I covered these photos of Jennifer Lawrence at the London photocall for Red Sparrow this week. People were going crazy over her slinky Versace gown, as compared to all of the men being covered up in layers. I wrote yesterday, “I’m not really feeling it on Jen – it feels like she’s ‘overdressed’ for a photocall and underdressed for the climate. Joel is literally wearing like four layers.” As I said, I wasn’t the only one noting that – the Daily Mail ran a huge story about it, as did other outlets. The discussion was more general, I thought, like “why do we expect actresses to saunter about in slinky dresses while the actors get to wear warm clothing?” But Jennifer Lawrence took it personally. She bashed those comments on her Facebook page, writing:
Wow. I don’t really know where to get started on this “Jennifer Lawrence wearing a revealing dress in the cold” controversy. This is not only utterly ridiculous, I am extremely offended. That Versace dress was fabulous, you think I’m going to cover that gorgeous dress up with a coat and a scarf? I was outside for 5 minutes. I would have stood in the snow for that dress because I love fashion and that was my choice.
This is sexist, this is ridiculous, this is not feminism. Over- reacting about everything someone says or does, creating controversy over silly innocuous things such as what I choose to wear or not wear, is not moving us forward. It’s creating silly distractions from real issues. Get a grip people. Everything you see me wear is my choice. And if I want to be cold THATS MY CHOICE TOO!
Girl… I’m not so sure about ANY of this! “Everything you see me wear is my choice”? Is it though? Because I feel like your Dior contract means that you’re forced to wear some really bad gowns, historically speaking. Are ALL of those Dior looks your choice? As for this slinky Versace number… I think it was her choice to wear it, for sure. I think she loved the gown and she wanted to look sexy, and that is her right and her choice. She chose “the look” versus “being warm” and that’s her choice. But does it follow that all of those choices are FEMINIST choices? Does it follow that debating warmth-versus-fashion is an inherently un-feminist debate? When did J-Law turn into Emily Ratajkowski?
PS… My theory is that she was trying to catch Matthias Schoenaerts’ eye because g–damn is that man hot.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
Jennifer has a SALIENT point…if I LOVE fashion…and I’m a top-tier actress…and I’m wearing a FLY AF outfit, while my co-workers look like they’re about to start their shift at Starbucks…I’m gonna risk the flu to show ALL THE WAY OUT! Heck…I’ve done that myself in my own life…”A COAT? WITH THIS OUTFIT? HOW DARE YOU!”
Agreed. Plus, not all of the commentary was that tame. She’s right to be fed up.
This isn’t about attacking JLaw. This is about acknowledging how it’s expected of women to be comfortable with being uncomfortable as a normal part of their lives and to put in MUCH more effort than men to be considered attractive or “presentable”.
It’s about the fact that she looks absolutely ridiculous but we’ve become so used to women putting being sexy above all else that no one told her to put a jacket on. Not the photographer, not the costars. Everyone just went along with this insanity. If one of the guys showed up in a tight tank top for a photocall in the middle of winter, he’d be taken aside and told that posing like this would make people question his mental state or level of sobriety.
We all know this one woman who wakes up at 5 am to iron her hair and put on perfect make up “for herself” and swears she’s soo comfortable running around in 6 in heels every day. Meanwhile men, being mostly free to do whatever they want and still be considered attractive and presentable compared to women, somehow barely ever “choose” to put themselves through misery to look good and by and large, choose comfort whenever possible. She’s fooling herself if she thinks she made a choice to stand in sandals in 6 degree celsius weather in a vacuum.
Except that it’s not coming across as anything other than an attack on Jlaw, by singling her and her dress out after actresses have spent DECADES in revealing dresses during cold-weather premieres and awards shows.
And I’ve seen enough and more times when more covered-up looks were called ‘matronly’, women can’t win either way it seems. Either way Jlaw got the extra press from that dress, so I guess it was successful.
@MMG
THIS! The coverage I read was not attacks about JLaw, just pointing out that it is silly to expect actresses to dress this way not actors. I feel like people only noticed because she is the only one dressed that way because she is the only woman in those pictures.
People are critical of the societal norms, not the individual. I mean, I have done the same where I dressed in weather inappropriate clothes while the men around me were warm and comfortable. I chose to wear those clothes, yes. The question is why I chose to wear those clothing. And a lot of our choices are informed by the society we live in. It’s not a bad thing to question those norms. But recently many women have taken questioning societal norms as personal attacks, which they are not. I wear makeup and heels and love fashion too. But why do we expect women to make themselves so uncomfortable for the sake of looking good
@Mmg
She’s beautiful, and the dress is stunning, and she’s stunning in it… I get her side of it, I do. And I do believe that it was her choice… but something still doesn’t sit right, seeing all those dudes dressed warm for the weather, while she freezes for a photo op.
Your point about a guy showing up in a tank top getting a different reaction hits home like a mofo…
She’s right, it’s her choice. It’s nobody’s ‘concern-trolling’ business what she wears… but I also understand why people are feeling sensitive about the possibility of a woman being pressured to be sexy.
@LAdyPrincess, I agree.
The reality is that we inhabit a world where you will have a line of men, all suitably dressed for the weather and the occasion, and then the woman in skimpy evening wear. Gorgeous, and absolutely her choice. But the reality is, women’s clothing choices so often are incredibly uncomfortable (the whole suffering to be beautiful trope) and so often incredibly revealing… and that aspect IS a feminist one. Because you would never, ever see that situation reversed.
That doesn’t make attacks on an individual woman okay.
>And I’ve seen enough and more times when more covered-up looks were called ‘matronly’, women can’t win either way it seems.
She’d totally have won in a jacket. No one would have batted an eye. Yes, women have been called matronly for covering up. But I follow celebrity gossip pretty closely and have yet to see one being slammed for posing for photos in a winter jacket alongside her winter-jacket-wearing male costars.
Of course, that no one would have batted an eye if she was in a jacket is exactly why she chose not to wear one.
She’s right. It’s her choice.
@mmg, I am one of those women. I take two hours in the morning doing my hair and makeup and I wear 3 or 4″ shoes all day at work (6″ is a huge exaggeration) and yes, I’m doing it for me. I love applying my makeup and doing my hair, it’s not a struggle or a punishment, nor is wearing gorgeous shoes. Just because you choose to not do that doesn’t make you better at being a woman than me.
You’ve placed a lot of judgement on women in your posts. If someone gave me a vintage-looking Versace and I looked that great, yes I’d wear it anywhere I could. And I’m Canadian, you can stand outside for five minutes in the cold and not get sick and die.
Yup. I hate the cold but if I’m looking like a damn gawdess, there’s no way you going to cover me up. Bow down to my fabulous for one day. I’ll pay for it tomorrow.
Ha – this all the way. I literally stood in a fabulous ball gown in the snow for press photos one bitter January night. Add a coat? Hell no. My choice, period.
I took the dog out at 9pm in below freezing temperatures last night in pj tanktop, pj shorts, and rubber boots. Did the same thing at 5am this morning.
When you’re out for a brief amount of time, it’s not THAT big of a deal. And if I was wearing a fancy gown, I don’t think I’d really care as long as it was only for a short jaunt outside. There definitely is a certain amount of concern trolling that happens over things like this.
Yeah that’s another thing that people are ignoring: it wasn’t for THAT long and believe me, if you’ve ever posed for a photo or two in the cold, you don’t think about how cold you are in that moment because you’re too focused on trying to look good lol.
That is from her perspective of time. The men all have on coats, sweaters, etc, they sure wrapped up for a few minutes. Don’t believe it was only 5 minutes TBH. Its possible it wasn’t long but the way the others are dresses says it was a lot longer than 5 minutes.
Exactly.
I agree with you. Unfortunately many feminists are die hard defenders of the patriarchal notion that women have no will or mind of their own. Is her choice “the feminist choice”? Probably not. Does it have to be? Absolutely not!
no it doesn’t have to be a feminist choice, and it isn’t one. but it’s jlaw that is defending her choice of outfit as feminist, rather than just a personal choice (to which she is entirely entitled).
Tumblr feminists*
Actual feminists I’ve met know it’s equality for all. Not just ladies.
I wouldn’t cover that dress up. It’s gorgeous. Jennifer I can do without.
Exactly. She has every right in the world to wear what she wants. But feminism has nothing to do with it and I’m not sure she understands what feminism is.
A feminist choice is one that benefits women at large. It has been coopted by women who make a totally personal choice and then if called on it, cry that it’s not feminist to criticize them.
I don’t think it’s that she should cover up a beautiful outfit (though lol at her co-stars getting ready to start their shift at Starbucks). But why are actresses expected to put on something dressy and slinky for an event while the dudes only have to wear their best dockworker formalwear? We see this all the time.
Yeah, I agree Bridget! This is something that bothers me about formal wear in general; between typical gowns and tuxes, someone is either dressed too hot or too cold whatever the weather! Add on gendered expectations and some weird patio, and these pictures are just odd.
I can see the point, but this is HER movie. She is the star of it, she is the one who will carry the win or loss. This was a promo event for her movie, so of course she is going to do all she can to draw attention. None of those guys have that kind of pressure to sell this project.
Overall, I agree with the point that many times women are expected to be in states of undress that men are not. However, I think this premier is not a great example to make that point.
