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For Sale Apr 12, 2026 at 4:53 PM

Scarlett Johansson Says it Was ‘Socially Acceptable’ for Young Actresses to Be ‘Pulled Apart for How They Looked’ in the Early 2000s: ‘It Was Tough’

Posted by mcfw31


Scarlett Johansson Says It Was ‘Socially Acceptable’ for Young Actresses to Be ‘Pulled Apart for How They Looked’ in the Early 2000s: ‘It Was Tough’
Variety
Scarlett Johansson Says It Was ‘Socially Acceptable’ for Young Actresses to Be ‘Pulled Apart for How They Looked’ in the Early 2000s: ‘It Was Tough’
Scarlett Johansson says it was 'socially acceptable' for young actresses to be 'pulled apart for how they looked' in the early 2000s.

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Positive-Drawing-281 Apr 12, 2026 +190
I don't think it stopped tbh.
190
Routman Apr 12, 2026 +39
Right, now it’s less talked about and more plastic surgery than ever
39
dburr10085 Apr 12, 2026 +11
The internet was used differently back then.
11
Hell-Diver7 Apr 12, 2026 +6
And GLP1s
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BigMax Apr 12, 2026 +23
It's slowed down. A little. Remember the tabloids? Constant, relentless body shaming of absolutely gorgeous women, from early ages too. That's calmed down quite a bit. Still though, obviously it hasn't gone away, as you can see from the constant cosmetic surgeries so many people get now.
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RockItGuyDC Apr 12, 2026 +1
I mean. I'm not really tracking it, but hasn't this just moved to "entertainment" websites and blogs, and moreso social media? Now women don't get picked apart in monthly issues, they get picked apart on the daily.
1
FastStill7962 Apr 12, 2026 +11
This tf
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OrionsBra Apr 13, 2026 +3
No. It's bad now. But it was so, so much worse then. Anyone who lived through that era of Perez Hilton and the height of TMZ knows how brutal they were to starlets. 
3
terrorrier Apr 12, 2026 +1
Hasn’t stopped but it has changed. I rewatch events I remember and it is shocking how casually people would say stuff like, “Wow, she’s enormous, yuck!” about ordinary looking women (and also that’s not right to say even if they’re really big?)
1
Fragrant-Potential87 Apr 13, 2026 +1
You almost can't talk about The Last of Us show without someone coming in and saying some shit like "She didn't look like Ellie" which I read as "I didn't think she met my standards of attractiveness". Its just really gross stuff.
1
HabitantDLT Apr 13, 2026 +1
I don't think it started in the 2000s. That shit was happening back in the silent picture days.
1
OregonMothafaquer Apr 12, 2026
For the most part it has. A lot of the leading young actresses wouldn’t be extras on baywatch
0
MadMaverick033 Apr 13, 2026
It did not
0
sentencevillefonny Apr 12, 2026 +31
Yeah that was the norm, crazy too. Remember all the Jessica Simpson stuff, etc?
31
AlarmingBranch1 Apr 12, 2026 +14
A lot of that shit was peddled and pushed by that Perez Hilton and his website, where he would circle body parts of women and making disparaging comments about them. He wasn’t the only one contributing to the problem, but boy did he fuel all that kind of talk.
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organictamarind Apr 13, 2026 +3
Perez Hilton was so toxic man..
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Mayor_of_Voodoo Apr 12, 2026 +49
Imagine the ones that *didn’t* look like Scarlett Johansson…
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tkot2021 Apr 13, 2026 +9
I don’t think this is helping lol
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mcfw31 Apr 12, 2026 +13
> “It was tough. There was a lot placed on how women looked,” Johansson said. “What was offered at that time for women my age, as far as acting roles or opportunities, was much slimmer than it is now.” > Johansson added that there are “much more empowering roles” for young women in 2026 than when she was “in my 20s.” When Johansson was coming up in the industry, she said it was “Slim Pickens.” > “You would get really pigeon-holed and offered the same [roles]. It would be like the other woman, or the side piece, the bombshell,” she said. “That was the archetype that was prevalent when I was that age.”
