Jennifer Lawrence, Khloe Kardashian, and the Ideal Female Body

I don't know about you, but I LOVED Jennifer Lawrence's portrayal of Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games. I think the woman is incredibly talented, and very down to earth. 

And now, I have one more reason to love her: Jennifer Lawrence REFUSES to diet for movie roles. In fact, by Hollywood's standards, she is obese -- but that doesn't faze her at all. 

In a recent interview, Lawrence was quoted saying, "I’m considered a fat actress. I’m Val Kilmer in that one picture on the beach. I eat like a caveman. I’ll be the only actress who doesn’t have anorexia rumors."

In a world where young girls are looking up to anorexic models as pillars of beauty, I find this particularly refreshing. 

Lawrence's newest film is the Silver Linings Playbook. According to celebrity news, the director of the film, David O. Russel, told Lawrence to "eat normally" to prep for shooting -- so that she would look like a normal person. 

We all know that Hollywood and the Media hold this image of the ideal woman as stick thin with insane curves, and we all have heard about the reports that these images can cause self esteem problems in young girls -- but who is really to blame for this stigma, AND who has the power to end it?

Another celebrity, Khloe Kardashian, gets flack all the time for her weight. Prior to her X-factor debut weightloss, Khloe went on the Ellen show:

A size 6 and she's being called fat?? According to 2012 statistics, the average American woman weighs 162.9 lbs and is a size 14. So why are the women of the media held to such stricter standards of beauty, physical fitness, and perfection?  Something needs to change when it comes to America's perceptions of the ideal female.  

I'll leave you to ponder with another quote from Jennifer Lawrence's recent interview. Perhaps this new generation of young Hollywood talent will follow in her footsteps. 

“I’m never going to starve myself for a part. I keep waiting for that one role to come along that scares me enough into dieting, and it just can’t happen. I’m invincible. I don’t want little girls to be like, ‘Oh, I want to look like Katniss, so I’m going to skip dinner.’ That’s something that I was really conscious of during training, when you’re trying to get your body to look exactly right. I was trying to get my body to look fit and strong, not thin and underfed.”