But this is just a photo call, not a red carpet premiere. Which usually takes place at night, and where her dress would be wholly appropriate.
Personally, while I find her dress a bit much I don’t have a problem with it. It is indeed her choice. I just think that the photo highlights the difference on expectations between men and women, and how they are expected to appear. It’s less “poor JLaw” and more “way to dress up guys, you don’t even look like you’re going to the same place”
Literally, all she had to say was “are you kidding? I’m not covering up this rockin dress. It was totally worth 5 minutes of cold.” Versace would have LOVED her for that. Instead we got some weird statement on sexism.
That’s the bizarre part of the photo. If they all had been in black tie nobody would have said a word. It’s that they seem to be going to two very different events. Guys are off to a pub and she’s going to a formal party.
This was a photocall and none of the actors I’ve seen at photocalls dress up to the extent Jennifer did. Is it her choice, absolutely and it’s purely a personal decision on her part. I would have never thought about the being cold part, she just looks way overdressed for the occasion.
Totally agree about the different expectations, Bridget.
It’s like bathing suits–women wear next to nothing, the less material the better, while men wear very long, baggy shorts. God forbid a guy wears a Speedo, ’cause revealing too much skin or wearing something skintight–well, that’s for women only.
eh, sure the point she is using to get good press is valid. However, she got caught in a not “cool” moment. She has to be the cool girl and when the media suddenly questions anything she does, even if it doesn’t make sense, she gets defensive. It about her image not feminism.
@Isabelle – exactly and women should be offended that she made this about sexism or feminism when the reality it was a convenient “out” for her. When someone of her fame makes this “not great decision on her part” about feminism, she dilutes the pool for the real feminist issues.
Except she’s not claiming that she wore that dress for feminism. It’s her ‘critics’ who are using feminism and sex crimes as an excuse to tell her to cover up that are making it about feminism. They’re the problem. They’re the ones ‘diluting the pool for real feminist issues’ by turning their feelings about the way some woman who’s body they don’t own is dressed into ‘feminism.’
Yes, some people lack common sense.
What can one do?
Some people are insecure and have to be constantly on, massive egos, I guess.
Not everybody understands that there is such thing as not everything goes every single time.
Make sensible choices is a better way to go, but she is not the brightest bulb in a box.
She looks ridiculous, try hard and desperate.
JLaw could have worn a beautiful designer pant suit or pencil skirt with a lovely silk blouse and a great cashmere sweater.
A woman can dress great in winter without looking like a lumber jack, millions of women around the world dress for their office jobs and not with JLaw’s designer choices and budget.
Not a rocket science, just common sense.
agreed! i’d stand in the snow for that dress too.
Considering the girl doesn’t grasp feminism that well (by her previous actions) I’m not surprised she called this sexist.
Fact is she does not “love” fashion by her own admission. And I’m sure since this is an iconic dress that Versace loaned it to her to be photographed. We all know she is forced to wear Dior so I’m not sure why she’s surprised everyone assumed she was forced to wear this. Esp in this climate.
It’s still an issue (to me) that women have to dress like a Barbie while men can be comfortable and warm while promoting. I hope freezing her @$$ off was her choice but it’s laughable that she pretends that people don’t have the right to side eye this.
Also people using “forced” to wear need to settle down a bit. This isnt a religious garb thats forced on her by the threat of death. She signed a deal that makes her more money than 99,9% of people make in a life time.
Just like working a stressful job for a low pay is not slavery.
@QueenB – Thank you!
No but it’s still an unfair expectation that women have to wear high end designers to premieres and press when men can wear jeans. Or that they have to be outside in (clearly) a slinky dress when it’s freezing. Just because she makes money doesn’t mean she wasn’t forced (if that is the case).
Making money does not excuse anything.
The biggest problem I have, is that she’s the only woman in this bloody lineup, and from the looks of it, the only woman in the film 🙄
I have to say though- not all women wear religious clothing due to fear of death. Some wear it as a choice to highlight their devotion – nuns and sanyasis!
Not all religious women are given death threats you know? Respect the choices of all women.
I agree and I’m surprised (yet not surprised) that she took it so personally. Most of the commentary I read about it talked about societal expectations that a woman must be dolled up all the time, even when it’s not weather-appropriate or when the men are dressed down, not saying anything about her specifically.
Right and I didn’t see anything about her specifically but the look of the picture and what that says about hollywood and society. and they weren’t wrong.
I’m wondering how her assistant or publicist or whatever person she has with her didn’t take one look and realize what a bad look it was.
She looked great but it was a bad read
The fact that she felt the need to put her health in danger to show off her cleavage *without* being made to by anyone is even more depressing. Of course, it went compmetely over her head and she’s not gonna question why no man in history of Hollywood “wanted” to show of his outfit so badly he ended up half-naked in the middle of winter, surrounded by women wearing jackets. At the same time, the Hadids and Jenners and Baldwins of this world who have millions of fans among young girls have made it seem almost normal in the past few years to walk around in sandals and crops tops in winter. Jennifer has now joined this group, showing her fans that being sexy as a woman is the most important thing there is, moreso than being comfortable or, you know, not catching the flu.
The comparison to Emily Ratajkowski is apt, this is yet another woman who wants to use feminism as an excuse to show off her body at every opportunity to be seen as a sex symbol, then throw her hands in the air and be like “I’m a woman and I wanna dress this way which means it’s feminist! #girlpower #liberation”. That said, it’s not THAT surprising that this is the extent to which she understand feminism, is it?
I don’t think she’s anything like Emily Ratjkakowski. She doesn’t pose naked all the time on Instagram, and that’s not her claim to fame. Yeah, she looks sexy, but she’s not like that all the time nor constantly talking about it as the core of her identity.
What Mmg said.
@ Mmg. Agree Agree Agree!
I feel like the ‘criticism’ was more pity. Like, it was COLD in London this week.
And we’re all dealing with #MeToo, so the culture is finally recognizing that, at times, women have been manipulated and coerced into uncomfortable situations. It was natural to assume that wearing minimal clothing in the dead of Winter might not have been her choice.
Ok, so it was.
But it was more concern and less concern-trolling than anything. At least that was my interpretation.
Does anyone realize that a cold, the flu etc comes from pathogens and not slinky outfits?
@Enough already
Yes, everyone has heard of this factoid by now. It doesn’t change the fact that being cold makes you much more vulnerable to infectious diseases. There is a reason the flu season doesn’t take place in August.
Mmg
No offense but what you said is not science but rather one of several theories biologists and epidemiologists have about why the flu spreads in colder months. It’s not even the strongest or best theory actually. It is more likely that cold weather consequences such as closed windows and more people sharing enclosed spaces that proliferate the virus.
PS – In partial agreement with you will point out that we do actually have less vitamin D in the winter which does play a key role in our immunity so there’s that 🙂
This is such a difficult tightrope to walk on. On one hand, nobody wants to go back to the times where women did not have the choice to dress themselves whoever they see fit, but on the other hand it feels like we have veered so far into the other direction that the norm is now to wear as little as possible and call it feminism.
Jennifer in her too revealing dress jumped out because of how ridiculous the juxtaposition of a woman dressed like Jessica Rabbit next to men in woolly jumpers looks, especially in this freezing weather. Of course she can dress how she wants, nobody is calling for a ban, but it begs the bigger question, why does she want to dress like that? The answer is relatively simple, the less clothes a beautiful woman wears, the more attractive she is in the eyes of men, and the more “erotic” power she has, the more that will eventually translate into monetary power. Ultimately it is men who determine access to monetary wealth. I suppose that on a small scale she has “won”, but to the detriment of women in general because it upholds this idea that a woman’s worth boils down to her “f*ckability” (shockingly this is an actual term that i heard someone use in relation to women).
The only way we can win this game is by refusing to play it. We think we are exercising our free will when in reality we are only replaying the script that was written by men for us.
Women like Jennifer and Emily are fair weather feminists, justifying their rights to bare all, and demanding our approval and applause, all the while claiming that what they are doing is in opposition to the patriarchy, when in that this is precisely the only sort of “feminism” the patriarchy approves of.
This definitely not the only type of feminism the patriarchy approves of. In fact women who dress like Mily and Jennifer are considered sluts by the patriarchy, who would demand that they cover up in order to deserve respect. If Jennifer wants to wear a revealing gown she is exercising choice. We can argue about what that choice is reflecting but her motives are her own as long as the choice is her own. This virtue signalling is so frustrating.
@enoughalready
Patriarchy takes different forms in different cultures. In conservative countries like India or Saudi Arabia, you’d be absolutely right and she would be considered a slut.
However patriarchy in the west welcomes the notion of scantily clad women. A lot of comments i have seen defending Jennifer against “vile, ugly feminist” have been from men. Similarly not too long ago many men were up in arms when F1 banned the track girls ( or whatever the term is), defending their rights to wearing barely there skirts.
Virtue signaling is another of those trendy terms that halts any sort of critical thinking, i think we can do better.
@Enough Already: “This virtue-signaling is so frustrating.” Right? This comment section is a great example of some of the ways we as women are trained to feel entitled disrespect women who aren’t as modest as we are, as if our being less immodest puts us above them. The fact that someone could even pretend that ‘sluts’ are only vilified, victim-blamed, and dehumanized in India and Saudi Arabia just shows how much this kind of misogyny is normalized.