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IanRastall Apr 12, 2026 +14
Maybe the article was dictated to AI? It's "slim pickins".
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xnxbcdbk Apr 12, 2026 +8
either that or whoever dictated it had never heard that term. it’s written like it’s a guy’s name lmao. charles dickens’ rapper name
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DazzlingCapital5230 Apr 12, 2026 +6
Slim Pickens was a famous rodeo star/actor lol
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IanRastall Apr 12, 2026 +4
That's what I mean. It knew about Slim Pickens, so it went for the wrong spelling. A human wouldn't think to do that.
4
DazzlingCapital5230 Apr 12, 2026 +3
Yeah! Just saying I agree and that’s where it’s likely from
3
Rabidjester Apr 12, 2026 +2
Also the brother of H.R.
2
kidneycat Apr 13, 2026 +1
One man came close to breaking me, H.R. Pickens. He did not succeed, for I crushed him into the ground!
1
kafka_lite Apr 12, 2026 +7
Did the article really quote her as saying "Slim Pickens" instead of "slim pickings"? That's hilarious.
7
audreymarilynvivien Apr 13, 2026
She always complains about this, and while there certainly was a lack of meaningful female roles at the time, she played a part in pigeonholing herself by being a stiff actress and not showing much personality. She wasn’t very good when she stepped out of her limited range of side piece or quiet young woman. The few interesting, dramatic lead roles went to her contemporaries (Anne Hathaway, Natalie Portman, etc.) because they could give more authentic and expressive performances.
0
Broken-Sarcasm-Meter Apr 12, 2026 +3
Crazy that an industry built on looks judges people for their looks
3
Kenesaw_Mt_Landis Apr 13, 2026 +3
I’m just going to jump in here and say “Scarlett Johansson released an album of Tom Waits covers”
3
BusyBeeBridgette Apr 12, 2026 +7
It's still very much a thing, sadly.
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happyscrappy Apr 12, 2026 +3
It was acceptable then. It's acceptable now, but it was then too. h/t Hedberg
3
zilch123 Apr 12, 2026 +12
It's a visual medium. Beautiful people will continue to be rewarded and criticized when they fall short of that. Not to sound so cold, but that's reality itself, and it will never ever change.
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Double_Priority_2702 Apr 12, 2026 +12
Yup and she certainly benefited from it
12
rhino369 Apr 13, 2026 +4
And as an ugly person, it’s kinda lame to hear an 9.5/10 Scarjo complain that she got compared to 10/10s for an acting job. I’m a 2/10 getting dinged for jobs where it has nothing to do with looks. 
4
YaqtanBadakshani Apr 12, 2026 +6
Yes, but for most of the history of cinema (at least in the US), it was *much* easier to get work as a less conventionally attractive actor than as a less conventionally attractive actress, and less conventionally attractive actors did receive less commentary (and harassment) over their appearance. Now, clearly *less* is not *none,* and *easier* is not *easy*. And the trend in recent years has been to tighten the beauty standards for men, while paying lip service to broader beauty standards for women (without meaningfully changing them), which, in my view, makes for a less interesting range of performances in mainstrean cinema.
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BHATCHET Apr 13, 2026 +1
Do you have examples over the decades for your view or is your argument just hyperbole?
1
Sumeriandawn Apr 13, 2026 +1
What? the evidence speaks for itself
1
YaqtanBadakshani Apr 13, 2026 +1
I can name eight or nine mainsteam actors that fall outside of what we might call Hollywood conventional attractiveness (in their acting prime) (e.g. Jonah Hill, Woody Allen, John Rhys-Davies, Billy Crystal, Stevel Buscemi, Forrest Whittaker, Timothy Spall, Toby Jones, Jonathan Pryce) Trying to think of acresses that similarly fall outside the Hollywood mold, you can find a few (Shannon Purser, Michaela Coel, Aimee Lee Wood), but they're fewer in number, tend to see less mainstream success, and tend to be more in television than in major Hollywood films.
