There is a scene in the underrated rom-com masterpiece that is Notting Hill that says everything you need to know about the double standard in the film industry regarding the way actresses are perceived: as glorified, overpaid prostitutes. While their male counterparts–the “genius” actors–get showered with praise for their artistry, a trend that began around the time of Marlon Brando and James Dean, when method acting made you an automatic tortured artist, women are viewed as little better than twits obsessed with looking attractive and young for the camera. An obsession, of course, indoctrinated in them by the men who have run the industry since its birth, the pimp, in this case, being the studio. So it is that this particular scene, in which Anna Scott (Julia Roberts), the megastar actress hiding out in London after the unexpected release of some pre-fame nude photos (how very Madonna and the Playboy scandal) with William Thacker (Hugh Grant), a civilian who owns a travel book shop, is entirely all too resonant. Even in the wake of 2017’s #MeToo reckoning.
As Anna and William sit in a restaurant at a booth with their backs to another one filled with dweebos dissecting her latest work, one of the men says, “You can give me Anna Scott any day.” Another chimes in, “I didn’t like her last film. Fell asleep as soon as the lights went down.” And here it becomes salacious with the comment, “I don’t really care what the film’s like. Any film with her in it is fine by me.” The conversation shifts again against her favor with, “She’s not my type at all. I prefer the other one. You know, blonde, sweet-looking. You know, what’s-her-name. Has an orgasm every time you take her out for a cup of coffee.” “Meg Ryan,” replies another prat. And it is already at this point in the conversation that the topic’s theme is telling of the rampant misogyny among viewers (both men and women) who feel they have the right to judge a woman who is an actress not for the work she does but for her “bangabilty” meter. For, to them, the crux of her profession is to fulfill a fantasy. No matter whether she’s playing someone living in abject poverty or a freedom fighter or someone who has just had an abortion and is going through a harrowing gamut of depressive emotions. It isn’t about a person she’s playing, or a message she’s trying to convey through her instrument (which, of course, toadish men will see as a double entendre because of this double standard). All male viewers want to see is someone they can wank to in the style of Lester Burnham later on, long after the movie has played. This is precisely why Marilyn Monroe was such a prime example of the actress nailed up to a cross and crucified for her sins of having an hourglass figure she knew how to wield, Mary Magdalene before she became Jesus in her martyrdom. So it was that her desire to play the syphilitic prostitute of Émile Zola’s Nana was rejected. It was, for most directors, too on the nose.
Thus, we’re given the “philosophy” negating the fuckability of Meg Ryan that dictates, “No, she’s too wholesome. The point about Miss Scott is…she’s got that twinkle in her eyes.” Another goon cracks, “Probably drug-induced. Spends most of her life in bloody rehab.” The man about to wax on about his theory continues, “Well, whatever. She’s so clearly up for it. You see, most girls, they’re all like, ‘Stay away, chum.’ But Anna, she is absolutely gagging for it. Do you know that in over fifty languages, the word for ‘actress’ is the same as the word for ‘prostitute’? And Anna is your definitive actress, someone really filthy you can just flip over and start again.” Barring his non-corroborated factoid about the words “actress” and “prostitute” being the same in most languages, there was a period in history, most notably the eighteenth century, in which actresses were maligned as no better than prostitutes by the journalists that would write about their performances, likening that “look in their eye”–the very one that the aforementioned goon speaks on with regard to Anna–to be as flirtatious and coquettish as that of a whore. Also paid to appear as though she’s having a good time. Perhaps part of the reason that actresses were banned for so long from playing any roles onstage (Shakespeare’s theater most certainly comes to mind) was for this very phobia about that come hither stare. The fear men had of their own reaction to the actress. A sexual object held up for an audience adding a tawdriness to her once “unbesmirched” beauty. But then they realized they could allow her to act and subsequently blame their boorish reactions to her paraded physique on her whorishness, not their inherent lasciviousness. That the role of the actress was not only to play a part but to be engaging by way of her physicality to the audience–for audience interaction in the theater was much more common during this epoch–further added to the notion that her loose morals were distinctly on par with a prostitute’s. To boot, the reputation of the actress for sleeping with men not only that she wasn’t married to but that might further her career intensified the malignant stereotype about her being no better or different than a lady of the evening. The actress herself, in fact, a lady of the evening when the theater curtain rose.
What’s more, the word “whore” in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was used with as much looseness as it is today in terms of merely describing a woman with so-called moral ambiguity. Hence, the frequent lumping in of actresses into this category. Plus, they were operating on a transactional level in the same vein as a prostitute. Yet so were men. And still are. So where was this enraged criticism for the actor? Why was he not deemed a gigolo? Obviously because since the dawn of time, it has been the proclamation of patriarchal society that women cannot do the same things or act in the same manner as men and “get away with it.” As though to be liberated is somehow “pulling a fast one” on them.
The correlation between a whore and an actress also amplified when taking into account that both trades have an expiration date for women before it becomes “sad” and “tragic.” They are professions designed for the tight-cunted woman, that is to say, someone young. In their teens and twenties, but, of course, the younger the better. Just as no man wants to look at a woman’s thirty-foot high wrinkles on the big screen, nor does he want to fuck one that doesn’t feel taut and supple. This is why some prostitutes go on to become madams and some actresses go on to produce and direct. Men, all the while, remain untouchable and immune to the damnations of time, being called increasingly more “daring” and “riveting” the older they get (see: Robert De Niro and Al Pacino and, soon enough, Leonardo DiCaprio). The only actress who has managed to transcend that curse of aging is Meryl Streep, and that’s solely because, long ago, she surrendered to “covering up,” her body that is–to being sexless as a means to force audiences to see her onscreen as an actor in the purest form, as opposed to a piece of female eye candy designed to be appraised and strung up if her physical appearance doesn’t induce boners. There are others like her, such as Tilda Swinton and Cate Blanchett, that use their physical predilection for morphing to avoid the curse of the average actress who enters a certain age bracket. However, their exception does not prove the rule for the actress/prostitute, disposable once she’s no longer able to be positioned as fuckable.
Even Julia Roberts has appeared less and less onscreen (as a means to avoid the inevitable), still choosing to do so only if she can be dubbed in some way sexually desirable (which, of course, occurred on Homecoming, her first foray into starring in a TV show). The metaness of the Notting Hill scene is further compounded by the fact that Julia Roberts’ most famous role was that of a prostitute. While Richard Gere’s Edward Lewis, the ultimate whore for money, got away with being a “shark” or “shrewd” because of his business acumen (and then, naturally, a Prince Charming there to save Vivian from her hooking ways). Yet the woman’s unavoidable ties to her corporeal body and the effect it has on men damn her to an existence of using what she was born with to get a check. Jennifer Lopez’s character, Ramona, in Hustlers, too, understands this quite well. That a woman can either fight the system that condemns her as a whore because of her attractiveness and what it gets her, or she can work within it to take advantage of the men that think there’s no brain behind those “come fuck me” eyes.