@okatu fairy
Nobody here is calling Jennifer a slut, if all you understood from my comments was internalised mysoginy and virtue signaling, you have missed the point. This is not a modest/slut discussion.
Today showing skin is the norm, all actresses, all singers do it. They wouldn’t do it, if they didn’t derive any benefit from it, most of them call it empowering. Empowering is some sort of catch all term but ultimately it is not entirely false, because some did build entire careers and gain a lot of money from it. Now had this not been sanctioned by the patriarchy (in the west), do you think this would have been possible? To know what your society approves of, you should always “follow the money”
a lot of women have been lead to believe that showing as much as possible was them defying the norms and being trailblazers, not realising that in reality they are operating WITHIN the norm of what their society expects them to be.
It is not virtue signaling or victim blaming to realise this, it just requires us to step back and assess the situation. It is not just Jennifer’s dress but why women choose to put so much emphasis on our erotic capital that is interesting and thought provoking. Just saying this is what we’ve been socialised to accept, doesn’t really add anything to the debate.
Honestly these silly buzzwords (virtue signaling, slut shaming, snowflakes etc) just kills discussion, let’s come up with real argument and debate, instead of hiding behind words. In fact there is no bigger virtue signaling that people who throw these words around.
She CHOSE to put her health at risk. She isn’t an infant. She is a grown woman, and IF she didn’t say anything and stood in that dress freezing, then it is still her choice. She is a huge movie star and love her or hate her she runs her show.
By acting like she was forced to do anything is denying JLaw’s awesome power in the industry and how much control SHE does have. Not all women have as much power and say in their everyday lives. She does, and she is right to get annoyed that people deny her place as an A++ lister and her hard work to get there.
This isn’t a sexist argument for the most part. For me it is a “Jennifer Lawrence overdressed and looks like a hostess at a casino surrounded by Canadian Lumberjacks at a convention in Alberta”. She looks ridiculous.
Implying that what she did was immoral= implying that she’s a ‘slut’. That’s the literal definition of what a ‘slut’ is: A woman who does something that’s considered sexually immoral. Hundreds of comments about it being ‘wrong’ for a woman to wear a revealing dress or why her voicing her opinion on HER own body and what she’s being told to do with is somehow outrageous is absolutely a ‘slut/modesty’ discussion.
Patriarchy in the West sends one message about a woman’s beauty/hotness being all she has to offer, (even though in general, sex and beauty are both things that appeal to humans anyway) while sending another contradictory message about female morality, respectability, and responsibility for male behavior (that’s also partially rooted in male fantasy). It’s not just one message being sent by the patriarchy at a time. Controversy is also another thing that sells. All of those things factor in to why careers can be built that way. That doesn’t mean that women are incapable of thinking for themselves, knowing what is or is not empowering for them personally (note that you’re the one bringing up empowerment. Women who mention being empowered by something you disagree with aren’t ‘lead’ to believe anything. It just doesn’t match up with your idea of empowerment. Women aren’t a monolith. Imagine that) , forming their own opinions and boundaries, or disagreeing with a message. Just like people are able to rise above homophobic messages despite living in a homophobic society.
Forced? How? A contract isn’t indentured servitude. It’s a paid and agreed to exchange of services. Jeez.
she’s not “forced” to wear dior. she signed that contact willingly. would it be crazy to say she did it because she likes the brand?
I mean she can have totally chosen to wear that dress and wanted to look sexy and hot – totally her choice and good for her, but we can also say that it’s a shitty misogynistic world that creates an environment where women are pressured to look sexy, and hot, while men are not. She is being used as the case study for these discussions but it’s not really about her at all. It’s a much wider issue and i’m surprised she can’t see that. Again, this is my biggest issue with celebrity feminism, they don’t or can’t see the wider issues, it’s only ever about their tiny personal experiences.
This.
I, and I suspect most other commenters here, don’t really give a flying fuck if Jennifer was freezing for a bit. What’s so enraging is the culture we have, where girls are being conditioned to make that choice. As a starlet, you have twenty years to parade your flesh and try to look tempting. Then mayyybe you’ll earn as much as a b list male actor, who’s considered a sex symbol without ever having to dress for anyone but himself and other men. After that, his career will continue, while hers will wither away.
I mean, look at that photo. One of those things are not like the other. It is NOT antifeminist to point that out.
I bet its a pure coincidence she wore a slinky revealing dress for a movie primer where she basically uses her body to “spy” and sexualizes her character.
Good point Layla.
Not every choice a woman makes is feminist.
I totally second your theory on Schoenaerts.
Go for it Jen!!!
I think everyone kind of missed the point here. There’s a conversation to have about the expectations we put on actresses when it comes to fashion but this is a bad exemple. At the same time I disliked her statement because it’s filled with choice feminist nonsense. I agree with Kaiser I think she took it personally instead of seing the bigger picture. I will add that bringing Emily into this is interesting, it feels like JLaw is trying to rebrand herself as sex symbol.
I’m thinking cheap publicity stunt for the movie. The location does’t add anything to the picture. It could have been taken indoors with all people dressed appropriately and she could have shown off the dress. Her feminist discourse sounds fake. I will not see the movie.
#IBelieveHer. But here come all the insinuations that a woman being assertive about where she stands when it comes to modesty for herself makes her a bitch and a whore (‘Cool Girl’ will probably be the most popular euphemism used in lieu of those more obvious slurs). Wait for it.
Any woman in her situation who makes a statement like the one she made runs the risk of being painted as selfish, anti-feminist, immoral, or even ‘damaged’, but before the usual slut-shaming and pathologizing start up, I have to say that it’s great that she stood up for herself. There needs to be more respect across the board for the fact that women’s personal beliefs, boundaries, comfort zones, and decisions about their bodies are not all the same. Women who aren’t cool with doing something need to be free to assert that and not be forced or coerced, and women who ARE cool with doing that thing need to be able to without being infantalized, harassed, slandered, bullied, gaslighted, chastised, abused, or blamed for the actions of those who force and coerce women. People need to be careful to avoid using the #MeToo movement to tell women to cover up or to scream ‘Victimization!’ any time they see an adult woman they don’t know making a choice about her body and sexuality that’s not their cup of tea. It’s already bad enough that the religious right constantly tries that tactic with premarital sex or ‘hook-up culture’.
And of course men and women should be allowed the same amount of freedom when it comes to dress. I thought the same thing a few years ago about Selena Gomez at a place of worship. 😉 But there’s a difference between both sexes being allowed that option and sending a message of “Hey woman! You’d better make sure you copy the physical appearance choices of the men around you, or else people are going to be outraged! You know that fabulous dior dress you want to wear is only going to make people think about women being preyed upon.”
#TeamTHISJen!
Right because pointing out the cool girl that sides with men against women and entirely denies her own agency and ideas to please men is totally the same as those slurs…
here is a good tweet from Helen Lewis explaining this:
https://twitter.com/helenlewis/status/966233860718678016
When it’s in the context of a woman being assertive about what her boundaries are and are not? Yes, that kind of namecalling is exactly the same as using those slurs.
The woman wore very little in freezing temperatures. Questioning why is not an attack. Yeah, some people turned her into a victim but as I said below, we’re all still trying to navigate what happened these past few months so unless someone actually said she should “cover up” lest she be called a cool girl, I say can we objectively look at the pictures? THEY LOOK CRAZY! My immediate reaction was girl, you’re going to turn into an ice block! She could’ve just said “People, I was wearing a great dress, that’s all there is to it.” I question her sanity, not her agency.
I’m not understanding this? Most of the commentary that I saw was along the lines of “Damn, it was COLD! That’s unfair that you had to freeze your ass off while the men surrounding you are in warm casualwear.”
Just to me, its typical. Woman all dressed up, while the man looks like he’s going to an entirely different event. I mean, I think she would have gotten shit for wearing jeans and a coat like the guys. I mean all the guys are wearing similar outfits. Did she not get the memo that it was a casual photoshoot? Or does she feel like she has to be more dressed up than the guys? Doesn’t make any sense to me why she is dressed so formally and the others so casually? IMO, she knows she can’t wear jeans and a coat like the others.
This has nothing to do about “copying” the physical choices of the men in attendance. If one of the men had dressed formally (nothing to do with showing her body) many would have jumped in to say – ‘dude, you’re overdressed for the occasion. End of story, it just looks dumb that she dressed up for such a non dress up event.
That is my thing. She looks ridiculous, and I think that is the root of her defensiveness. Interesting about choice feminism though Queen B posted a good link.
She wants to be the sexy cool girl. She has always wanted to appeal to men so Kaiser’s Emily reference is so dead on here I must pay homage.
these celebs need to stop using feminism to defend personal choices that have nothing to do with feminism.
100%!
Well, it’s JLaw. She isn’t really the brightest bulb in the box.
Untrue-Jennifer Lawrence seems very bright to me, and I think she handled this nonsense very well-interesting that a sight that is supposedly so feminist routinely attacks women as much as it does…
There is nothing about feminism that says you have to support other women and keep opinions to ourselves. It is against silencing women in any way even if we disagree. Female anatomy isn’t body armor against being questioned or criticized by other women. It is way past time we move past that idea.
