Double Standards in Celebrity Net Worths Assignment #6 PDF

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We were instructed to research and compare the net worths and public perception of two celebrities, one male and one female, who had comparable careers....

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Amanda Scheuer 373 Psychology of Women Professor Cahill 11 October 2017 According to Celebrity Net Worth (which may or may not be totally accurate), Jennifer Lawrence has a net worth of $120 million, and Bradley Cooper has a net worth of $100 million. They have starred in several movies together, so they are often seen on the same level of status when it comes to their acting careers. The Forbes website states that Jennifer Lawrence was Hollywood’s highest paid woman last year, having starred in successful films like The Hunger Games franchise and various X-Men movies, and Bradley Cooper has also been on the Forbes list of highest paid celebrities in the past. I found two separate articles by BBC News that feature interviews with Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper about a few of the films they have been in. Although both articles contained interviews that posed questions about their experiences with acting and the media, the topics of the articles seemed to be drastically different. This could be attributed to their gender, or something else entirely, but still these articles show just one example of how actors and actresses are often treated differently in the media. The BBC article about Bradley Cooper discusses the challenges that he faced while portraying a man with a mental illness such as bipolar disorder in the film Silver Linings Playbook. The interviewer asked him questions that pertained to the struggles he endures as he first enters the set, and throughout his acting experience for a film. They also asked him about how he feels working with certain actors and directors on set. Even the title of the article itself tells the reader that Bradley Cooper was asked about the “acting challenge in Silver Linings

Playbook,” so he discussed a lot about his skills as an actor and his career-related experiences. On the other hand, the interviewers in the BBC articles I found about Jennifer Lawrence asked very different questions, even in relation to the same film that she and Cooper starred in: Silver Linings Playbook. The titles of the articles I found included the following phrases: “Hollywood, women and body image” as well as “weight comments.” Before even reading the article, it is clear that the interviewers asked her questions about her body, the way the media reacts to her physical appearance, and other topics about aesthetics that are not actually related to her acting career. While it is important that she talks in one article about the dangerous pressures that the media puts on young girls to be thin, the fact that she has to discuss this in itself rather than her skills as an actress tells a lot about how actors and actresses are treated differently. One other thing I noticed with the articles about Jennifer Lawrence was that she was asked about a specific decision she made on “whether she regretted doing a raunchy shoot” for a magazine. Rather than asking her about her success as an actor - like BBC interviewers did for Cooper - they questioned her choice to model in her underwear for a photoshoot. It also notes that “Her own figure became the subject of much debate, after being branded "fuller" by industry standard,” which is ultimately another way of spreading this idea that she is not thin like the typical beauty standard in Hollywood. This can often come across as telling readers that she is not just an actress, but a “fuller”-bodied actress--regardless of the fact that weight does not impact her acting skills. Although both Cooper and Lawrence are regarded highly as successful actors in these articles, I found it interesting that the subject matter of each was incredibly different. I also find it difficult to attribute this to anything other than their different genders. I’ve found that in the media, men are not commonly asked about their body weight or their physical

appearance, whereas women are very frequently asked about losing weight for a particular role, being criticized for modeling nude or semi-nude, etc. This is unfair to actresses because it makes it seem like they are not being taken seriously in their acting careers, while men are often taken more seriously and even regarded higher for their skills.

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References BBC. (2013, December 18). Jennifer Lawrence: weight comments 'should be illegal' . Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-25427990 BBC. (2013, November 11). Jennifer Lawrence on Hollywood, women and body image. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/av/entertainment-arts-24906569/jennifer-lawrence-on-hollywo od-women-and-body-image Celebrity Net Worth. (2017). Bradley Cooper Net Worth. Retrieved from https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-celebrities/actors/bradley-cooper-net-worth Celebrity Net Worth. (2017). Jennifer Lawrence Net Worth. Retrieved from https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-celebrities/actors/jennifer-lawrence-net-worth Forbes. (2016). Jennifer Lawrence. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/profile/jennifer-lawrence/ Masters, T. (2012, November 20). Bradley Cooper on acting challenge in Silver Linings Playbook. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-20300790...