What exactly is this ugly word supposed to mean?

[Jennifer] Lawrence is known for speaking her mind, yet she says that didn't make a difference on this specific occasion. "I asked to speak to a producer about the unrealistic diet regime and he responded by telling me he didn't know why everyone thought I was so fat, he thought I was perfectly 'fuckable.'

 The word is new but the concept goes back decades. It's an insane notion on the face of it. For starters, that's a ridiculously low standard. There are very few women men wouldn't be willing to have sex with.

It's just a fact of our evolutionary psychology. As discussed here before, both men and women would have sex with a frighteningly large number of people if it were simply a matter of desire. Everyday, the vast majority of men and women on this planet walk by several dozen people they'd have sex with. That they don't is a reflection of circumstances other than desire. We tend to want not just sex but sex under conditions we feel comfortable with.

So what exactly does this word mean? It might be more useful to think of the concept than just this particular word. There are two related senses we find used in. There was an example in the comments at the Althouse blog the other day. Althouse had put up a post about the ongoing trainwreck that is Megyn Kelly's career. The very first poster had this to say,

I know she has had a rough year, but I'd still do her.

She's still got that going for her. 

I've heard that sort of comment all my life. It's so stupid even if meant ironically that there isn't much to say about it. It's like saying, "I'd accept $1 million for my 15-year-old Subaru". No one's offering and they'd be the ones doing you a favour if they did.

And yet it continues to be said. Keep that in the back of your mind.

The other use of the term, the one directed at Jennifer Lawrence, I think is a relative one. Think about characters in teen dramas. Blake Lively was twenty the first year she played teen-aged Serena van der Woodsen. That's pretty standard practice as actual teens are rarely as good at acting. Teen characters played by actual teens only work if the kids are not expected to extend their acting range beyond goofy. But if teens are going to be played by people in their twenties, the actor playing the part has to be plausible as a teenager.

If we go back to movies and TV shows, the female lead has to have enough sex appeal that it's going to be plausible that the male lead would want her in the face of the competition. And that is a tough standard, a much tougher standard than real life. The female lead is going to surrounded by exceptionally good looking women. She has to be plausible as the one who draws your eye. The script and the camera are on her side, as they were when Blake Lively played a teen, but there are limits to what the highly paid creative staff can do.

Of course, this is only an issue because the entertainment industry is  one of the most sexist work environments on the face of the earth. Women are hired for their looks and for their willingness to do sexual things. Outside stripping and prostitution, I can't think of any other field where women are treated so unfairly. The woman at the car rental counter who gets only five seconds of screen time has to be smoking hot to get the part. Even women meant to look unattractive are typically played by super-hot young women made up to look less attractive and/or older.

Now, it must be said that Jennifer Lawrence deludes herself. She couldn't make it in a field that didn't operate like that. Her career depends absolutely on her looks. Yes, she can act but she wouldn't even have had a shot at a career if a) she didn't look like she did and b) she wasn't willing to sell herself as primarily a sexual being. She's like a prizefighter, she got her job in the first place because she could go in the ring and stomp the competition, she can't complain now that she only gets to keep her job so long as she can keep that up. If the job was purely a matter of acting skills, there are thousands of women who'd rank above her. She's profited from the very sexism she now decries. That said, this is an appalling industry we should all stop supporting.

What would a non-sexist entertainment industry look like? I don't think anyone even has a clue. There never has been such a thing.

In any case, the ugly word means, this woman is still plausible as the most exciting character on the set even though she's going to be surrounded by lots of other exceptionally beautiful women. And I can understand that even though I don't support the way the industry works. She has to shine in a way that she stands out over every other woman in the cast.

The only the other thing to say is that it didn't used to be quite this bad. It used to be a standard plot line that the male lead would find the "girl next door" more attractive as a partner than the bombshell. That's not to say that the female leads were anything less than beautiful but they didn't have to be the most beautiful woman on the set.

I don't know exactly when that stopped being the case. The change had definitely happened by 1994. In that year, The Mask made a joke of the old convention. The male lead has a the choice between seemingly nice girl in reporter Peggy Brandt or femme fatale, and gangster's girlfriend Tina Carlyle. He duly chooses Peggy who promptly betrays him to the police and then ends up with Tina, who turns out to be trustworthy and caring. I remember thinking at the time that this was a nice send up of a plot cliché. In retrospect, that's not so clear. Once upon a time, Hollywood that character trumped sexiness. That hasn't been the case for a couple of decades now. That The Mask could make a joke of it shows that Hollywood had decided that the standards the rest of us look for in a partner were just a quaint joke by 1994.