If women want to claim agency, then claim it. All of it. She made a choice, and some people think it was stupid and odd. It had nothing to do with feminism or sexism to mention the weather and how strange she looked.
Exactly. It was.a poor fashion choice from her part, and that’s it. “I love fashion”. Well, if you love fashion you first make sure that what you wear is occasion- appropriate. Therefore, you don’t wear such a gown before supper or for an informal event. If it’s freezing and you have an outdoor event you make sure you wear something warm. Versace offers plenty of fabulous and glamorous daywear designs, as well.
She has tons of red carpet to do and she does’t have a more appropriate occasion to wear this?
At the end she doesn’t look sexist nor feminist, only utterly ridiculous.
The accuracy of this, though……
People also need to stop using feminism to attack or infantilize women for making choices that people have been SOCIALIZED to disapprove of.
it’s still not feminism, though.
i can choose to go around in just my knickers, but it’s a personal choice not a feminist choice. not everything women do is feminist just because women do it. if jlaw was bothered by the comments about her outfit she should have just said ‘you lot back off, i can wear what i want’ and that would have been fine. bringing up feminism for issues that have zero to do with it is peak white feminism, it’s like when some say that feminism is ‘about choice’ whenever it has very little to do with it. i’m sure jlaw has sufficient resources to educate herself on what feminism is.
Actually I think the point is that we (and Jennifer) have been *socialized* to expect the woman to look sexy, regardless of her comfort.
The woman in sexy, skimpy clothing. The men fully dressed and warm. This has *been* the norm. This is what *is* expected.
We’re all wondering (those of us that are) if there isn’t a better way.
Again, JLaw never said that her dress was feminism. However, there were people invoking “feminism” and sex crimes/coercion as the basis for their complaints about the way she was dressed, which is why she responded the way she did. If people’s criticism had just been things like, “she must have been cold” or “that dress is fug”, the criticism wouldn’t have gotten any response from Jennifer at all. So the complaints about misuse of feminism really shouldn’t be directed at her in this situation.
@ Elaine: We’ve been socialized to expect women to look hot and put more effort into their beauty than men, while being socialized to disapprove of women who don’t dress and behave according to the idea that their worth lies in covering up and keeping their legs closed.
No, wearing knickers all day isn’t a feminist choice, but people slut-shaming you for wearing knickers or assuming that you wear knickers all day for the male gaze and not because you want to, isn’t an argument in favor of feminism, either.
That’s kind of the problem though: the people who oppose your choice to wear knickers all day framing their argument as a feminist one. THEY are the ones that bring feminism into it when really it’s simply about your personal choice.
ETA: Otaku Fairy beat me to it. Yes exactly.
@ Otaku Fairy. Interesting idea. But how about Kim Kardashian? Forever naked, big butt proudly displayed and monetized, is she reviled? It seems that her choices are accepted and celebrated as being just that -her choices.
I’ve not seen or heard of Kim K being slut-shamed in a very long time. At least not the corners of the internet where I hang 🙂
A commenter above referenced this argument. That, on the one hand, can you “fight the patriarchy” in hot pants, and win? Or are you only trained to placate the male gaze, and your wearing hot pants cannot possibly be a choice outside of the over sexualization of women you’ve been indoctrinated to not only *accept*, but perpetrate?
I don’t have the answer.
But I know I thought JLaw looked cold. (And beautiful).
@Elaine: In most places names like ‘Kim Kardashian’ and ‘Kylie Jenner’ are synonymous with things women and girls are supposed to performatively distance themselves from, and used as insults.
As for the other part: People are definitely capable of living in a society without swallowing every little message it sends. People also capable of learning the difference between “This is what I really want/ don’t want/believe ” and “This is bullshit, but I sort of have to do this or abstain from that in order to avoid social, physical, or economic consequences” too.
I guess by using feminism as an excuse is better than coming off like a dumb blonde. She still look ridiculous regardless if it’s her choice or being forced.
I would be more happier if she covered herself and defend that choice than this. She is sending a wrong message to young girls.
“I would be more happier if she covered herself…”
Of course you would. That choice would be more in line with your idea of morality. An idea that doesn’t originate with you (after all, our ideas about what things are ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ for women to do with their bodies don’t exist in a vacuum, amirite?), but was passed down to you by your ancestors under a violent, patriarchal, sex-negative ‘Boys Will be Boys’ society.
“…and defend that choice than this.” Why would she even be in the position to have to defend that choice when society has already decided that that’s the choice women have to make in order to not be considered immoral, inviting disrespect, lacking self-respect, a bad role model, unintelligent, selfish, antifeminist, or to blame for abuse? That’s one of the things women are expected to do if they don’t want to be seen and treated as less than. Female sexual modesty is one of the most aggressively enforced male fantasies of human history. It’s one of the only male fetishes that ever gets conflated with morality and ‘respect’.
“She is sending a wrong message to young girls.” Actually, I think she’s sending a pretty great and necessary message to young girls.
And what message is that? Do things for yourself? Be happy with the choices you made? Don’t bend to society’s expectations? Hell, I’d rather teach my daughter that then “cover yourself because it makes people (i.e. men) uncomfortable.
.
@Otaku Fairy – I’m not condemning Jennifer Lawrence for dressing sexily. If I do have a body like her, the street would be my runway. However if the weather for a jacket, you bet your ass that I’ll be putting on one.
To me, she looks ridiculous and trying too hard. Why is it that her co-stars can keep their jacket on but she feel the need to take it off. If she considers herself as a feminist then she should have keep her jacket on. And defend that decision. And that’s my problem with her. She knows that she looks dumb for not having a jacket on in the cold ass weather, just admitted to that. Don’t use feminism as a defense.
Feminism is the believe of everyone being equal.
Equality does not mean the marginalized are obligated to mimic the dress and grooming of the privileged.
Feminism does not mean women have to wear jackets.
And obviously, wearing the jacket is not something she would have had to defend. Covering up is the safe, Good Girl choice under a rape culture where immodest women are viewed as less than by both sexes.
100% agree.
My gardener Matthias is in this? I might have to see it.
Now, so we’re not sexist by Jen’s standards, we discussed her dress yesterday, can we discuss those short white pants on Joel? Aren’t they too short? Who wears white pants in February??
And are they cuffed?
The men look like fancy dock workers.
Not every critique of a woman is sexist but maybe she’s got a point? I could see how the comments might veer toward concern trolling
The problem on yesterday’s post were commenters saying she was forced to wear that dress. It is wrong to assume someone was forced to wear something just because they are a woman. Maybe she wanted to go for a sexy look, despite the weather, maybe it was her choice.
Like I said yesterday I live in N.Y. where women going to the club where less than what Jen is wearing in freezing temperatures. It’s their choice. Sometimes it is fake concern trolling.
ITA. Also honk honk for Matthias!!!!! I would be naked if I were near him and had her figure. She was smoking
@V4Real
Wait a minute!
Is it really a woman’s choice what she wears or are we conditioned over a very long period of time to look a certain way and we women don’t even know the difference anymore???
Are women supposed to be always the “EYE CANDY”, even when our comfort, health and safety are at stake???
I was recently buying shoes for a wedding, the sales person helping me was a young girl, I’m 28 and she told me she was 20.
I think she wore more make up than Khloe Kardashian.
As she was putting down the three shoe boxes, she said : “all this make up is melting off my face and my push up bra is digging into my skin”.
I asked her, why do you wear so much make-up, if it bothers you and she told me that she doesn’t have a choice, because she works on commission and makes more sales when dealing with male customers.
@Sam Yes for most women it is our choice. But ask yourself this. Could it be that women are also conditioned to assume that every time a woman dress in a certain way they must have been forced to do so, or they are trying to appeal to the male gaze. Have we been conditioned to think like that. From these two posts about Jen, it seems we have.
@Sam I work for tips and NEVER wear makeup. I get just as much of not more than my co-workers who do.
“But ask yourself this. Could it be that women are also conditioned to assume that every time a woman dress in a certain way they must have been forced to do so, or they are trying to appeal to the male gaze. Have we been conditioned to think like that…”
Definitely. It’s no coincidence that alongside rape culture where modesty in dress is what women and girls are expected to use to signal sexual unavailability, and female purity is idealized, wearing a revealing outfit is automatically seen as victimization and a plea for male approval. Plus there’s the fact that as women, we’re socialized to believe that we’re entitled to treat women who are less modest than us however we want in our quest to distance ourselves from them. We’re even taught that our disdain, disrespect, and contempt for women less modest then us makes us more virtuous and respectable. That’s playing out perfectly in this comment section and elsewhere. Add all these factors up, and things definitely aren’t as black and white as some of the sex-negative feminists here want you to believe.
She’s probably upset that the conversation isn’t about how gorgeous she looks, cause she does, and everyone likes a compliment, and she deserves one here. Maybe she feels like if no one is saying how damn pretty she is, or how incredibly well that amazing dress fits her amazing body, etc., then why did she bother?
Actually, I would argue that was the reason some media outlets ran with the “story” to begin with- Lawrence looks fantastic, everyone was talking about how gorgeous she looks…one comment on social media by Helen Lewis catches on, then others follow…tabloids turn it into a distraction so that the focus will be on this silliness and NOT how fabulous she looks.
