Her way, OK? Jennifer Lawrence revealed to Harper’s Bazaar in its May 2016 cover story that she wanted to transform Hollywood’s prototype of the perfect body, and said she’d like to set herself as an example for “a new normal-body type.”
The Oscar-winning actress, 25, posed confidently inside the issue of the fashion glossy without her bra in an embellished sheer Dior top and other see-through (but ladylike) pieces, while opening up about lending her voice to certain issues of discrimination.
“I would like us to make a new normal-body type,” she told the mag. “Everybody says, ‘We love that there is somebody with a normal body!’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t feel like I have a normal body.’ I do Pilates every day. I eat, but I work out a lot more than a normal person. I think we’ve gotten so used to underweight that when you are a normal weight it’s like, ‘Oh, my God, she’s curvy.’ Which is crazy. The bare minimum, just for me, would be to up the ante. At least so I don’t feel like the fattest one.”
The star made headlines last year for calling out the startling pay gap between male and female actors in Hollywood. “I had no idea it was going to blow up like that,” Lawrence recalled of her October 2015 Lenny Letter, “Why Do I Make Less Than My Male Co-Stars?” The piece itself garnered massive attention — and somehow, the Silver Linings Playbook star received backlash.
“I obviously only absorbed the negative. I didn’t pay attention to the positive feedback,” she mused. “My parents get really upset. They do not like me speaking out about anything political because it’s hard to see your kid take criticism. But, really, people who criticized it are people who think women should not be paid the same as men. So I don’t really care what those people think. … I try not to be too sensitive to the ‘poor rich girl’ jokes. I was saying my reality is absolutely fabulous, but it is not the reality of a lot of women in America. That’s what I’m talking about.”
Lawrence further defined feminism in her own words to Bazaar. “I don’t know why that word is so scary to people; it shouldn’t be, because it just means equality,” she reflected. “If we are moving forward in a society, you are feeling stronger as a woman, and you want to be taken more seriously. You don’t have to take away the wonderful traits that come with being a woman: We are sensitive. We are pleasers. We’re empathetic. All those things that can keep you from asking for what you want or making mistakes.”
The Joy actress had one takeaway from the entire experience. “There’s nothing wrong with being a pleaser if you’re smart about it,” she said. “As long as you are getting what’s fair. You know, I want my employers to be happy. I want to please anyone I’m working for as long as they pay me the appropriate amount. I’ll make them as happy as they want.”
Up next, the beloved star will reprise her role as Mystique in Bryan Singer’s X-Men: Apocalypse, opposite Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy. The film hits theaters on May 27.
