In an interview with The New Yorker, Jennifer Lawrence asked whether she could vape constantly since she would have to stop it in November, confessing her plan to get a boob job before shooting an upcoming nude scene next year. She expressed her displeasure regarding the state of her body after giving birth to her second child with her husband Cooke Maroney this March saying, “Everything bounced back, pretty much, after the first one. Second one, nothing bounced back.” That is not unlike Jennifer, who has always been goofy with a devil-may-care attitude, which her fans have found endearing over the years but this is a sort of raw honesty she hasn’t shown before.
Although she admits that she wouldn’t be in such a hurry to get the surgery done but she would still get it done had she not been an actress, it is no mystery the amount of pressure the industry puts on its women to maintain unrealistic beauty standards. Promoting such standards for the pleasure of the male gaze sets the wrong precedent, as traditional Hollywood films often reflect and reinforce the patriarchal structure through the enormous power the visual medium possesses. And at the end of the day, we know male stars do not rush for a surgical procedure just for the sake of on-screen nudity.
Jennifer Faces Scrutiny Amidst A Career Comeback
It’s clear that this has been on her mind for some considerable time, and these statements were not issued in a vacuum, since just last month people on social media speculated that the facelift she got in 2023 had aged poorly and that she looked like a poor tired mom in unflattering clothes, initiating a discourse on her “new face”. Some fans rushed to her defence, demanding respect and calling her “real” for showing up like this to a public event, others explained that the puffiness was from the pregnancy and breastfeeding.
But when actors put themselves in a vulnerable position, such harsh speculations do tend to get to them, even if they live far away from the reach of the average Joe behind their steel gates and glass castles.
She recollects telling Viola Davis a few years back how she would sense a loss of control whenever she would have to do press. Ironically, she is back now after a two-year hiatus promoting her new film with Robert Pattinson, Die My Love, the teaser for which reflects the same manic nature she has become iconic for. It seems she’s still carrying traces of her character Grace in Lynne Ramsay’s Die My Love, a mother slowly unraveling under the weight of her own mind, as she spoke with candid ease about her plans to get a facelift in the future.
Like a snowball tumbling down a hill, she did not stop and kept on revealing one thing after the other, among which were the cosmetic procedures she has had so far, which have only been botox as she needs to use her facial muscles for acting.
A New Chapter of Reflection for Jennifer Lawrence
Jennifer continued with the transparency, calling her old press junkets, “cringe” and “embarassing” despite garnering a huge fan following for her goofiness, calling it a defense mechanism to help her navigate fame. In her most recent interview with The New Yorker, she sits down with the same honesty and candidness that she did for the past 10 years, but this time she uses it like a confessional booth of a church, recollecting her sins.
Although she calls her past self, the self she projected in public her “genuine personality”, she still feels she was rejected not for her selection of films or her politics but for her behaviour. It just goes to show that not even wealth and fame can save you from crucifixion if you are cursed with being a woman.
The room to work in, is so often so small as a woman that the slightest move can result in breaking forbidden norms and unsaid rules of existence, especially in the public eye. Women are often socialised to behave as if an imaginary panoptic gaze is following them through every nook and corner of their lives and when someone falls out of line, they often feel isolated, leading to an identity crisis much like Jennifer.
Maturity and Motherhood
Jennifer’s bluntness persists, but a new sense of maturity has set in with the onset of motherhood, opening a fresh chapter in her life. During a press conference for her latest film at Cannes, she opened up about her postpartum experience, calling it “isolating”. She called having children, “brutal and incredible”, “a blister” that makes you sensitive and opens the whole world to you. Along with that she talked about how having children has changed her whole life for the best and impacted her creatively as well. She also recommended every actor to have children in a partly earnest, partly humorous manner.
Her reflections on motherhood mirror a larger shift within her. It seems to have reshaped not just her personal life but also the way she views herself and her work. She told Vanity Fair in 2021 how she had gotten sick of herself, trying to please everyone so that nobody could get mad at her, and seeking to bring herself some peace through her work life doing 16 films in 6 years. But now she has realised that all this time she was rowing the wrong boat, and sooner or later the boat would’ve sunk and she would’ve drowned. On her recent appearance on The Graham Norton Show, she was “at peace” at the thought of not returning to acting.
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