Lawrence is promoting a film, and a rival studio publicist would like nothing more than to take focus away from Lawrence looking gorgeous/Red Sparrow and instead focus on this nonsense. The thing is, it still won’t work because all the comments I see online are STILL about how hot Lawrence looks and are followed by oh, hey I want to see Red Sparrow! Lol…screwed up in reverse!
lol, girl…She’s reaching around the world with this. But then again were people nasty about it? I thought her dress choice was funny and nonsensical (Even more so now that I see ALL the men appropriately dressed for the weather next to her). All this for a pretty generic black dress?! She tried, I guess.
I wouldn’t say that people were nasty, but the reaction was a bit extreme IMO. I think a commenter above got it right when she said that two things can be true: Jen could be using her agency to make a decision FOR HERSELF and the broader point that women are often subject to entirely different pressures/requirements in terms of their appearance can also be acknowledged.
I have to say that I’m surprised this has become such a huge deal and Jen probably made it bigger than it should have been by addressing it….
…but maybe she just felt powerless trying to battle people’s assumptions and this was her way of exerting some control over the situation.
Honestly, it must suck being famous sometimes. Personally, I would collapse under the unending public scrutiny.
Honestly, it is just cold here. People went “Something’s off, no sane person would do this. Who forced her???” and it got out of hand from there.
Kitten, you couldn’t pay me all the money in the world to be famous! LOL I would be a gossip writers dreams come true. I made the worst dating choices, fashion choices(I use fashion very loosely here), and I did dumb crap. Ha! I mean, could you imagine not being able to go to the grocery store or garden center without being found out and hounded/videoed/photographed?!?! I would die with anxiety. Being a celeb in the years of the iPhone and social media is a totally different beast than 20 years ago.
@HeyThere!
Totally. I wore a f*cking PINK. PLAYBOY. T-SHIRT. when I was 21.
*facepalm*
And yes, I would absolutely wilt from the lack of privacy.
Omg, Kitten…..I owned a white baby doll T shirt that had a black sparkley PlayBoy Bunny on it…..WTF was I thinking?!?! Lol ****shame washes over me****
I was kind of a emo/hipster/unicorn hair wearing 90’s person before it was ‘cool’. I also looked like a walking glam disco ball at least once a week. I will tip my hat to my parents for allowing me to express myself freely in jr high/high school.
Among other things, people were literally using the sex crimes that have been exposed as justification for why they wanted her to cover up and accusing her of not supporting #MeToo by showing so much skin.
I missed that part of the larger discussion. That is obviously problematic for a multitude of reasons that need not be explained. Sigh.
Oh, I didn’t know that. I’ll cut her some slack then. I didn’t realize other people turned her dress choice into more than it just being odd for the weather.
Okay … good for her for making the choice to freeze? I guess? Was anybody really attacking her? My first thought was “GIRL! I can barely go outside without leather gloves!” It really is cold in the middle of Europe right now. Five minutes outside in this dress seems horrifying. But okay. If this is what she wants to do for fashion, that’s her choice.
My question is how in hell, after the past five months, are we even supposed to know who in Hollywood makes any choices at all and where does the pressure, direct or indirect, come into play? Right now we question everything and that’s good. Sometimes that means we go too far but let us know, it’s okay. If a woman is showing up in a revealing dress in freezing temperatures while the guys are bundled up, that is not normal to most of us. So when people assume stuff, just let us know that you chose to look crazy. Without calling US sexist and anti-feminist. And btw, NO man would do this.
I would like to say “even if you were paying me 1 million dollars to wear that in that cold I wouldn’t” but then I would also appear a hypocrite because money is a lot of incentive to do that. I have seen teenagers with barely a short dress on in the UK winter ages ago, with the snow on the pavements… and they were not paid a penny to do that.
I would have had 16 layers minimum but whatever floats her boat lol
It’s great that she chose to wear that particular dress, but I wonder what would happen if she decided to do the rest of the promotional tour wearing jeans and a t-shirt. What are the chances she would be told that she has to dress up? She has some power and it would be an interesting experiment to find out just how much control she has over these decisions.
OK but seriously, as a fellow-hooded-lidder can we talk about how amazing this smoky eye is?
It’s the bomb. I love it. I wish I could replicate it.
Fabulous.
Jennifer has a right to defend her choice, but calling the criticism sexist and antifeminist is overboard. She fails to understand the true issue here, which is that fashion requires women to risk comfort/illness but never asks that of men. The fact the men would never even.contemplate freezing for style is a double standard. And, Jennifer, unless she has weather appropriate options she turned down (unlikely) really had no choice at all.
yeah her that dress like the guys were all comfortable says everything wrong about the gender dynamics
OK but seriously, as a fellow-hooded-lidder can we talk about how amazing this smoky eye is?
I don’t know….it’s very 2001. Are we bringing this look back?
I hope not I spent lots of time perfecting that look in the early 2000’s,and I’m glad for the extra time I save not doing this look these days!
This whole look is dated. It is too soon to do the 2000s.
I love the makeup. My eyes are deep set and I have a pronounced lid but I’m curious how it would look on me
What was the French awards show that required the women attendees (actresseses, directors and producers) to wear heels? I fractured three vertebrae and had to have one replaced with a titanium cage five years agi, couldn’t wear heels for three years after that. I bet they wouldn’t have allowed me in.,
It was Cannes
I rolled my eyes at her response. It’s not just her though, people are getting utterly ridiculous in how they use feminism as shields against any and all criticism. Every choice a woman makes isn’t an exercise in feminism just because a woman made it. That’s intellectually lazy.
Then you have people using feminist buzzwords at any given moment without thought. Emily Ratajkowski and Kim Kardashian often put up risqué photos on Instagram and they say it’s because they feel “empowered” by their bodies. No. It’s because you thought you looked great and think others should see too. No judgement, but let’s not make everything deeper than it is. The other day someone was attempting to say cosmetic plastic surgery was a form of “self love” and “self care.” WHAT?!
She never said that feminism means that any choice a woman makes is feminism though. Those are the words that tend to get put women’s mouths whenever they don’t passively accept the dominant messages about female modesty.
Eh…generally-speaking, I don’t disagree with you but in this particular case, the issue wasn’t modesty so much as equality and well, common sense. People weren’t shaming her for wearing a “provocative” (I say, boring) dress, they were questioning the societal expectations of men vs women and wondering why a woman *may* feel pressured to wear a dress in freezing cold weather while her male coworkers are granted the comfort of coats and proper outdoor attire.
Again, I believe that this was her choice, but I remain unconvinced that we can separate out her personal choice from the larger pressures that women face in a patriarchal society. A lot of this sh*t is subconscious–it’s social conditioning–and as such, it is often internalized and left unexamined within a feminist framework.
So while I agree with your statement, I don’t think it’s applicable here….
ETA: scrolling through the comments here, I can see what you say about “modesty”. Sigh.
Did people make similar comments on yesterday’s thread? I missed it I guess.
@Kitten: Not just here. People were using Me Too and Times Up as reasons for why she shouldn’t be dressing like that, in addition to calling her a brainwashed victim for daring to choose anything for herself other than modesty. Then when she defended herself, people immediately started calling her names for that.
Yikes. Yeah that’s not ok.
It seems like there are two debates that are converging here: 1) the examination of societal expectations of men vs women and
2) women’s agency and autonomy and the predictable assumption that women only dress in a sexy manner because they are forced to.
I assume that the reason Jen wore the dress is threefold: firstly, this is her job–she has an endorsement deal with Dior that she needs to uphold. Second, she genuinely felt sexy and loved showing off the dress. I mean, she doesn’t look uncomfortable to me in the photos–she looks like she’s really enjoying her entire look and is happy to show it off which is…normal.
I still enjoy getting dressed up and looking sexy from time-to-time and I do it because it makes me feel good and it’s fun, not because any dude wants me to (my BF prefers me in sweats and no makeup). I imagine that Jen and I are not the only ones.
And finally, THIRD: I do think that women are often pressured into wearing clothes that focus on aesthetics rather than comfort and practicality. For every woman like Jen who is comfortable with nudity (see the recent post about her nude scenes) there is an actress like Andie McDowell, who has repeatedly discussed the pressure women deal with in Hollywood, in terms of getting nude on-screen as well as the pressure to dress/look a certain way.
I think all facets of the discussion are interesting and worthy of examination. but people need to leave the moral judgments and slut-shaming out of it FFS.
@Kitten: why would she wear a Versace dress to uphold her Dior deal?
@ Bridget 🙂
I should have known that dress is Versace–very late ’90s. Bleh.
Anyway, she presumably had the dress loaned or comped to her for a plug. You want the beautiful designer dress? It’s yours, just make sure it gets photographed.
And the fact that it’s Versace and not Dior actually furthers Jennifer’s point that this was a dress SHE chose and not something she was in any way obligated to wear.
*shrugs*
I’m sure she did use it, but I would be surprised if there was any deal in place. They start at high profile as Jennifer Lawrence is a GET for a design house. Whatever she wears is extensively featured. She’s in the powerful position, and doesn’t need to have any deal in place for something to be photographed. I wouldn’t say that she was forced by any means to wear her dress, but I do want to point out that fashion, and high-end styling, is a lot more than simply choosing a single dress. For a press tour such as she’s on she’s using her fashion to make a statement. It’s just that they miss calculated on this one, especially with the contrast between what she’s wearing and what the guys are wearing. I also wonder if she would be able to wear this dress for any of the nighttime events and premieres though, considering her relationship with the Dior. This may be her only opportunity to wear a Versace.
