I Feel Pret­ty is not the answer to Hollywood’s body image problem

Amy Schumer’s new film sees the actor and come­di­an play Renee, an office work­er whose con­fi­dence soars when she suf­fers a head injury, lead­ing her to believe she is con­ven­tion­al­ly beau­ti­ful. The body con­scious com­e­dy has received a lot of back­lash, with crit­ics decry­ing the film’s prob­lem­at­ic approach to body image issues. The film­mak­ers have dis­missed these accu­sa­tions, but it’s easy to see why I Feel Pret­ty is being labelled as yet anoth­er exam­ple of Hollywood’s dam­ag­ing atti­tude towards beau­ty and body representation.

Schumer has quick­ly estab­lished her­self as an every­woman for a more enlight­ened age, own­ing her sup­posed per­son­al flaws in Train­wreck and gen­er­al­ly offer­ing a more relat­able pic­ture of fem­i­nin­i­ty than the air­brushed Hol­ly­wood ide­al. It’s puz­zling, then, that I Feel Pret­ty is so con­fus­ing and con­tra­dic­to­ry in its mes­sage. A moral of lov­ing your­self and not need­ing exter­nal val­i­da­tion is present through­out, yet much of the film’s humour is derived from its cen­tral character’s weight. We’re asked to gasp in hor­ror as Renee enters a bar biki­ni con­test, and again when she con­fi­dent­ly asks out a man she is attract­ed to, much to his astonishment.

At best, I Feel Pret­ty miss­es the point, tac­it­ly argu­ing that fat sham­ing is okay pro­vid­ed you like your­self (and even then, you can only like your­self if you think you look dif­fer­ent). At worst, the film pro­motes the harm­ful notion that a woman who looks like Renee could nev­er feel good about her­self. It’s flawed, heavy-hand­ed and lit­tle more than we’ve come to expect from Hollywood.

There is a long tra­di­tion of pok­ing fun of obe­si­ty in main­stream cin­e­ma, and you don’t have to look too far back to find egre­gious exam­ples of fat sham­ing. In 2001’s Shal­low Hal, a male chau­vin­ist played by Jack Black is hyp­no­tised into see­ing the ​‘inner beau­ty’ of women and sub­se­quent­ly falls for Rose­mary, who to him looks like Gwyneth Pal­trow but is in fact Gwyneth Pal­trow wear­ing a fat suit. Cue a cav­al­cade of fat-relat­ed jokes (large under­wear, tilt­ed canoes) and Paltrow’s true image being described as a ​“rhi­no” by Jason Alexander’s sup­port­ing character.

Then there’s Austin Pow­ers’ Fat Bas­tard, who sup­plied a gen­er­a­tion of school bul­lies with an armoury of fat-sham­ing insults. Else­where an entire chap­ter of Eddie Murphy’s career was spent in latex suits for the Nut­ty Pro­fes­sor films and Nor­bit, both of which rely heav­i­ly on sight gags. Even in a more sen­si­tive era, this type of humour per­sists. Rebel Wilson’s Fat Amy from the Pitch Per­fect films is osten­si­bly con­fi­dent and com­fort­able in her own skin, yet she’s also the char­ac­ter most prone to phys­i­cal comedy.

Put sim­ply, Hol­ly­wood is and always has been in the busi­ness of ideals. By today’s stan­dards, the pin ups of the 1950s may not even have got past the audi­tion stage. The result­ing effect is that of visu­al fast food – appeal­ing in the short term but dam­ag­ing in the long term, with audi­ences being con­stant­ly con­front­ed with the mes­sage that real heroes have abs, or that to be desir­able you must have immac­u­late hair and your own per­son­al light­ing. Com­bined with social media and the deeply super­fi­cial nature of celebri­ty cul­ture, main­stream cin­e­ma con­tin­ues to have a neg­a­tive impact on soci­ety. No won­der I Feel Pretty’s exam­i­na­tion of self esteem is so uncon­vinc­ing – the issues it con­fronts are part­ly Hol­ly­wood made.