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Last week Dahlia linked to a piece by Salon's Rebecca Traister about TV Land's new dating show The Cougar, in which a bunch of young dudes try and woo a 40-year-old woman. Traister hates the show and the whole cougar phenomenon in general because, "Of all the things that men do that women might reasonably wish to do as well isn't this....mimicking the midlife crisis-penis-car-crippling-insecurity version of mature masculinity...one thing we could have just walked away from without regret?" Some behavior isn't empowering, for anyone, and should be left well enough alone.
A story in this weekend's New York Times got me thinking a similar, if inverted, thought. It was a piece about how Hollywood's leading men are getting fat. Seriously. Apparently, the expanding waistlines of Russell Crowe, John Travolta, Denzel Washington, Hugh Grant and Leonardo DiCaprio constitute a trend worthy of examination in the paper of record. The piece's writer, Michael Cieply, describes a scene between Crowe and Jeff Daniels in the just-released State of Play as "Two men. One notebook. Four chins." Ba dum dum ching. To reverse paraphrase Traister, of all the things women do that men might reasonably wish to do as well, obsessing over one's weight—or being publicly shamed about that weight by the media—shouldn't make the list.
New York's Vulture points out that some might say, "[T]his kind of criticism levels the playing field a bit and puts men in the same position that women have faced for years." I would say it just gives everyone body-image issues.
Cieply writes in his piece that "Hollywood's women may [may!!] have weight issues of their own. But it is somehow less noticeable, possibly [possibly!!] because actresses who expand do not often get roles to showcase that growth." In other words, larger women hardly ever appear in movies because they never, ever get cast. Is it noble of the Times to draw attention to this double standard? So that, what? Larger men don't get cast either? Perhaps, in the interest of equality, actors, just by virtue of turning 45, should start losing roles—exactly like their female counterparts! Then we’ll never have anyone who looks even remotely like a normal, middle-aged person in any movies ever again, but, at least, that would be fair. Or, you know, equally unfair.
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