However, it’s a photo call. Of course she was photographed. I wouldn’t say it was evidence of any sort of deal.
Meh. I think everything you said is irrelevant to the larger point. Whether it was a deal (and I believe that it was) or not doesn’t change the fact that she clearly stated it was her choice to wear the dress and her choice to not wear a coat. That implies that she felt confident and comfortable enough to wear it outside in the cold for the ten minutes or however long it took to get the pics.
Her choice–not an inherently feminist one but certainly not an inherently ANTI-feminist one either–just merely a personal choice.
*shrugs*
This seems like a stunt to gain attention for her film. She knew media outlets would comment on the lack of layers in comparison to the men she posed with. I think she uses that as a podium to call ‘sexist!’ and develop her public persona.
Is anybody going to talk about the film?…or just her outfits promoting it…just sayin’…
Jennifer is right. Women are free to choose what to wear. I read so many articles where they practically insinuated that she had been forced to dress like that, as if she was a child. No, she is an adult woman who makes her decisions.
+1000. I’m actually surprised that people are surprised by her not being ok with it. Do people really think women are going to have more patience for slut-shaming and the (selective) erasure of female agency right now?
my theory is she was out all night getting hammered and didn’t have time to change before the scheduled obligation. . .
It’s Lawrence and it’s totally plausible
Acting like she has no agency is sexist. For some reason people are always doing that with Lawrence, despite her making it clear again and again that she knows her power in Hollywood and has no qualms about using it.
Look at all the outraged articles. They all suggest if not outright claim that she was pressured to dress like that, that as a woman she had no choice, that she couldn’t possibly have made her own decisions about her own wardrobe…it is sexist.
Why is her stylistic choice being treated like the problem anyway? She looks amazing and she’s dressing on theme for a spy movie. The guys look rumpled and mismatched and like they accidentally wandered into a photocall. Why isn’t the onus on them to dress better at work events? Why is Lawrence, the star of the film, meant to align herself with their uninspired wardrobe choices rather than vice versa?
Bravo!. Agreed.
Well good for you Jen! And watch out for cold/flu/pneumonia… vitamin c and lots of tea.
Now lets talk about Matthias Schoenaerts and how hot he is!
Yes that man…. Hubba hubba. I discovered him in Far from the Madding Crowd and then I saw him in that movie with Diane Kruger. He can play masculine without it being toxic. I am so watching this movie and I can’t blame Jlaw if she trying to catch his eye.
I’ve never studied feminism academically but I do know that I disagree with a certain generation of it. This school of thought that uses “my choice” statements to end discussion. Are choices ever made in a vacuum? If you are inundated with messages that place your value on your sex appeal is it not more likely that you will trade your confort to look sexy? Isnt it interesting that none of the guys thought he would rather wear that cute muscle shirt to show off his guns than five layers of clothing? Cant we also have a conversation about the male gaze and how the women who do this never show up in some artsy Vivian Westwood/HBC look. Its always skin baring in a Jessica Rabbit way.
I actually like Jlaw and I’m not picking on her. I picking on this messed up school of feminism that lacks any kind of curiousity. Its like rape fantasies and how people demand that we not interrogate what causes women to crave this treatment because “my choice”.
“Are choices ever made in a vacuum? ” Ding ding ding! Some feminists really dont want to think about their own behaviour and how it contributes or at least is deeply influenced by our society.
WORD!
Choice feminism is a cancer.
I’ll take the ‘Choices aren’t made in a vacuum’ argument seriously only when it starts getting used against (Western, non-Muslim) women who make more conservative choices about clothing and sexuality just as frequently and aggressively as it’s used against women who make choices that are considered ‘slutty.’ For now, it almost exclusively gets used against certain ‘Kinds of Girls’.
For funsies, look at Jennifer Lawrence’s long dress and black flat shoes on Schumer’s IG (they are in the Amy Schumer wedding post) and check the comment section. I don’t see anyone lecturing or concern-trolling her about wearing a modest outfit.
Uhhhhh have you ever seen the criticism against the duggar women. Because that’s exactly what people have said about how they are forced to dressed modest to avoid temptation.
I didn’t get comments yesterday by posters saying the double standard, how actresses are expected to dress like this. No, not for this kind of daytime photo call. She is the one who chose to overdress with boobs and legs showing for days as much skin showing as possible. She was way overdressed, more like for a red carpet awards show. Making her some victim of the film world compared to men and how they dress was overkill. No one expected her to dress to that extreme for that daytime event in that kind of weather. She chose to. I’m glad she owned it.
I disagree. We’ve seen countless photos where the actress is wearing a dress and looking awesome and the actors can just show up in whatever. I don’t doubt that Jennifer liked the dress and chose it, but there’s an expectation that women are packaged a different way than men.
I’m talking about the extreme to which she is dressed, not that she was dressed nicer than them. I acknowledge that happens.
And don’t we perpetuate it also? All we do is comment on what women wear on red carpets and critique and couldn’t care less about the men. My point was no one made Jennifer dress like a Liz Hurley sexpot clone for this particular daytime, freezing outing. It was way overdone for the occasion, but it was her choice. I don’t think any actress would have felt the need to wear a very sexy, provocative gown to a daytime, freezing photocall. They would have dressed nicer than what the men were wearing for sure.
It’s what she wanted to wear.
Is it bad that we discuss fashion though? I really agree with Lainey’s take that it is a huge advantage for women.
Fashion can be used for good, but is wearing Liz Hurley’s old dress really the vehicle for social change? I don’t think anyone seriously though that Jlaw was ordered to wear that dress. It is just interesting that in the group photo we have the sole woman dressed to the nines and the guys looking like schlubs. I think questioning how that scenario happened is a valid discussion and forces everyone to examine societal expectations for both genders.
I think she had an implicit oral contract with Versace to make sure the dress got photographed.
I think the guys probably didn’t have any such oral contract.
Ultimately, I think people care more about women’s fashion. I also think she’s more famous than the other guys in the photograph. I have no idea who those other guys are, except for Jeremy Irons. Is one of them Sam Worthington? Beats me!
That was the first and only thing that I noticed when I saw them. This was not a daytime look. This is a nighttime premiere look.
Agree – she looks completely ridiculous in an evening gown during the day. If it was at night, I would give her a pass – but she’s standing next to a guy wearing an untucked denim shirt (ie very casual day attire). I think she looks silly and it’s not about feminism, it’s about to wear for the occasion.
And on the same token, I’d criticize the men for wearing khakis for a formal event.
Sheesh. Didn’t their grandmas teach them anything??
I believe her when she says this was her choice but at the same time can you imagine a photo call like this where the lead actress was wearing khaki pants and an overcoat? This is not the first time something like this has happened.
Yes. Actresses often wear semi-casual wear, overcoats, layers etc. to photocalls. Even at the most glam photocalls like at Cannes it’s rare for an actress to wear an actual gown.
Lawrence herself most often wears jeans or plain pants and a basic top and blazer to photocalls. She’s just choosing to dress on theme for this particular press tour.
Wait, she’s telling others about feminism? She’s the me-only feminist. She stood up for David O’ Russell, totally defending the dude who harassed Amy Adams so badly that Christian Bale had to step in to help. Christian “I eat set workers for breakfast” Bale! I also have a choice. A choice not to care about Jennifer Lawrence’s clothing or her new movie. Nope on that Russian accent…and I even liked Atomic Blonde. But this one is a nope.
Lol-I get the feeling there are more plants in here than in a California hot house…
What? Sorry, but not everyone is a super fan. Also, I live in CA. Hot houses are rare–the sun shines almost ever day here.
I am really annoyed how small the acceptable range of clothing for women is becoming now.
Too revealing is anti feminism and pandering to the male gaze, to covered up, e.g. with a headscarf is a symbol of oppression, a t-shirt on the beach on a lager woman is succumbing to the pressure of the patriarchy to conform to a certain ideal. A tiny bikini is antifeminism as well.
How about not policing womens clothing choices anymore?
+infinity.
She must realise she looks stupid in these photos and is reaching. Put the girls away, and if it’s any good let the movie speak for itself.
It’s not. Hence all this stunting.
You’ve seen the film??- reviews right now are decent to very good and Lawrence is receiving terrific reviews, so…I get the feeling you don’t really know what you’re talking about
Reviews are mixed, let’s be real. RT in the 60s and Metacritic numbers in the 50s is not decent to very good.
Doesn’t mean the film won’t make money or she’s not good in it though.
That accent is so bad it could become a meme. lol
Whew it is painful.
People should wear the kind of clothing that they want to wear – so if that dress was her choice and not a demand then that’s cool. However her speech about the whole issue is riddiculous – she doesn’t love fashion, she proved it many times in various interviews and she is forced to wear certain Dior dresses – too bad, because she has beautiful body and Dior just makes her look very unflaterring.
Nevertheless, I agree that this is a part of a bigger problem, because many times actresses are criticized about their wardrobe choices but men are not.
