteen girl's breasts?"
"It got worse. The next page of search results linked to a website with a description that said, 'If you want Mara Wilson nude and sex pictures, click here.' My stomach dropped, and my heart pounded as I desperately tried to make sense of it. Maybe there was some kind of porn actress who had the same name. Or what if I had been drugged and kidnapped and then somehow made to forget the whole thing? Some rational part of my brain remembered that there was such a thing as photo manipulation, that they could put my head on someone else's body. But that didn't make me feel any better: who was this poor anonymous girl whose body stood in for mine? I burst into tears.""It was just the beginning. A few months later, I found out I was listed on a foot fetish site that catalogued scenes in movies where children's feet could be seen. Then there was the fan letter from an adult man who said he loved my legs and wanted my lip print on an index card."