1
LophiYesel Apr 13, 2026 +1
Yeah; Lauren Bacall, Joan Crawford, Audrey Hepburn, and Marilyn Monroe were hideous beasts 
1
YaqtanBadakshani Apr 13, 2026 +1
I've read this comment three times, and I'm really struggling to parse your point.
1
HammerandSickTatBro Apr 12, 2026 +1
That is not some kind of natural law. It is an industry practice.
1
zilch123 Apr 12, 2026
Beauty sells. This is a visual medium at the end of the day. We can say it outright, whisper it, or outright ignore it, but at the end of the day, this is how it will always be. Beautiful people have advantages in life and this is one of them. Just like smart people, strong people, or any other biological advantage.
0
HammerandSickTatBro Apr 12, 2026
Beauty is a social construct. Beauty standards are usually not even universal *within* a single culture, much less across many different ones. Visual media also serve a *huge* variety of purposes, for which the same adherence to a *very* narrow artificial beauty standard is actively detrimental. The homogenization of appearances in what is presented to us is neither inevitable, nor natural, nor good.
0
zilch123 Apr 12, 2026 -1
Beauty is solely a social construct? There are no evolutionary markers of health that can be perceived as beauty? I don't think the "beauty standard" is narrow, but I do think the beauty depiction can be. I disagree with the idea of a standard (are we surrounded by women who truly look the *exact* same in media). But I do think in a visual medium with the goal of generating attention, beautiful people will inevitably be cast and gain opportunities over others. This isn't just theory. The rubber has hit the road with this in reality.
-1
Hyper_nova924 Apr 13, 2026 +5
Beauty may not solely be a social construct but it plays a huge part and this is evident due to the constantly changing beauty standards in different cultures throughout history. Yes of course there is a correlation between health and beauty but it’s not that simple. Many of the beauty trends throughout time have nothing to do with health. Currently extreme skinniness has come back into fashion like the 90s, female celebs are getting skinnier and skinnier and that is not healthy at all. Women are supposed to have more body fat than men for a multitude of reasons yet when women are at a healthy weight nowadays they are seen as too big. And I’m not talking about the celebs on the extreme end that are being criticised for being too skinny such as Ariana Grande but just the average female celebs. Look at Margot Robbie, Emma stone, Anne Hathaway, Nicole Kidman etc. Also, how are cosmetic treatments such as buccal fat removal, lip filler, Botox etc. indicators of health? I’d argue that currently there is a trend of what I’d coin “sickness encoded glamour”
5
agaloch2314 Apr 12, 2026 +2
It’s also the only reason she’s famous. She certainly can’t act.
2
Sumeriandawn Apr 13, 2026 +1
Lost in Translation Ghost World Marriage Story
1
lumsh Apr 12, 2026 +2
Eh she did fine
2
Sinister_JaY Apr 13, 2026 +2
Devils advocate here, if someone had a debilitating stutter or a nasty version of Tourette syndrome and they were a radio DJ, wouldn't people pick that apart? Movies and television are a visual medium. Isn't it natural to pick it apart the same way as a painting? There are good and bad works of art subjectively, dosen't that invite criticism and analysis? I agree that women and people in general shouldn't have their value assessed what they look like but if your job is to be an image for people to look at, isn't it fair game?
2
gls2220 Apr 12, 2026 +5
She did pretty well. The system worked for her, just like it's working for Zendaya and other young and beautiful actresses right now. Nothing has changed except that ScarJo has gotten older and no longer benefits from her looks the way she used to.
5
Puzzleheaded_Two7358 Apr 12, 2026 +2
I hate this attitude of well you did okay” what about the women who didnt do okay, didnt get that breakthrough role. How many women have been publicly ridiculed for how they looked, body type or something incredibly tiny that blew up. Dana Plato was a kid who got criticized by Howard Stern, she imploded. Karen Carpenter and hundreds of others. You can quote mental health but if you are prone to depression and are an actress/musician/artist and some a****** says they would like you better if you were a size smaller…. I dont think it’s much better today.
2
dontxworryxsoxmuch Apr 12, 2026 +2
Woman who profited off of pushing those ideals has now come to tell you how bad it was as she ages, destroying the confidence of millions of young women in the process. You women don't hate these kind of people enough.
