Gerard Butler's Belly Will Be the End to Hollywood's Beauty Double Standard

Well said, LJ!

DonnaKat wrote:

You know, that .net contest, one of the prizes is an autographed something of Gerry's. If any of us win, we should ask for those pink shorts.

Nope, I am asking for the Plaid Shirt he he he

The plaid shirt is a million times better than the pink shorts. You can even wear the plaid shirt, unbuttoned as a "jacket" and it would be kind of cute. The pink shorts need to be burned.

I have a flannel plaid shirt that's similar to the Bounty one, and I wear it as a jacket and even sometimes as a shirt. It's warm and comfy.

You can wear it when you go watch the movie, or if you go to the premiere...

Yeah, DK, wear it to a premiere where Gerry shows up for, and get it signed.

Interesting article:

LIZ JONES FASHION THERAPY

Hollywood has long held women up to impossible, unattainable standards while letting its men get away with bald patches and beer guts.

Look at the coupling of Humphrey Bogart - short, balding and 55 - with the dewy perfection of a 25-year-old Audrey Hepburn in 1954’s Sabrina.

Once a woman passed 30, she was given the role of the mother or maiden aunt, or pensioned off. Bette Davis starred in The Old Maid when she was 31, while Anne Bancroft played 30-year-old Dustin Hoffman’s mother in The Graduate when she was just 36.

If older women are ever given the romantic lead, even if they are obviously still goddesses, they are supposed to be grateful, despite the fact the man pursuing them resembles Mr Toad.

Look at Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson in Something’s Gotta Give. She was playing a 56-year-old famous playwright who owned an immaculate beach house, while he had suffered a heart attack caused by fatness and smoking.

You might be forgiven for thinking things have moved on with the release of the new romantic comedy It’s Complicated. In it, Meryl Streep plays a woman in her 60s who is unafraid to admit she is a sexual being. Hurrah! I hear you shout. But let’s put it into perspective.

Streep retains all her porcelain, angular beauty, and just happens to have the clout of two Oscars, 13 Oscar nominations and a huge box office hit (Mamma Mia!, in which she bagged James Bond, no less) under her tiny belt.

In the new film, she is supposed to go weak at the knees when confronted with ten-years-younger Alec Baldwin, despite the fact he has become as flabby as a bull seal, and about as dexterous in bed.

Take, too, the fact that as women become more successful and famous they seem to reduce in stature, spending ever more time at the gym to make sure they remain at the top of their game - men do the opposite.

Just look at what has happened to Val Kilmer, Russell Crowe and George Clooney. Let’s examine the double standards here.

While George Clooney is mooned over for his craggy looks, with no one turning a hair at a white beard that would look more at home on Santa Claus, the moment a Jennifer Lopez or a Nicole Kidman steps out with a barely discernible grey hair, all hell breaks loose.

But it seems Hollywood’s notoriously sexist double standards might just be coming to an end, if the hoo-hah over a set of paparazzi photographs taken on New Year’s Day are anything to go by.

Because as well as the inevitable, shots of women in bikinis being dubbed either too skinny or too fat, there were snatched photographs of yet another Hollywood heartthrob run to fat.

This time, it was Gerard Butler, the star of 300 and The Ugly Truth, whose famous six pack had been replaced with a full on party barrel.

The breakthrough was that this photo was accompanied by the headlines, ‘From Spartan To Softie: Gerard Butler packs on the holiday pounds’ and, 'Gerard Butler shows off his gut and moobs in Barbados’.

My goodness, for the first time a man was being given the treatment doled out to the likes of Jessica Simpson, the Olsen twins and Sienna Miller. But is it a good thing that men are now being held up to the same scrutiny as women?

As a male writer on the celebrity gossip website Gawker.com pointed out, the famous should, by rights, pay the price by being famously fit. ‘After all, if we want to look at people carrying a bit of fat around the midsection, we’ll start following politics.

‘Stars have money and the access to afford the best trainers, nutritionists, yoga instructors or surgery, if it really comes to that.

‘And part of their job description is to be more beautiful than the fatties we see every Saturday at the mall buying bigger sweatpants.’

Of course, Hollywood stars should look better than the rest of us. Movie studios have long been called dream factories, after all. But while women have to conform to a single, shiny haired, small bodied and youthful ideal, men have long been able to be as big and untidy as bears.

Look at the pairing of Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn in The Break Up: she was the uptight neurotic, he the slob who had never said hello to a dishcloth. And yet still we were supposed to root for them being together!

But hang on a minute. On the one hand we are calling for more diverse roles for women - older women, black women, big women, ugly women. So does it therefore make sense to applaud the boot being on the other foot for a change, with men getting it in the (jowly) neck?

As Alex Bilmes of GQ magazine told me when I asked whether the whole Butler’s Belly criticism was a good or a bad thing: ‘I think it’s as close to the end of the world as we can get without Barack saying to hell with it and pressing the red button.

‘So we’re going to try and make men as body dysmorphic as women? Is that what women want? To turn their men into neurotic hysterics: vain, superficial, miserable, empty-headed narcissists more concerned with a flat stomach than a fertile brain?

Because if it carries on, that’s what you’re going to get.’

Does the sight of a Hollywood star run to fat make him feel better or worse about himself?

‘As far as men are concerned, I think we couldn’t care less whether Gerard Butler is fat or thin, tall or short, handsome or ugly. It just doesn’t matter to us.’

But here’s the thing. The reason a movie star’s looks don’t matter to Bilmes or to most men is that they have been taught from birth that their appearance is not the be all and end all: what matters is how rich they are, how powerful, how good at sport, how brainy, how talented.

And whether they like it or not, that confidence in their own ability over their looks has been reinforced by images in the movies, in magazines and so forth. My own view is that, no, of course we don’t want men to be as uptight and neurotic about the way they look as we are.

But in a quick poll of my girlfriends, to a woman they said they wanted men on screen to look more like Alex Reid (the only reason women are tuning into Celebrity Big Brother these days) and a lot less like Woody Allen.

It is only ugly men (Hollywood producers, money men and directors) who have promoted the idea that looks aren’t important to women, and that we will always go for money first, humour second.

It might sound shallow to say this, but much as men want Angelina Jolie sans the children and with the body she had in Tomb Raider, so I want George Clooney to lose the beard, and to do a few sit ups once in a while.

The opprobrium heaped upon Gerard Butler means only one thing: that it’s nice for men to get a dose of their own medicine for a change.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1242163/LIZ-JONES-FASHION-THERAPY-Sorry-laugh-moobs-Gerard-time-men-got-taste-medicine.html#ixzz0cIkwRvSW

While I wait for the fat A-list male bashing to begin, I won't be holding my breath.

Interesting...