Renée Zellweger's Weight and Hollywood's Body Double Standard

Introduction: Being Fat in Hollywood

It is acceptable for an actress to be fat in Hollywood — provided that actress is clearly, temporarily fat solely for the purposes of her art, not because she might actually have the natural physique of an average American woman. No screen persona illustrates this fact better than Renée Zellweger. Zellweger began her major motion picture career as the girl next door to Tom Cruise's sports agent in Jerry Maguire. However, the native-born Texan's real fame as a celebrity only took off after she agreed to embody British novelist and journalist Helen Fielding's creation, Bridget Jones, in the film adaptation of the "chick lit" classic Bridget Jones's Diary.

Bridget Jones and the Body on Screen

Bridget Jones's Diary struck a chord with many women on both sides of the Atlantic. It is a tale about a British woman obsessed with finding a man but even more obsessed with her constantly fluctuating weight. In print, although Jones calculates her weight in minute day-to-day detail, it is difficult to assess whether the main character's obsession with her inches and pounds results from the media pushing an insecure Jones toward self-hatred of her normal physique, or whether the character could actually stand to "lose a few." The filmmakers of Bridget Jones's Diary, however, decided to leave no doubt about the character's overweight status. The film justified Jones's self-loathing through a series of humiliating shots of the character in tight pantyhose and an even tighter, ill-fitting Playboy Bunny costume.

To play Jones, the filmmakers hired an American actress to embody the British creation, thereby clearly marking the difference between the petite Zellweger and the pudgy Bridget — in both nationality and physique. The film was then widely promoted by advertising Zellweger's heroic weight gain as well as her mastery of a perfect British accent.

Promoting the Weight Gain

Typical of the interviews given during promotion for the first Jones film is the following: "Renée Zellweger is an actress born and bred in Texas, slender and cheerful… But for seven months she was Bridget Jones, book publishing company publicist, 129 lbs., witty and veddy, veddy British" (Kim, 2001). The article implies, of course, that to be 5'5" and 129 pounds — as Zellweger was — is the antithesis of slender. Zellweger spoke of the weariness of having to eat so much, saying that her consumption "was boringly technical, frankly, truly… We went to the physician and I said, 'This is what I would like to do.' And he did the math, and he made the list, and said, 'Here's what you'll have to add if you want to achieve X,' so we just implemented that into the day" (Kim, 2001).

The actress implies that she would never wish to eat that much, but that she transformed her body under strictly clinical circumstances. The interviewer lavishly — almost voyeuristically — chronicles what Zellweger ate during the film's production, noting that "the volume of food — breakfast was an omelet with croissant, butter and weight-gain milkshake — sometimes became overwhelming for the diminutive actress, who found herself substituting Cadbury Dairy Milks instead" (Kim, 2001). After some prompting, Zellweger confessed: "It was nice to say [for once], 'I'd better have a garlic bread with this pizza — it's for the good of the film… it's my responsibility to have that piece of pie'" (Kim, 2001).

But although Zellweger insisted she loved "being voluptuous and really womanly," several questions remain. Why not hire an actress more physically suited for the role of Bridget Jones? What does it say about Hollywood that actresses are required to gain weight simply to look like real people — even real people in the media business, like Bridget Jones? And why should it come as such a surprise that an actress would alter her physique and lifestyle to embody a character? After all, actors are supposed to be protean — shape-shifting by definition.

Conclusion: Actresses and the Illusion of the Common Woman

The arc of Zellweger's Bridget Jones experience reveals a great deal about how Hollywood constructs and polices the female body. An actress may temporarily inhabit the body of an ordinary woman — but only on the understanding that it is a performance, a heroic sacrifice, and a deviation from her true, slender self. The media's breathless coverage of every pound gained and lost reinforces the idea that the average female body is a kind of costume, something to be worn briefly for artistic effect and then gratefully discarded. Far from celebrating the diversity of women's bodies, the Zellweger coverage ultimately reaffirms a narrow ideal: that glamour and normality are mutually exclusive, and that the natural physique of a real woman is, by Hollywood's standards, something to be endured rather than celebrated.

Works Cited

Kim, Ellen. "Interview: Renée Zellweger." Hollywood.com, 18 Mar. 2001.

"Zellweger Paid by the Pound." The Age, 18 Aug. 2003.