While surfing the internet for my daily dose of celeb news, I continued to come across paparazzi photos showing Jonah Hill on a recent shopping spree in New York City. Accompanying photos of the 21 Jump Street actor were headlines that read "New Fears For Jonah The Whale Hill" (National Enquirer), "Jonah Hill Is Fat Again" (Life & Style), and, most shockingly, "21 Plump Street" (Daily Mail).
It seems that when it comes to celebrities and their bodies, it's no longer just women who are on the receiving end of body shaming.
Just last year, Rob Kardashian was famously criticized for his increase in weight. After paparazzi caught he and mom-ager Kris Jenner exiting LAX, fans and haters of Keeping Up With The Kardashians began to joke about Rob's "ballooning" body. Within hours "Blob Carrotcake" began to trend in reference to the star. In response, the brother Kardashian tweeted "so I found out I was trending for being fat thank you all it really made my day."
When it comes to body image, Hollywood, and the media that covers it, are completely unforgiving. There are few lead female actresses who are bigger than a size 4, and yet numerous tabloids that proudly feature "fat actresses on the beach."
La La land is a fantasy world, real people just live in it. But why has the focus of fat-shaming shifted to include men? And is it fair, or does it even matter?
As to why fat-shaming is now a man's problem too, I say blame the blogs. As more people flock to TMZ for the latest celeb photo, or search for the next item to upload to their own online site, the hunger for content has reached a fever-pitch.
And so where a photo of a full-bodied man wouldn't have even piqued the interest of an editor five years ago, that same shot has become just another item for readers to click on, and for social media commenters to respond or retweet.
It's the readers who are hungry.
NYMag shrugged off the male fat-shaming trend back in 2014. Referencing the media's coverage of a thicker Gerard Butler and Leonardo DiCaprio, Kat Stoeffel wrote "Butler and DiCaprio’s minor weight fluctuations have come to represent a distinctly male freedom not to care about their appearances." She continued, "if being in shape is part of an actor’s job, only men truly get to take a vacation. While women stay thin for the fashion magazine covers they will need to appear on in order to promote the movie, Esquire waxes poetic about Vince Vaughn’s “great golden acreage,” which, Chris Jones noted, has “probably been kissed by Jennifer Aniston.”
So, fine, men might not internalize the critique as much as women, and, fine, they might not be as harshly criticized as their female counterparts, but does that make it OK? Gawker's Brian Moylan thinks yes. "If they want to be famous, they have to pay the price by being famously fit," he wrote in a blunt piece for the website. "After all, if we want to look at people carrying a bit of fat around the midsection we'll start following politics...And part of their job description is to be more beautiful than the fatties that we see every Saturday at the mall buying bigger sweatpants."
While stars, both men and women, know that being attractive is partly why they get paid the big bucks, all the hate is still a bit too hard to swallow. With men's fluctuating weights getting more and more ink, we're doubling the amount of vapid trash making its way around the net. And, in doing so, doubling the insecurities non-celebrities have with their own bodies. It's time for the media and social media trolls to just grow up. Chew on that.