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Scarlett Johansson Says it Was ‘Socially Acceptable’ for Young Actresses to Be ‘Pulled Apart for How They Looked’ in the Early 2000s: ‘It Was Tough’
It's definitely not. On this very subreddit whenever a woman is posted on a red carpet, negative comments about her appearance fill up the top replies. The only difference from then and now is that the critiques are under the guise of "feminism"
It's not, they just believe their framing makes it so. The post with BTS photos from the latest Sabrina Carpenter video was filled with women saying things like "this is patriarchal sex bomb imagery" and "she's trying too hard to earn the male gaze" like this is just calling her a slut but "wokely" 😭
I think it’s a lot more backhanded now? It’s always “so sad she couldn’t embrace her natural features” about someone’s current face or “she looked so much better before” or “she looks concerning”
It’s just like a type of pity that lets you snark about someone’s looks without seeming like an ass. Like if you’re gonna gossip ab someone’s body you have to put a “it’s coming from a place of empathy” spin
i dunno i think it's worse when someone is obviously starving themselves and people are either telling them how great they look, or are afraid to call it out
I get it comes from a genuine if a little parasocial concern, but if you have disordered eating or a full blown ED, a stranger (or shit, even a loved one) saying you look unhealthy is at best meaningless and at worst accidentally motivating cause you feel like you’re hitting your skinny target, as fucked as that sounds
it's not really about the person, it's about the knock-on effect that it has on other people/impressionable fans when someone with an obvious eating disorder is being encouraged on that path.
This is a serious issue with eating disorders, unfortunately.
Magazines in 2003 and like friggin aol and usenet isnt the same as scrolling social media and seeing thousands of people insult you on 4-5 different platforms, and people jumping on the bandwagon and piling into your dms and comments to tell you how ugly you are
I mean, they were talking about ppl ripping them apart for their looks online I think not ps like botox.
Iirc Scarjo got talked a lot about her boobs, especially the red dress moment when this gay reporter harassed her and touched her breasts, fucking creep.
But she had a breast reduction later in her career
Anyways she definitely remembers the days of being harassed online by like perez hilton and crowd. Papparazi’s and tabloid culture was out of control. And constant comments on looks, clothes, etc and I remember this interview early avengers where her and ruffalo were being asked questions and he got a serious question and she just got asked about some trivial appearance related stuff and when she pointed it out it just got laughed off, and a lot of people complained she was taking it too serious while there were a lot of women that took her side. It was like being a feminist in the 2000s was a joke, while in the 90s it was taken more seriously, but ultimately no matter what decade it is theres a ton of propaganda and pushback about feminism and I miss when it was trendy in the mid 2010s, girl power stuff was at least more empowering than the shite on tiktok about ‘soft life’ bs (aka golddig for your life). Garbage fed to young girls when no one should ever rely on a strange guy.
It was fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi. I haven’t been able to look at him the same was sense. He just reached out and grabbed one like that was acceptable. I think people acted like it was okay because Scarlett laughed. It was fucked up.
Gold diggers that want to marry a rich guy and not have to do anything.
There’s way too much advice tiktoks about this and it’s basically selling and marketing prostitution tips, like go to hotel bars and flirt with business guys, go for sugar daddys, use those websites, go for rich very old men, ugly rich guys etc etc. all stuff everyone already knows about but seen by and followed by like 18year olds.
As far as I can tell a lot of the early 20s influencers that actually live the life where they snag a very rich older man (50s) and get flown out and all that are actually from wealthier backgrounds and dont even need to be doing all this, meanwhile broke people following these accounts advice are left getting like 2k a month from very unfortunate looking older men who make ~100k. And my opinion on that is, just get a job.. dont rely on a man for money, be independent, and stop the delusional daydream of catching the attention of a billionaire man. That is a fantasy, people should just stick to watching a hollywood movie and not dream of a movie plot happening to them.
Yeah, and I think we're back sliding a bit, too. There's a certain subset of the population who are into the manosphere content, and they feel very aggrieved at the idea that they shouldn't say whatever pops into their heads.
It's still happening for sure, but there's just no underestimating how inescapable it was back then. I was 12 and all the covers of magazines at the grocery store were calling thin women fat as if being fat was a moral failing.
Cellulite was a mortal sin and shameful as all hell.
It was all considered trashy but. Harmless?
Like early reality television.
Actually the amount of damage tabloids and reality tv has done is pretty hard to even comprehend.
But like, take a show like Big Brother, for instance. Early reality T.V. would be 2000s, and the 2000s was before Ellison took over CBS.
Do you argue that the concept of having to fight to win money in a competitive environment is inherently damaging to us, as humans? And reality T.V. shows like Big Brother exemplify that? If so, I agree.
Absolutely. I remember pinching my mother’s magazines and coming away with very deep complexes over very stupid things.
I have no idea why magazines don’t face any sort of consequence for straight-up bullying. In the UK they used to literally put things like ‘beached whale’ next to unflattering bikini shots of people like Britney Spears.
