Yet again, people can’t seem to talk about Bryce Dallas Howard without bringing up her body. Why? I do not know. This time, it is rooted in the underbelly of Letterboxd reviews for her film Argylle, where men can’t seem to talk about her work without bringing her body up.
If you take a glance at the current reviews there for the film, a lot of them feature men saying absolutely off-the-rails things about Howard. One emblematic user compared her to his wife (which is great and fine) but used the word “thicc” in his review. Why are we doing this? Why is her body a topic of conversation in your Letterboxd review of a movie?
I will not be linking to the reviews and luckily, if you sort through Letterboxd and make it so the most liked are at the top, it takes a while to get to the gross ones. They all seem to think that a woman’s body can only look one way and this has, unfortunately, been a trend with Howard.
When Howard was promoting Jurassic World Dominion, she talked about being asked to lose weight by production and how director Colin Trevorrow stood up for her. Talking with Metro, she recounted the exchange. “How do I say this . . . [I’ve] been asked to not use my natural body in cinema,” Howard said. “And on the third movie, it was actually because there were so many women cast, it was something that Colin felt very strongly about in terms of protecting me … because the conversation came up again, ‘We need to ask Bryce to lose weight.'”
Howard went on to talk about how Trevorrow fought for her with production. “[Colin] was like, ‘There are lots of different kinds of women on this planet, and there are lots of different kinds of women in our film,'” she said. “I got to do so many stunts that wouldn’t have been possible if I had been dieting.”
Stop commenting on a woman’s body like this! Or at all!
It is never okay to tell someone they need to change their body. It’s also grossly objectifying to include comments about an actor’s body type in a film review as if you’re discussing the cinematography or a plot point. I can talk about how Howard is beautiful until I am blue in the face but commenting at all about the specifics of her body is not something a thoughtful person would do. The fact that this is happening again? After Howard herself has already talked about it from a Hollywood standpoint? It’s completely messed up.
I should not have to go on Letterboxd to see what people have to say about a movie and be overwhelmed by comments about a woman’s body. No “criticism” or commentary should ever be boiled down to how a woman looks in something. And sure, people have been commenting on Henry Cavill’s haircut in the movie constantly but that’s not the same thing and you all know it.
(featured image: Universal Pictures)