All I got from the pic of the 5 of them was a “one of these things is not like the other” vibe. The men are in country casual and she is in an Oscar gown. Made my teeth itch. Just seemed silly.
This is what I was saying yesterday. I didn’t think it was this deep issue involving feminism, sexism, etc. Like she looks great and can wear whatever she wants, but she looks like she’s headed out on the town (at night) and her coworkers look like they’re at a daytime event. There’s no coordination and it looks off.
Goodness, she has clearly stated that she and she alone decided to dress up the way she did. If she freezes because she wore a dress that she thought would make her look good( like most women love to do) why can’t others just leave her alone to get on with it? We all know high heels mess up your feet but does it stop the majority of women wearing them?
Christ, this judgemental bullshit on women’s attire is getting beyond ridiculous.
“We all know high heels mess up your feet but does it stop the majority of women wearing them?”
It stops this woman right here and many women I know, too. There’s a reason why flats remain perpetually fashionable and in-season…
Omg I love Matthias Schoenaerts too! Can we have more photos of HIM??
i would sell my left arm to be in a man sandwich with Matthias Schoenaerts and Joel Eggerton.
Yaaaaas!
I’m also wondering why she feel the need to respond. This wasn’t a huge story, this could have died down in two days. To me it kind of feel like she’s panicking a bit. Red Sparrow is getting mediocre to decent review and I expect a lot of reaction from feminists about how the director handled the sex and violence in the movie. Moreover the movie isn’t going to set the box office on fire, which could have been a good thing for her. So frankly this isn’t the first photo call she’s done in her carrer and yet we never saw her so overdressed. It’s kind look like of way of generating an headline. I can’t imagine that she and her team didn’t think of these reactions before choosing this outfit.
This story was huge. It was everywhere since two days.
Like many women, her tolerance for the usual BS thrown at women is probably lower than usual right now.
How dare you! JLaw is not like all the other girls, don’t cha know! She LOVES being cool, I mean cold, and she loves the unequal societal standards that make women trophies but men artists. She got on AMAZINGLY with Harvey Weinstein. He was like a father to her! And David O’Russell! She LOVED his sense of humor and he’s her soulmate. Anne Hathaway and Amy Adams were just being FEMININE BABIES when they said he was emotionally abusive and psychotic. The videos of him abusing Lily Tomlin are just FAKE NEWS. JLaw is sick of FAKE FEMINISTS with their FAKE NEWS about stuff like patriarchy and institutionalized sexism. She CHOSE stuff and that makes it okay!
Ugh. You remind me well how much I can’t stand this creepy woman.
Creepy???-huh?
I think she looks fabulous in the dress,and if she wanted to wear it fine.The guys are in trendy casual dress,and she looks out of place.What would have been wrong with a beautiful pair of wide leg trousers,heeled boots,a cashmere sweater and a gorgeous scarf?Her choice for sure,but she looks like she didn’t get the memo to wear dress casual.Oh well…
You should wear clothes appropriate for the event she looks ridiculous… she could have worn the dress later
We only see other guys there though. Guys always wear slacks. She might be overdressed, but, eh, you see that in real life all the time. I do think the dress goes with the movie, judging by the trailer. Actresses usually dress in keeping with their movie’s theme, so in this instance I guess I didn’t even think twice about what she was wearing. Charlize Theron usually wears some strange see-through outfit with her underpants showing when she has a sexy movie to promote.
Showing up overdressed to an event has nothing to do with feminism.
Overdressed and yet underdressed at the same time.
But if she wants to catch a cold, that’s her right.
I think she did genuinely choose to be cold. She wants her movie to do well, and that dress probably goes with the movie theme. If she did feel pressured to show the dress, I think that was for business reasons — the dress goes with the movie.
She probably would have looked cool in a jean jacket though.
Posing next to the guys in their jeans and jackets makes her look like a car model at an automotive convention. Dress is fine. She still reminds me of someone’s daughter raiding mommy’s wardrobe to play dress-up for a tea party with stuffed animals lol.
The thing that is ridiculous is her. She goes out of her way to be unlikeable and she succeeds with me. She just looks silly. That’s it. She makes the photo look stupid. That’s all. It’s not sexist, she’s just a moronic creep.
She’s playing a sexy Russian spy, right? I think that was part of why she’s in a slinky dress. I’ve froze my butt for the sake of fashion, just like I’ve worn sky high heels that kill my feet because I love how amazing I look in them. Not all the time, but for special occasions. And being offered that Versace dress to wear seems like a special occasion.
That being said, she looked a bit out of place with the bundled up guys, but I’m guessing that was an afterthought and not expected to draw such controversy.
Yeah, I think she’s dressed like that to keep with the theme.
Charlize Theron kept wearing Calvin Klein bras to promote Atomic Blonde. Maybe that influenced how I saw these photos with Lawrence.
If she had played a heart surgeon, I’d probably look at the photos differently.
In keeping with the theme, that dress would have looked killer with a really fabulous (faux) fur wrap or coat. No self-respecting Russian femme fatale would go out in freezing weather without the proper outerwear.
Yes!!!
It’s not Jennifer’s fault: she’s just the talent. But someone in more of a styling or marketing role should have realized she would look like a car model, not a (presumably bright) femme fatale.
She would have looked more in character with a jacket from one of her costars around her shoulders.
My decidedly non pro nor anti feminist opinion is that she looks silly being ridiculously overdressed for this event just like any other women dressed in an evening gown where the men look like they just came from hiking and camping.
She’s really starting to get annoying and the movie looks like crap.
Lol-thank you for your two cents…
I think she was saying the argument against her was not feminist, not that her choice itself was feminist (even though she made a choice).
Thank you for the common sense! It’s like people are being willfully ignorant just because they don’t like the fact that she spoke up for herself. Shame on her for not shutting up and taking it!
Yes, thank you!-voice of reason…
I don’t care enough about this whole “controversy” to delve too much into how I feel about it, mostly because I feel “meh”. But I wanted to put it out here that I think a lot of people conflate anti-feminist with unfeminist. Unless you are talking about a right winger who is specifically antifeminist, many times, what we call antifemininst is really unfeminist. And how that changes things is that, pretty much all feminists do or say something that is unfeminist from time to time.
I mean, none of us is perfect.
Hm. The only criticism I’ve read has been of the guys for dressing down, while she is dressed to nines.
Setting aside the picture’s obvious overtones, when 4 out of 5 people of in a photo are dressed down in warm, casual clothing while the 5th is dressed up in formal, skin- baring attire, the visual contrast is bizarre. If this photo were a Lands End ad featuring 4 bundled up, casually dressed women with a shirtless, bow-tied, hunky guy in low-slung, tight tux pants (or Jennifer Lawrence in a skin-baring Versace dress), some people like me would think it looked like an attention-getting stunt or — at best — odd and not very well thought out or executed. Nothing personal toward the shirtless, hunky guy or Jennifer Lawrence.
I don’t think I like her tone. I kid….hey if she wants to freeze her bum off for fashion, that is totally her choice. The contrast between the way she was dressed and the way the others were dressed threw me off. But I didn’t realize it had become a big deal.
If you “love fashion” why don’t you know this is not a day time look? I think Anna Wintour is more offended than you are.
I think she over reacted a little. Lol. I mean, it did look silly when everyone else is bundled up. It’s not as big of a deal as she’s making it. All she had to do really, based on the comments I saw and the one I wrote was say: ‘thank you for being worried I was being ‘sold’ and cold while the guys were wearing the 4 layers of gap/old navy winter trends. I was only outside for a few minutes. I’m fine, thanks.’
As I said yesterday, I still think it looks like she was going to a different event. Almost as if these guys are fans and saw her out at a party and wanted a pic. LOL *shrugs shoulders*
That would’ve been the ideal response, but no! Not JLaw! She had to use feminism as a shield because of course. She has to make a big deal about everything concerning her. Give me a fucking break. *face palm*
She said what others were arguing wasn’t feminism. She didn’t say what she was saying was feminist.
There are an inordinate amount of articles from mainstream media written about how she was suffering in the cold as a woman.
Yep. She should have just laughed it off with something like “I ain’t feeling the cold because I look so hot”. Bam. Mike drop.
But this is ridiculous and now she’s really made an ass of herself. I think she’s a bit too conceited, fame must have gotten to her.
I’d stand in the snow in that dress, too. She looked amazing.
CEE. She does look great. I don’t think that fact is in question. Lol
In order to keep the dress, she might have had to make sure the dress got photographed. I doubt she paid for the dress (I wouldn’t if someone was offering something that expensive to me for free). I guess you could argue she could have offered to have another dress photographed, but maybe she really did like this one. We’re not all going to have the same taste. Maybe she wants to sell the dress to Liz Hurley when she’s done (I know that’s what I would do).
I always assumed the dresses people wore were on loan from fashion houses?! You mean they gets to keep them?
Maybe they are loaned. Now that I think about it, I’m not sure. I might have erred in assuming she gets to keep the dress.
I just figured she’d have to make sure the dress gets photographed no matter what, if she wanted to wear it. I feel this situation is a little different than a manager requesting that a waitress dress sexy. There’s an implicit contract involved between actresses and these fashion houses.
