The year is 2017 and women who can act to the point of winning multiple awards for their talent are still not deemed as enough in the eyes of Hollywood movie studios ,unless they come in on the scales under a certain size.
That’s the lived experience of British actress Gemma Arterton, anyway.
Speaking to Deborah Francis-White on The Guilty Feminist podcast about an on-set experience she had while filming in Morocco once, the 31-year-old recalled a time that a major film studio she was contracted to became so concerned with her physical appearance that "they flew someone out overnight that gave up their whole life to be with me and be my personal trainer."
Following the arrival of the trainer, her regime became the stuff of brutal, lycra-clad nightmares.
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“They’d [the studio] measure me and they’d call up the personal trainer at, like, nine at night, going: ‘Is she in the gym? And if she isn’t, why isn’t she in the gym?’"
Arterton continued, “And then they’d get me in the gym and film me in the gym and they’d have to know that I was there.”
And when you think this story can't get any worse, it does. Because this is Hollywood we're talking about, after all.
"There was one day when I went to get some snacks, they have, like, snacks on set, and I went to get some apricots, some dried apricots," Arterton told Francis-White. "And the man went – this big, fat, obese producer went, ‘I hope you’re not going to eat that.’”
Seriously. Even dried fruit is the enemy now?
The Clash of the Titans actress first spoke out about the physical double standard faced by women in Hollywood back in 2010, telling GQ, “Unless you’re really famous and successful, then they’re going to bully you into going to the gym. It’s a side of the industry that I find uncomfortable.”
Sadly, it seems that seven years on, little has changed, with the issue is as prevalent and dangerous as it ever was.