2
Krow101 Apr 12, 2026 +3
For someone who made a career on her looks ... this is pretty ironic.
3
swrrrrg Apr 12, 2026 +3
I mean… yeah? You’re an actress/model. Of course looks matter. Not suggesting it can’t mess with your head but anyone who goes in to entertainment knows this.
3
exoriparian Apr 12, 2026 +1
Woman who has always been hot as shit laments how tough it was to be judged by looks. More at 11. (also, it's still that way, if not more-so)
1
freakdageek Apr 12, 2026 +4
Must have been very hard for one of the most attractive women on the planet to get through those tough times.
4
Independent-Cellist9 Apr 12, 2026 +1
Yea tell us about it
1
wooties05 Apr 12, 2026 +1
I just want watched the movie the substance, I feel like the idea is related. If you're into body horror it was pretty gnarly give it a shot but don't watch any trailers. Demi moore is still fine.
1
Ristar87 Apr 12, 2026 +1
Uh huh... Now Hollywood just uses CGI to "fix" women. Heck you can even see it in movies with Scarlett. If you watch fighting movies or superhero movies (Thor's a great example with Natalie Portman) you can see when they forget to CGI the whole body in the fighting sceness. In one of the scenes with her you can see her flexing the camera shot arm and it's super muscular while her other arm is still o natural. She looked like a parody of a guy that had been jerking it with one arm all his life.
1
blursten123 Apr 13, 2026 +1
I would like to block this entire person from all of my internet.
1
Former_Process2850 Apr 13, 2026 +1
I agree but Scarjo is constantly commendeering gender equity causes performatively to make her seem more human/relateable. She is a Woody Allen defender after all, and should absolutely not be a moral compass when it comes to gender equity.
1
Sammy_Dog Apr 13, 2026 +1
I like Scarlett, but she's a very successful, rich and beautiful actress. Listening to her complain about how hard she had it rings hollow (she's done it multiple times over the years).
1
woodpaulusgnome Apr 12, 2026 +1
I wish people would keep their unflattering thoughts to themselves. If you can’t say something supportive about an artist you don’t know, don’t say anything at all.
1
Monkfich Apr 12, 2026 +1
I remember trying to find a movie to watch with my mum, when she was in town. Something like 2003 or something. I suggested we go see Johansson’s new movie at the time - The Girl With The Pearl Earring. Of course, when I actually said those words, I instead said The Girl With The Pearl Necklace. I knew I’d fucked up as soon as I had said it, but thankfully my mum was a star and didn’t realise my faux pas, or didn’t even know it was one.
1
Swamp_Dwarf-021 Apr 12, 2026 +1
And water is wet?
1
Suspicious_Safe7647 Apr 12, 2026 +1
How did they.....put em back together then. 🥁
1
Turbulent_Ad5764 Apr 12, 2026 +1
Thanks for this breaking news ScarJo
1
Slow_Ad4077 Apr 13, 2026 +1
*looks at how Erin Moriarty is being dragged thru the muck over her looks in the latest The Boys season* Doesn't seem to have changed.
1
lonelyboy5265 Apr 12, 2026 -3
She made her millions. Can say these things now comfortably
-3
luniz420 Apr 12, 2026 -3
your job is to get looked at
-3
Puzzleheaded_Two7358 Apr 12, 2026 +6
But not to be judged and belittled.
6
AppealEquivalent2582 Apr 12, 2026
Is still hard…. The girls with lips all the actress have plum lips and let’s talk about the cheeks.
0
HammerandSickTatBro Apr 12, 2026
This hasn't changed.
0
NeonFraction Apr 12, 2026
It still is, but it was too.
0
Behemothwasagoodshot Apr 12, 2026
Listnook knows I watch The Boys, and honey it's gotten a LOT WORSE.
0
Audrey_Angel Apr 13, 2026
And full advantage taken.
0
Specialist-Web-9216 Apr 12, 2026 -10
These so called stars really have it rough in the spotlight. Critique comes hand in hand with adoration.
-10
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