Jennifer Lawrence Joked About 'Reverse Body Dysmorphia' — And Here's Why It's Not A Big Deal
By Olivia Muenter
Jennifer Lawrence is known for making headlines. Whether she's winning Oscars, or tripping at the Oscars, or generally just saying something ridiculous — we all love to love JLaw for her silliness and sarcastic, quirky brand of humor. It's hard to know when Lawrence is being serious or not to say the least, so it's always good to take what she says with a grain of salt — but have her sarcastic comments finally crossed the line? Some people think so, and were offended when Jennifer Lawrence recently joked that she has "reverse body dysmorphia."
When discussing the CGI editing on the most recent film installment in the Hunger Games series, Mockingjay, Lawrence was joking with an interviewer about how she really just sees herself like a "Victoria's Secret model."
"I have just such like an idea of myself where I'm just like a Victoria's Secret model, all the time and when I see the truth, I'm just like, 'What?' " Lawrence said.
If you've ever seen an interview with Lawrence, then you know just as well as anyone that the actress is just joking and displaying her usual brand of sarcastic humor. She continued to joke with her fellow cast members and interviewer on the subject, and that's when things got a little less than PC.
"You should see what I look like in my mind," Lawrence said. "I have Reverse Body Dysmorphia."
If you're wondering what Body Dysmorphia is, it's a body image disorder that is characterized by sufferers being constantly preoccupied with flaws in their appearance. According to E!, celebrities like Robert Pattinson and Hayden Panettiere have dealt with Body Dysmorphia before.
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It's pretty clear that Lawrence is joking here, poking fun at the idea that she could seriously view herself in such a way. But here's the problem: People actually do suffer from Body Dysmorphia, and making light of a serious problem has rubbed some people the wrong way.
Although it would be wrong to say that it's OK to make fun of a real disease and its real sufferers, it's abundantly obvious that Lawrence is simply joking, even making light of the idea that every Hollywood actress has a perfect body image. Let's give the woman a break.
Celebrities are human, too. OK, sure, more beautiful and wealthy than we can imagine, maybe. But still simply human. A harmless joke (about herself, no less) is just that — harmless. If you were to take an inventory of everything you say throughout a day, odds are that there would be one or two comments that wouldn't fair well with all of humanity or go without offending at least one person in the world. We are all human. Maybe Lawrence should have thought before she spoke here, but let's cut her some slack and remember what we do have in common with her (being human) before we hold her to an impossible standard that we hardly hold ourselves to. Plus, how much worse would the world be if we couldn't joke about all the terrible stuff that happens every day?
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