Has Hollywood finally had enough of its obsession with nipping, tucking and enhancing every last inch?
In a casting call for the upcoming movie Pirates of the Caribbean 4, the memo was clear – women with boob jobs need not apply. Real Boobs Only – and they’d be checking at the door. Talk about limiting your busty wench options…
A real boob revolution
Why has Hollywood become unenthusiastic for plastic, and what has caused this revolt? Is it because directors (and audiences) are now more interested in watching “natural” looking women on film – or do real boobs simply jiggle better in a corset? According to Emily Maguire, author of Your Skirt’s Too Short, this particular ban on boob jobs does have a practical element. “The bodies of the women in the 1800s [when the Pirates movies are set] would have ‘moved around’ a lot more than those of the average Hollywood actress today, so hiring women with real breasts would look more natural,” she explains. “The director of the TV show Mad Men allegedly asks his female stars not to do too much weight training on their arms, because the women of that decade didn’t look like that,” she says. Likewise, actresses with plumped up lips are discouraged by Mad Men’s creator; they didn’t have collagen in 1961. “So these requests do happen,” says Maguire. But besides attention to detail, there are other factors to play – factors like Heidi Montag, says Dr Karen Brooks, associate professor of media studies at Southern Cross University.
The Montag Effect
“There’s been a bit of a movement away from plastic surgery recently,” Brooks says. Why? “Because it’s gone to extremes,” she says. “The trend has been that everything has had to be bigger and tighter, and quite unrealistic. And extreme restructuring like this is distracting for audiences.” It is, after all, hard to relate to a character when you’re struggling to concentrate on their face, so it makes sense that Montag look-alikes would be banned from the casting process. But a subtle pair of “enhancements” is hardly the same thing as remodelling your look on a Playboy bunny. And, besides, actresses on the silver screen are famous for having subtle “work” done. So why the boob backlash?
Beauty in 2010
This comes down to our changing ideas of beauty, says Brooks. Traditionally, she says, we’ve embraced plastic surgery as a way of modifying traits that don’t “fit” with the classic mould of what’s considered beautiful – such as small breasts or a big nose – but now, our beauty ideal is changing. “At the moment, we now have a number of women on our screens who have this sort of ‘cookie cutter’ beauty,” she notes. “Thanks in no small part to plastic surgery, they’re all beginning to look the same – like overgrown Barbie dolls.
Consequently, we’re tired of looking at the same type of woman. We want something more from what we consider beautiful.”
It’s a worthwhile point – and you only have to look at the new generation of beauties to see what she means. Stars on the rise, such as Zooey Deschanel, Alexa Chung and Mia Wasikowska – and US host of So You Think You Can Dance Cat Deeley (“With her wonky nose,” adds Brooks) – are a lot less “perfect” than the perfectly groomed stars of previous years.
So does this mean that critical Hollywood is starting to embrace “real” women? Not really, says Brooks. “There’s a big difference between Hollywood trending towards the ‘natural’ look, and Hollywood actually going realistic,” she says. Zooey Deschanel might not look like your typical American beauty queen, she says, but she’s not your average-looking girl on the street. “Rather than embracing ‘real’ women, we are now just embracing a new stereotype.
Real boobs, real curves?
So what about this casting call? A request for Real Boobs Only means a request for real women, right? After all – real breasts come with real curves. Double no, says Brooks. “The casting agents might be calling for a ‘natural’ look, but it’s still using a very specific criteria that so many women don’t meet. The call-out, which allegedly asks for “beautiful, female, fit models” with “lean dancers’ bodies,” also requests that applications be between 170cm and 172cm tall, and sizes 8 to 10 only, which, she says, are “not your average-looking women”.
So, while there might be backlash against boob jobs right now, the new trends in womens’ beauty aren’t any more realistic. Who’s surprised? Not me, says Maguire. “It seems that this is just another new trend – that’s how fashion works. It’s cyclical.”
“It is a continuous narrative,” agrees Brooks. “We might have grown tired of the obviously fake, and be actively embracing a new, more ‘natural’ look, but we’re basically just creating another form of cookie cutter beauty,” she says. The silver screen might be making less room for the likes of the extreme makeovers – but you’ll need to stay tuned longer to see really “real” women being embraced by Hollywood.
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