I’d be shocked if she actually paid for that dress though. Rich actors in general seem kind of cheap when it comes to that kind of thing. The only time I can recall someone actually buying a dress was Hayden Panetierre. She wanted something made by Tom Ford so badly, she decided to pay for it herself and bought it off-the rack. Then people mocked her for having the audacity to buy the dress, as if she wasn’t worthy enough of getting the dress handed to her for free. People were actually laughing at her for buying the dress. And I thought we were living in bizarro world.
It’s kind of sad to me that women almost always have to look like Barbie dolls.
Regardless, if it is reasonable or not.
Women are still treated like pieces of meat and we often go along with it.
“My” choice to be cold, uncomfortable in impractical shoes, sure. The fact she doesn’t even realize it means patriarchy did its job well in conditioning her to those gender norms.
It reminds me of this article talking about how women’s baseline is usually being OK with pain, even to sexually satisfy a partner when we’re in pain.
You’re right. It’s the same thing with burkas and women saying it’s their choice to wear them.
This is why Hollywood elites are considered out of touch. The dress in the cold with the men dressed as they are looks ridiculous and if a female in the “real world” wore this they would be considered crazy. I always tell my daughter “dress for the occasion” This is out of touch with reality. I get she liked the dress but wear it to the right occasion. And considering that females in Hollywood have stood up and said they are made to wear certain things and act certain ways because they were pressured to do so it doesn’t ring true when she states this was her own choice. Because anyone with a sound mind would not wear for this occasion. She looks completely out of touch. I agree that you can wear what you want when you want. But…….in the world we live expect criticism. Men get it to. It would be like one of the men out there in shorts and a sleeveless t – they would get criticized.
Meh. All arguments aside, I think this pic proves who has a fashion contract and who doesn’t.
I agree. If I didn’t know she was wearing a Versace before, I certainly do now!
Maybe she feels what she wears is a smaller issue in comparison to the bigger issues going on in Hollywood right now. There is a scale and she probably feels what she wears in the cold goes lower down on the scale. I don’t disagree that in general she is under pressure to look a certain way (slim, toned and fit). However, considering what else is going on in Hollywood right now, perhaps she doesn’t want to detract focus from that. She did say the following: “It’s creating silly distractions from real issues.” Maybe she genuinely doesn’t want sympathy or pity when other women in Hollywood, she feels, might be suffering from bigger problems. Maybe she feels the concern for her might even be kind of fake, if it’s distracting from the bigger issues at play.
I think the controversy is ridiculous and I agree with JL. I understand the feminist movement, after millennia of horrendous oppression and abuse against women, is bound to overreact in its efforts to reach equality, but in this case JL is a grown woman and I think we should allow her to own her agency and make her own choices however silly or superficial they may seem. (English is not my first language, apologies if that doesn’t make sense.)
She looks fantastic! But one of the biggest fashion rules and dressing right for the occasion; on that note, I’d say she missed the mark. Also, where is Charlotte Rampling? I’m pretty much only interested in this movie because of her, Joel, and Matthias.
Wow indeed.
She can and should wear what she wants. Her body, her choices.
I am so tired of all the controversy over some actor and what they wear.
At least she didn’t pee on a sacred artifact or drunk puke , scratch her ass in public or sing on a plane. 😉 , again.
Didn’t Jennifer just say she was going to butter up Timothee Chalamet like a pig for slaughter? Yet she’s mad and thinks it’s sexist that people pointed out it’s too cold to wear an evening gown on the waterfront in the winter?
Here’s where I actually agree with her:
Why frame the argument as though the MEN at the photoshoot are the ones who are setting the tone for dress?
She’s the biggest star there. She’s the star of the movie. She’s the one pulling out the stops to look glamorous and push the femme fatale character in service of the film. She’s the one willingly wearing a slinky dress to sell her product. She’s doing it because she wants to and because she enjoys doing it and because she’s passionate about her job.
Maybe the problem the problem is that we shift the responsibility of “appropriate” more often onto women instead of questioning why men are allowed to not pick up the slack.
I like the dress, but I wonder why she wore it to a photocall instead of a premiere.
I don’t see people calling out Jen on this either, more like they were pointing out societal expectations on women vs men.
Yup I agree with Jennifer.
Being able to choose who you want to be – sexy or prudent, classic or modern, trendy or minimalist – IS feminism. Being able to choose to dress sexy because it makes you feel good, because you’re proud of your body, because it’s not up to anyone to tell you to cover up or not, IS feminism. Sexy/body baring/skin is NOT anti-feminist and I’m getting real grumpy with people implying it is.
I think she looked great. Fashion should be fun, and it should be shown off.
Even at the risk of contracting the flu/pneumonia? I get it when she claims it was her choice, I believe her. But is it really worth putting your health on the line in the name of fashion? Just my opinion I guess.
I’ve foregone coats in the name of fashion plenty of times in my 37-year life, whether it be for dances, cosplay events, or what have you, and I get sick maybe twice a year if that. *shrug* Like she said in her post she was outside maybe five minutes. Humans are more resilient than that.
Five minutes in the cold is not going to give you flu/pneumonia. Those are diseases – you have to be exposed to the pathogen, not the brief cold. Long term exposure to extreme weather may depress your immune system, but not to the extent of making you ill. We see higher rates of illness in the winter because of how the American school system runs (Fall to Spring) and because more people are indoors, exposed to one another.
I think it’s fair to examine the expectations of men versus women when it comes to appearance. I do, however, understand why she lost her temper her because it is so VERY exhausting to constantly have your choices and agency questioned as a woman, and I imagine it’s only magnified at her level of fame.
I’m glad it was her choice and she has the right to look however the hell she wants to.
But following that line of thought people also have a right to comment on that very public choice that she put out there. She just admitted that she chose that dress for a photo call no less because she wanted to show off. Well girl you better be ready for people to voice their opinions on your looks then.
She’s just pissed that she isn’t getting all praises like she hoped she would get. I’m sure she wouldn’t have made a comment if all the comments were “oh she looks amazing, she looks sexy”. That would’ve been okay no doubt. But comments like “she looks ridiculous especially compared to the sensibly dressed people around here” are somehow insulting to her.
Grow a pair Jen. If you can’t take a few negative comments about your choice of outfit then what the hell are you doing making photo calls?
To sum up, it was her choice but it was a STUPID choice and we have the right to say so.
She didn’t say people had to shut up though. This is her response to other people’s comments, who offered them first. She responded assertively. People will respond back again in reply most likely, but I doubt she’s going to tell people to shut up. With social media, it’s easier now for a celebrity to respond back if they want to.
To be honest, I don’t think she wants praise. I think she simply wants her movie to do well. The movie is riding on her name. If the movie fails, the responsibility is going to fall on her shoulders, not the men’s. Unlike Emily Ratjakakowski, she has an actual responsibility to create box-office results and bring in money.
When Liz Hurley wore the safety pin dress, people thought she was fierce, provocative and mischievous. She looked happy and confident. J Law looks unhappy and uncomfortable in this photo. She probably thought she was sexy but most people interpreted that look on her face as sheer discomfort. I think she’s a bit vulgar because there is a gap in her education. It is manifesting fully now. She has done something silly, people have pointed it out, and she has responded like a petulant teenager because she lacks gumption.
Exactly! Liz Hurley wore that safety pin dress and rocked it. JLaw’s dress is wearing her, not the other way around.
I can’t get my head around black tie at a photo call…Liz wore it to the most prestigious awards ceremony in the industry.
According to this article she wore it to the premiere of Four Weddings and. a Funeral:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/12118237/Liz-Hurley-if-I-hadnt-worn-THAT-dress-I-might-have-been-a-worthy-actress.html
Why does she look so miserable? Really it looks like she was forced to wear it, though I believe her when she says it was her choice…but damn girl SMILE ! Or did the “smiley” pics not make the media rounds?
It’s not about gender or feminism. She 100% looked stunning but she also looked ridiculous because she went black tie to a photo call! I
Look at her face in the group photo…
Well, I think she looks fantastic and sexy. She’s been looking really good these days – clothes, hair.
I often wonder about female celebrities being cold; and I’ve commented on it in the past. I don’t know how they do it, because I would be freezing. But, it’s just me putting myself in that situation…it’s not a judgement on them…and it’s certainly no judgement or shade on her.
[*Go Jennifer!*]
I actually agree with her. Feminism is about choice. She loves fashion and this dress in particular and chose to show it off and not cover it up with a coat. And it was also her choice to take on that Dior contract for which she no doubt makes tons of money. I’d bet she gets some say in what they put her in too.
What a stupid speech.
She can wear what she likes. We can’t judge whether she chose to wear it herself or not but even if not she’s making a business decision.
Also here to say: My My Matthias Schoenaerts.
Living in the frozen north, I cannot tell you how many wedding shoots I have seen in the cold, cold, snowy wilderness. And the brides (most of the time) brave the cold to show their beloved dress! At least in some of the pics. And I always thing “brrrr…brave girl! These pics are stunning!” If I looked that good in a Versace gown, I would be outside right now (at -15C) taking pics! Why do people have to read anything else into this?
If I had that body, to put in that dress…damn skippy I’d wear it and forget about covering it up with a coat. Her makeup is the best I’ve seen her look in a long time, too. Maybe she’s overdressed and maybe she gives zero bothers. I think what really chaps peoples’ buns is that she knows she look good here… and the world loves to rip on confident women.