Dear Scarlett Johansson,
You are one talented and beautiful girl. There are not many women who could simultaneously capture the hearts of both Woody Allen and Justin Timberlake. And by all accounts you seem smart and savvy to boot. Plus you manage to keep your panties on and out of rehab. But I am not writing you today to discuss your impressive IMDb profile. I am concerned about your self image. Anyone who reads the press about you knows there is one constant in every article — your supposed chub. You are often highlighted as “healthy” (Hollywood code for “likes her ice cream”), “curvy”, “voluptuous”, and the worst of all insults a “regular, normal-sized girl.”
Granted, most of us would love to have any of those descriptions attached to us. So what’s my problem? You’re not! I’m sure you are healthy in a webMD sense but certainly not in the way that reporters mean it. You partly earn that curvy label by your impressive chest. But I feel compelled to inform you that you are not a “regular girl.” You may not be a size 2. Although if you shopped at The Gap instead Givenchy, like a “normal girl” I’m sure you’d wear a size 0 with ease. But even in designer sizes I’m willing to bet you’d don’t exceed a size 4. Sweetie, “normal” in the United States is a size 14.
The sad part is that all of this seems to have sunk into your beautiful head as you often use the same misguided lexicon to describe yourself. “I don’t need to be skinny to be sexy,” you parrot dutifully. You’re right, of course. You don’t need to be skinny to be sexy — you exude sex appeal like Axe body spray exudes smarminess. But girlfriend, you are skinny. Big boobs do not make you fat.
Queen Latifah is plus-sized and proud of it. Jennifer Hudson is beautifully normal. But Scarlett? You are a thin, gorgeous, bombshell. Just embrace it and stop with the name calling. Because every time you call yourself fat, you’re calling the rest of us stupid.
Loves,
Charlotte
Originally Posted on the Huffington Post
Amen to that! Unfortunately I lost my (at the time generous) bust along with a whole heap of weight when I discovered running, but when I think of the Hollywood women I consider to have a desirable figure I think of Scarlet. Which isn’t to say that she’s fat, just that she doesn’t emulate the anorexic type of frame we are expected to aspire to these days. If I had a message for Scarlet it would be “enjoy life, enjoy your curves, don’t stress”!
Normal sized? How about drop dead gorgeous?
Isn’t it funny the way “not totally anorexic” has become the new Hollywood “voluptuous?”
Great post!
My favorite? When the press was calling Rachel Bilson curvy. Girl weighs about 4 lbs.
Anyway, it’s sad that she’s heard these things so much that she’s bought into it. Good that she realizes emaciated isn’t sexy, but she also needs to understand that she isn’t “normal” or “chubby” she just has big knockers.
Gena, I love your comment about Rachel Bilson – hilarious!
Scarlett Johansson? Beautiful!
Yeah, I hope she doesn’t buy into much of the hype…because then she’d be wanting breast reduction so those coveted rib bones (big eyeroll) show.
Thank-you.
Thank you!! This is so, so true.
YOU GO GIRL!!
Maybe a variation on the old medical phrasing, “Usual Childhood Diseases without sequelae,” could be updated to,
“Unusual Adult Apparatae with sequelae” 🙂
Always enjoy your writing!!
Well, Scarlett is certainly not fat, or normal, but I wouldn’t call her “skinny” either. Probably just semantics, but “skinny” to me has always meant something different. Not just thin and healthy, but that very thin (not anorexic), beanpole type. I hated being called skinny. In the lingo I group up with, you could be thin and not be skinny. Like, say, Keira Knightley (whose chest has been digitally altered in pictures to make it bigger, something I’m sure SJ doens’t deal with) would be skinny, whereas Scarlett would be thin.
And curvy means you have womanly curves – a bust and hips – and not just a straight shape with equal measurements top to bottom.
But,yeah, she’s not fat. She has a great body. I still can’t get into her though, and don’t get the big deal.
Hear hear! She’s not normal sized, she’s thin but healthy, and happens to have a large chest. And I certainly wouldn’t call her voluptuous. Queen Latifah yes, Scarlett, no. It’s amazing how a little bit of bust entirely changes someone’s view of someone’s body. If she didn’t have that bust she’d be right in with the same skinny Hollywood image, I bet you. But I admire the fact that she hasn’t gone anorexic like the rest of them.
Does the media just not know about the word “perfect”?
I read today that the new crop of plus-sized models are size 8.
Surely this is a sign of the apocalypse?
Thanks for this – I always have internal melt-down when I read stars who are STILL very slim being labelled as “curvy”. It honestly makes me feel like hell.
In a way I think it could be more dangerous than seeing stick-thin stars all over the place – at least the super-skinnies tend to get lambasted by the press for being so thin. But girls like Scarlett are that bit closer in size to us, so we tend to compare more. Well, I do anyway.
She is not “normal” in a physical sense. She is amazingly beautiful and still very slender.
Therefore I am not fat.
Phew.
TA x
I have big boobs and unfortunately I always feel they make me look fatter. I know I shouldn’t think that way but it’s difficult. Unless I wear a fitted top (which then emphasises my tummy). I feel looser tops just hang from the boobs down and I become the same width as they are. Then of course this attitude is probably drilled into me by the media as your post discusses. I want to love my boobs but lots of times I’d halve them if I could. 🙁
And then the sad part is the average size in the world is a size 8 and in the United States it is a size 12 or 14. How did this happen?
I am a size 8 in most dresses and pants. I sometimes wear 6. I always get leggings in size large but sometimes I get the smallest possible size at plus size places if I cannot find them in the other side. When it comes to old navy skinny jeans I wear a size 4 but only because they run big there and there only (baby phat and apple bottoms are always a size 8 for me) and I like my pants super tight to fit my waist. My measurements are 34-27-40. Here in the US that is considered slender but not thick. Now in the south lots of people call me skinny (mainly the females), up in New Jersey and New York I am considered normal with a booty and small chest. Most of the guys up North or in Florida compliment my body while in the South (esp. Atlanta) they say I am pretty but skinny. I realize to the US I am considered slender . To foreigners (especially Colombians, Chileans, Indians, and multiple Europeans) I am told my butt sticks out alot (which really is not a size thing but a muscle tone thing) and that its big, but I am considered normal in the rest of the world. I have lots of international friends and to them I am considered healthy. Scarlet and her 34 inch hips is slender not curvy not average (at least in America) not skinny just thin and slender. She would be popular in Brazil and France though since they have some of the most skinny tall people. So as long as she has a good diet she is healthy and beauty is a preference based on culture and personal preference. Lots of Hispanic men up north consider me perfectly shaped opposed to the Southerners and people out west.