If you were chronically online in the 2010s, you’ll remember a certain female celebrity soaring in popularity thanks to her off-the-cuff, self-deprecating humour and excitable red-carpet interviews. Jennifer Lawrence, now 31, was the poster girl for the ‘relatable’ celebrity: fun, down to earth and overwhelmed at her own success.
I remember it well, I loved J-Law. Unlike her uber cool starlet peers, Lawrence acted exactly how I or any of my friends at the time would’ve had we been catapulted to stardom – or at least, how we imagined we would. She would loudly profess her awe at the calibre of celebrity she was now in rooms with, joke about how no one eats at award shows and laugh off any overtly ‘Hollywood’ questions about her diet or exercise.
It was refreshing to see someone embrace how out of their depth they were in such a bizarre environment and everyone, it seemed, loved her for being so authentic. Then she fell on the stairs on the way up to collect her very first Oscar, and the pedestal she’d been put on plunged into the depths of trolling hell.
(Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
Almost overnight, the tide seemed to turn on J-Law. She was labelled with what is seemingly one of the most damaging reputational labels a woman can wear: fake. Critics online began to dissect every interview she did, now interpreting her self-deprecation as faux humility and claiming that this oh-so-relatable personality of hers was all for show to appeal to us normies.
It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad, that men in Hollywood can survive being levied with all sorts of deranged and despicable accusations about their behaviour, but a woman dares to make a few too many jokes and she’s taken down with nonsense critiques that are entirely subjective and say nothing about her character.
And taken down she was, as evidenced by recent interviews where J-Law has reflected on her interviews back then with actual remorse. ‘[I was] so hyper. So embarrassing,’ she told The New Yorker in recent profile. ‘It is, or it was, my genuine personality, but it was also a defence mechanism…I look at those interviews, and that person is annoying. I get why seeing that person everywhere would be annoying… I was, I think—rejected not for my movies, not for my politics, but for me, for my personality.’
I was young and nervous and defensive.
In another profile with The New York Times, Lawrence elaborates. ‘As horrified as I am at some things — like an old interview or something, so cringe — I get it,’ she explains. ‘I was young and nervous and defensive and awkward. I remember when I was nominated for “Silver Linings Playbook,” somebody was like: “Everybody loves you! What does that feel like?” I was like: It feels precarious. It’s going to come down. That’s just the nature of things. And then I fell getting my Oscar, and the next year I was waving to fans, and I tripped on a cone and I remember being like: “[Expletive], that’s it. Nobody’s going to believe that I fell two years in a row.’
‘I regret everything I’ve ever done or said,’ she says later in the interview, one of many instances where her self-deprecating humour continues to show itself. And while it’s great that she can still laugh at herself, this time around feels different. Reading her take on her personality in her 20s and such an earnest apology at how ‘annoying’ she was, I felt genuinely sad.
This is a woman who broke the mold on the mysterious and elusive ‘cool girl’, emboldening a celebrity culture where it fun to be relatable and silly and wholeheartedly yourself – something young celebrities today are praised for in droves. Think Renée Rapp, Sabrina Carpenter, Rachel Sennot, Tom Holland, Ayo Edebiri. They all balance self-aware humour with serious talent in a way J-Law once set the standard for.
(Photo by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)
I was 17 when The Hunger Games first launched J-Law into the public sphere, and her humour left an imprint on me not just because it was rare to see an American celebrity be so sarcastic and dry, but because it embraced shame in a way I’d never seen before. J-Law might be embarrassed now, but part of her appeal back then was that she was almost always embarrassing herself all the time. She laughed it all off with ease, gracefully giggling away even when she fell over in front of a room full of her idols. When you’re a teenager and all you care about is avoiding being embarrassed at any opportunity, that kind of example on a public stage matters.
Knowing how much then that J-Law has internalised the online criticism about her persona in her 20s, I can’t help but feel disappointed for the 20-year-old version of her. She shouldn’t have to apologise for being ‘too much’, nor should she deserve to feel embarrassed and shrink herself now to appease an audience that will find criticism in any way a woman presents herself. We spend our lives tying ourselves up in knots to fit into this perfect caricature of what a woman should be, but that’s the point, it’s a caricature, not reality. The best thing about J-Law is that she’s always kept it real, the only people that deserve to be embarrassed are those that piled on her way back then for daring to trip up the stairs.
Georgia Aspinall is an award-winning journalist and acting assistant editor at Grazia UK, previously senior editor. As well as co-ordinating news and features for both digital and print, she is responsible for Grazia’s campaigning efforts. Georgia has a vast knowledge of digital journalism and SEO best practice, covering women’s interest stories across politics, health, dating, travel and pop culture.
