“In the spirit of being candid and outspoken, she’s said some things that, while well intentioned, are begging to be misconstrued by impressionable young fans.” — Dean Essner

 

If celebrity culture were an automobile, Jennifer Lawrence would be driving it. Better yet, she’d be rolling roof down, smiling and waving at a swarm of teary-eyed adolescents decked out in their most authentic Katniss Everdeen garb. The car would move slowly. The adjacent streets would be blocked off. The parade would end only when the next one started.

Lawrence’s rise to public deification is something to wonder at and be wary of. On one hand, she’s a talented actress with the special ability to woo critics and average moviegoers alike. She’s made some shrewd career choices so far — namely becoming the face of one of the few blockbuster franchises with artistic merit and becoming the muse of director David O. Russell, whose movies suit her loud, brash, off-the-cuff personality quite well.

On the other hand, her age is an issue. Lawrence is no child star at age 23, but she’s no elder stateswoman either. And in the spirit of being candid and outspoken, she’s said some things that, while well intentioned, are begging to be misconstrued by impressionable young fans. That’s part of the ugly pressure that goes hand in hand with early fame: It’s hard to be an inspiration to your fans when you’re just as young and immature as they are.

The issue of body image is of particular concern. Lawrence has been very vocal about her concerns about today’s conception of beauty, fueled by tabloid magazines, models and clothing store corporations. It’s a worthy cause, but it’s also fallacious once Lawrence starts using her own habits and sense of self as a positive example.

“During Hunger Games, when I was eating ungodly amounts, I used to tell myself, ‘Stop eating, people are going to see this. This movie is going to be around forever.’ But nope! I was like, I still want candy and I still want a hot dog,” she said in a 2013 interview with InStyle magazine.

Why is her logic faulty? Nearly everyone believes Lawrence is beautiful and thin. Here, she claims to have eaten tons of hot dogs and candy and therefore paid the price in the form of an unfit onscreen appearance. But in reality, this is far from true. No one who has seen the Hunger Games films is dwelling on any signs of added weight. In fact, many would argue she’s in model form. By using herself as a case study for a very important message, she inadvertently makes herself just one more impossible standard for women to measure themselves against.

This argument — that Lawrence has been obliviously body-shaming young girls everywhere — has appeared in a slew of publications from many critics, specifically in one searing Huffington Post piece in January. However, I chalk up these mistakes to her still-developing media acumen.

Like her recent film, American Hustle, reminds us, the pressures of scrutiny can contrive people into saying what they assume everyone wants to hear. “The art of survival is a story that never ends,” says Christian Bale’s character, Irving Rosenfeld. Lawrence, an accomplished actress, knows how to put on the right face for the camera — that’s why screenwriters and directors fling scripts at her left and right.

But her off-screen performances are dicier. The ability to tell people what they want to hear, to put on the best face and say the right things, is a double-edged sword, and it’s not clear yet whether she’s using those powers for good or for evil.

She’s in the gold-plated automobile on that tantalizing slow ride down Main Street, U.S.A., but at any moment, the brakes could stall, the people could stop waving and the next shiny car could shoot out from the undergrowth.

But until those things happen, she’ll do what she can stay alive in our limelight. After all, she’s Katniss Everdeen. Or is she?