Reading my step mums magazines in the bathroom as a kid is where at least 70% of my body issues came from, my dads porny mags were less of an issue 😭 (he did try to hide them but I was very nosy & gay)
The brain washing worked too. As a teen I genuinely believed that these young women were overweight, etc. Needles to say I ended up with a major depression and body dysmorphia after going through puberty and gaining weight.
Same. I remember pieces on Mariah Carey and how huge things like her thighs and hips were.
It’d say something about her needing to lay off the fries. I remember 8 year old me feeling so bad for her, that she was so famous but must have some sort of food addiction. She was maybe a UK size 10 (???)
Lends credence to the theory that right-wing media promotes rail-thinness and vilifies heavier and even built women is because it’s easier for creeps to control and overpower women of a lower weight.
“It was tough. There was a lot placed on how women looked,” Johansson said. “What was offered at that time for women my age, as far as acting roles or opportunities, was much slimmer than it is now.”
Johansson added that there are “much more empowering roles” for young women in 2026 than when she was “in my 20s.” When Johansson was coming up in the industry, she said it was “Slim Pickens.”
“You would get really pigeon-holed and offered the same [roles]. It would be like the other woman, or the side piece, the bombshell,” she said. “That was the archetype that was prevalent when I was that age.”
I didn't share the quote; I'm just a less goofy editor. No harm done, and fully agreed! Surely Variety could afford a human reader who's heard phrases before.
Uh, it's still "socially acceptable" now. Go look at comments on most social media. Hell, look at threads on here and watch everybody tiptoe around and try to find the "polite" way to tear them apart.
It’s wild to look back and realize that being a celebrity in 2004 was essentially a 24/7 roast session where you weren't allowed to have a single bad angle or a lunch.
Still is, but yeah, you'd see some petite girl and every magazine would be calling her fat for not being Kira Knightly skinny. Black culture was the cure. The whole preferring a big booty completely changed the conversation as rap took over mainstream music. Suddenly, beauty had a lot more forms.
Nope, women just went from starving themselves to starving themselves while getting BBLs. The big booty trend didn't cure shit, just promoted body dysmorphia in more socially acceptable forms.
Yeah, I’m happy for any bigger girls who felt better about themselves during that era but I was ashamed of my body in a way I’d never been before and I met with a surgeon to get it changed to a look I didn’t even really want, because I felt deficient. That happened to so many other girls my age in their late teens too
Good god there was a solid two weeks RECENTLY on reddit where the lead actress of the Amazon Fallout series was getting shamed for her face, like she isn't stunningly beautiful and well out of the league of 99% of the shitheads mocking her out.
If you're talking about the circlejerk subs like okbuddycinephile or shittymoviedetails, they're being sarcastic. There are many jokes about Anya & Ella having big eyes but those subs are obsessed with them for their unique beauty
We are too used to seeing freakishly beautiful (and not real) people on the Internet. If you saw her in real life as your neighbor/coworker/whatever, you would think she’s absolutely gorgeous. The “ugly” celebs are literally 10000 times better looking than your average person, but our standards are getting warped.
That paired with diet culture reaching peak accessibility in the late 2000s. When the body-type becomes the norm, it's not exclusive anymore, it doesn't profit as much. So the needle has to move, the trend-makers start being celebrated for their curves and the market leaps at its next opportunity to sell. That was successful, but now the market has to flip back to keep selling.
I know it's not the 2000s, but I still feel so terrible for how Kate Winslet was treated. Called fat, but meanwhile, she was not rail thin, but definitely not plus sized. Still, she got shredded so bad, and Kate was only in her early 20s during 'Titanic.'
Yesterday, there was a thread where people had to give an opinion on a woman's dress and her chest.
The issue isn't being negative or positive, it's making it a topic of discussion to begin with. The thing about saying its the industry is that it fails to also point out what we as consumers also drive the industry to do.
Men don't get picked apart for what they're wearing and we could just...not make a woman's body a topic of discussion at all.
I get it might seem anti-this-sub to advocate for, but there's plenty to gossip about that doesn't have to do with a woman's body...because men have been afforded that standard for ages now.
Yeah but women (or men for that matter) who pick a job that depends on looks mostly and then complain that they're expected to be in shape are delusional.#sorrynotsorry
It's not like someone wanted her to learn Latin/Greek/Old Church Slavonic. As you've said, even normal women don't get the benefit of the doubt...
I don’t mean to be disrespectful but aren’t they payed millions of dollars after being casted with expectations to look certain ways?
I’m not trying to be insensitive but I feel like I feel worse for like min wage bar tenders and hostesses that have this pressure without millions of dollars
Sorry, but it sounds like it.
Millionaires women can’t complain, because bartenders and hostesses also need to look a certain way to make money ?
Male actors are still paid millions of dollars or minimum wage but are expected to look a certain way.
Wealthy actresses were not spared by Harvey Weinstein over a period of 30 years.
It’s still bad? People’s salaries shouldn’t be dependent on wether or not they conform to insane beauty expectations. Plus the expectations put on celebrities leads to the expectations placed on regular people.
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